Quotes & Sayings About Ignoring The Past

Living in a dream of the future is considered a character flaw. Living in the past, bathed in nostalgia, is also considered a character flaw. Living in the present moment is hailed as spiritually admirable, but truly ignoring the lessons of history or failing to plan for tomorrow are considered character flaws ... I wanted to know how to inhabit time in a way that wasn't a character flaw. — Sarah Manguso

I've learned that history is the autobiography of the historian, that ignoring the past is the act of a fool, and that loyalty does not mean falling into line, but stepping out of it for the people you love. — Annie Barrows

I think that's what a fresh start is all about. Not ignoring the past, but seeing it through the eyes of God, through the eyes of grace. Knowing where we've been and where we're going. A fresh start isn't about forgetting; it's about perspective. — Susan May Warren

A man could only spend so much of his time ignoring the present before the present made him a thing of the past. — S.M. White

To denounce does not free the self from what it hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence. — Jacques Barzun

Without realizing that the past is constantly determining their present actions, they avoid learning anything about their history. They continue to live in their repressed childhood situation, ignoring the fact that is no longer exists, continuing to fear and avoid dangers that, although once real, have not been real for a long time. — Alice Miller

This piece of earth I billet grows small. Bullets of time dart past, dropping shards of opportunity at my feet. And until the rift that surrounds my decaying body clamps shut - swallows me up like so many remains - I army on, simultaneously ignoring and saving my comrades in the hole.
Such is a writer's life. — Chila Woychik

All his life he would cherish the memory of an endless caravan of camels alongside the railway line, the laden beasts plodding patiently through the snow, ignoring the twentieth century as it hurtled past them in a clash of iron and a shriek of steam. — Ken Follett

As Eldon continued to look around, he was anxious to realize people were gathering in the square. They paused to glower in disgust at Tobias, and a few bold children riding past on bicycles slowed down to stick out their tongues. Eldon heard Tobias mutter something under his breath, and as the children rode away, they lost control of their bikes and crashed into each other.

"Toby!"

"Are you rested now?" said Tobias, ignoring Eldon's shock. — Ash Gray

Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves. — Bessel Van Der Kolk

An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ignoring what he's done in the past. Blindly, stupidly, disregarding the entire graveyards he's filled, the thousands who have suffered... the friends he's crippled... I thought... I thought killing me--that I'd be the last person you'd ever let him hurt. If it had been you that he beat to a bloody mass. If it had been you that he left in agony. If he had taken you from this world... I would have done nothing but search the planet for this pathetic pile of evil, death-worshiping garbage... and sent him off to hell. — Judd Winick

You get everything you need?"
She squealed like an idiot and whirled around to see him smirking at her. "JeSUS!" She glared at him and brushed past him, ignoring the sparks that shot down her arm where their bodies met.
Thumping down on to the sofa, she grabbed at the food tray and began digging in, glaring at him the whole time as he took the seat opposite her. She swallowed when he refused to look away. "You know this is all just a little too Virginia Andrews for my liking."
He raised an eyebrow. "Meaning?"
"The clothes, the accessories, the shampoo!" Avery shook her head in disbelief. "It's creepy, Brennus. — Samantha Young

However, traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.

The more people try to push away and ignore internal warning signs, the more likely they are to take over and leave them bewildered, confused, and ashamed. People who cannot comfortably notice what is going on inside become vulnerable to respond to any sensory shift either by shutting down or by going into a panic - they develop a fear of fear itself. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

You don't get to keep ignoring the past because you don't like it. — Adam Silvera

He jerked the door open, ignored Leo's suddenly furious growl and stomped back to the observation room. As he pushed through the door, Leo on his heels, he faced Elizabeth as she turned from something Ely was saying.
He gripped her shoulders, bent and kissed her forehead gently. "I'm heading home, Mother. Please get Father off my back and out of my life for a day or so if you don't mind. I do have family matters to take care of now."
Ignoring her surprise, he turned and stalked past Leo, back to the hall, and out of the small building that served as Sanctuary's pre-detaining building.
Calling Leo "father" didn't sit well, but he was a Breed, created, not born, trained rather than raised. He wasn't Jonas. After tonight, he would never call Leo "father" again perhaps, but he wouldn't deny him any longer. — Lora Leigh

The poorer half of humanity needs cheap housing, cheap health care, and cheap education, accessible to everybody, with high quality and high aesthetic standards. The fundamental problem for human society in the next century is the mismatch between the three new waves of technology and the three basic needs of poor people. The gap between technology and needs is wide and growing wider. If technology continues along its present course, ignoring the needs of the poor and showering benefits upon the rich, the poor will sooner or later rebel against the tyranny of technology and turn to irrational and violent remedies. In the future, as in the past, the revolt of the poor is likely to impoverish rich and poor together. — Freeman Dyson

Interfaith dialogue is a must today, and the first step in establishing it is forgetting the past, ignoring polemical arguments, and giving precedence to common points, which far outnumber polemical ones. — Fethullah Gulen

Accepting our greatness means no longer playing small. It often starts with baby steps. But eventually it means making major changes - in our lives, jobs, relationships, and dreams.

If I had believed in my own self-worth, I would never have been willing to make the financial moves I made in the past.

If I'd known my value, I couldn't have spent so many years ignoring the whispering - and sometimes screaming - voice that told me to leave my marriage. For a long time, that truth was just too scary and painful for me to face. Talk about keeping my head in the sand!

But how many years did I waste, postponing what has proven to be a much better life - simply because I went into hiding and didn't see that I was worthy of something better? — Nancy Levin

the chambers and passages of the cave system. A track led past both entrances, and round up onto the hill-top, up which sloping trail Yana now wearily pulled herself. Some huts were private dwelling places while others were the domain of certain crafts. Community meetings were held either outside in a large space deliberately left clear in the centre of the huts, or during cold or inclement weather, in the larger of the two entrance chambers of the cave system. Yana moved aside the leather windbreak sheltering the entrance to the hut which was her family's home and walked down the four stone-flagged steps to the floor of the sunken hut. A strong herbal odour hung in the air. Ignoring it, Yana dropped her kill by the fire, and made her way to the occupied sleeping platform at — Julie Reilly

The Bodleian above anything else made Oxford what it was ... There was something incommunicably grand about it, something difficult to understand unless you had spent your evenings there or walked past it on the way to celebrate the boat race, a magic that came from ignoring it a thousand times a day and then noticing its overwhelming beauty when you came out of a tiny alley and it caught you unexpectedly. A library
it didn't sound like much, but it was what made Oxford itself. The greatest library in the world. — Charles Finch

Thinking about the future and thinking about the past is really only a way of ignoring the present. — Billy Corgan

Literature is a way in which we can learn to live deeper lives
husband with wife, parent with child, brother with sister, fellow member with fellow member. Most good authors are better than we are. They are much better company than our own friends.
What comes from good company? What comes from good company is better manners, greater sensitivity, greater sensibility, greater empathy, great sympathy. Reading good literature makes us more capable of understanding other people, of loving other people, those whom we don't particularly want to love, even our enemies, as well as those closest to us. How can we expect to have full marriages when we are not going into those marriages with full minds and fine sensibilities? We are ignoring the tremendous possibilities of a delicate, well-poised, rich, sensitive life if we ignore the literature of the past. There is no substitute. — Arthur Henry King

THE ROBIN
O Robin, sing! for the secret of eternity is in song.
I wish I were as you, free from prisons and chains.
I wish I were as you; a soul flying over the valleys,
Sipping the light as wine is sipped from ethereal cups.
I wish I were asyou, innocent, contented and happy
Ignoring the future and forgetting the past.
I wish I were as you in beauty, grace and elegance
With the wind spreading my wings for adornment by the dew.
I wish I were as you in beauty, a thought floating above the land
Pouring out my songs between the forest and the sky.
O Robin, sing! and disperse my anxiety.
I listen to the voice within your voice
that whispers in my inner ear; — Kahlil Gibran

If I never explore my limits, my bodymind will gradually tighten and become unconscious. If I regularly explore my limits in a caring and adventuresome fashion, I will expand and grow in a vital fashion. But if I try to push myself past where I am honestly able to go, I will no longer be practicing yoga but instead will be practicing greed, and I will probably be met by pain and disease. Stated simply, it is the difference between ignoring your self, making love to yourself, and raping yourself. — Ken Dychtwald

People forget history nowadays, he lamented, that is what the ego does, making one the prisoner of one's inflated present, ignoring the humble past one has lived. — Aporva Kala

A little more patience, a little more charity for all, a little more devotion, a little more love; with less bowing down to the past, and a silent ignoring of pretended authority; brave looking forward to the future with more faith in our fellows, and the race will be ripe for a great burst of light and life. — Elbert Hubbard

People search for the meaning of life, but this is the easy question: we are born into a world that presents us with many millenia of collected knowledge and information, and all our predecessors ask of us is that we not waste our brief life ignoring the past only to rediscover or reinvent its lessons badly. — Erik Naggum

It is a grave error for historians of literature to interpret the national spirit of the age in an oversimplified manner, ignoring the complexity of various cultural and life processes. Instead of using their imagination, they try to read the future by observing the hands of a clock which is still busy measuring the past. — Mieczyslaw Jastrun

A curiosity: my name, Rem, will someday come to mean a line of text in a language spoken only by machines. Specifically, it will mean a line that the machines can safely ignore
one that's only there as a mnemonic, a placeholder, for the people who give the machines their orders. A REM line might say something like "this bit is a self-contained sub loop" or "Steve Perlman in Marketing is a shit." The program as a whole rolls on past and around the REM lines, ignores them completely as it takes its shape, moves through its pre-ordained sequences, unfolds its wonders. My mother named me well. — Louise Carey

In their secretly nervous hearts, they've convinced themselves, poor little delusional narcissists, that their nation is the most powerful that ever was or even will be, ignoring the still vaster empires that have crumbled in the past, conveniently forgetting that the U.S. has only existed for a mere 225 years, and refusing to consider for a nanosecond that in another 225 years it very well might be gone.
*Stubblefield commentary, on patriotic American citizens in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. — Tom Robbins

Some part of him had hoped that a woman might one day see beyond his scars to the man he was inside. But Megan was doing more than just ignoring his ugliness. She was _accepting_ it with a woman's gentleness, her touch soothing memories of savage pain, grief, loneliness. — Pamela Clare

My best day ever. Got up. Had breakfast. Came to school. Bored, as usual. Wishing I wasn't there, like usual. Kids ignoring me, suits me fine. Sitting with the other retards - we're so special. Wasting my time. Yesterday was the same, and it's gone, anyway. Tomorrow may never come. There is only today. This is the best day and the worst day. Actually it's crap. — Rachel Ward

No one really knew who (or what) the Curator actually was, nor could anyone guess as to where he came from or why he stood guard over this gate. He was like the rainclouds outside or the sun behind them: you didn't question where they came from or what they were doing, simply because they had always been there. Some of the more sociable Genshwin had tried several times to wring some interesting answers out of him, but no one had ever been able to get past his enigmatic grin.
It made Rachel uncomfortable. As a youth, she had often tried to provoke him to anger without success. He would just laugh and shake his head at her like a patient father ignoring a petulant child. He was too patient, and she resented that; he was intentionally cryptic and she hated him for it. And the Curator knew it, too. — S.G. Night

You will never let go of the past by ignoring the most painful thing the person you loved has done to you. When you begin to minimize it, second guess yourself and others, ignore it or even pretend it didn't happen you cheat yourself out of healing. Naturally, your mind would rather believe the lies you are telling it, rather than accept the truth. The soul has a way of protecting itself from trauma, but if left in denial there is no growth or change. Healing requires going to that place you avoid and asking yourself why you are so afraid to accept the reality of what happened to you? Why have you minimized it like this person has wanted you to? What is it about your self esteem that allows you to continue being a doormat? — Shannon L. Alder

People forget history nowadays,that is what the ego does, making one the prisoner of one's inflated present, ignoring the humble past one had lived. — Aporva Kala

She walked right on past, ignoring him just like she chose to ignore the way nature had tagged her with those outsized badges of femininity, just like she was above him, and sex, and everything else that's weak and of the flesh. — Ken Kesey

As that fucking chandelier twinkled overhead, Blay said roughly, "I'm still in love with him."
Saxton dropped his eyes and brushed a the top of his thigh, as if there might have been a tiny piece of lint there. "I know. You thought you weren't?"
As if that were rather stupid of him.
"I'm so fucking tired of it. I really am."
"That I believe."
"Im so fucking ... " God, those sounds, that muted pounding , that audible confirmation of what he had been ignoring for the past year
On a sudden wave of violence, he pitched the brandy snifter at the marble fireplace, shattering the thing.
"Fuck, Fuck!" If he'd been able to, he'd have jumped up and torn that goddamn cocksucking light fixture off the goddamn cocksucking ceiling. — J.R. Ward

But what? But it was just so much easier to deal with the old pain by ignoring it? Forgetting it? Andy's presence meant having to actively work at forgiving him, and that was hard. Forgetting was much easier than forgiving
forgiving was an on-going process that had to continue past the dramatic declarations of apology and absolution. — Diana Killian

It is all too easy to give ourselves over to the traumas of the past -- allowing pain to define us. There is a medicine for that -- hope and perseverance. Light brings light. And no matter what we face there is one thing we can control: our outlook. It's not about ignoring the pain, or mindlessly believing things will simply be better -- it's about finding the joy in participating. And when the weight of the past pulls us low we must find the strength to release it ... and finally give ourselves permission to start over. — Rick Remender

I say decisively that nothing is so marked in modern writing as the prediction of such ideals in the future combined with the ignoring of them in the past. Anyone — G.K. Chesterton