Quotes & Sayings About Not Missing The Past

I'm not sure the least educated members of the population are missing out on the advances in medical technology as much as they are adopting harmful behavioral habits that shorten their life. — S. Jay Olshansky

Like Blue, not the ley line, was the missing piece that he'd been needing all these years, like the search for Glendower wasn't truly underway until she was part of it. — Maggie Stiefvater

It had always been the two of them through everything -every adventure and every expedition- and now there was this awful distance between them, and she tried not to think about all the stories they were missing out on, all the litle moments and bigger milestones that had happened over the past few weeks without the other knowing — Jennifer E. Smith

I know you're feeling worried,
But I promise I'm okay.
You think I'm missing all the fun,
But I don't want to play.
And I'm not feeling lonely;
Yeah, I've got a friend with me.
I'm just keeping this corner company. — Margo T. Rose

Lord Bacchus, do you remember me? I helped you with that missing leopard in Sonoma."
Bacchus scratched his stubbly chin. "Ah ... yes. John Green."
"Jason Grace."
"Whatever," the god said. — Rick Riordan

To do that Cinnamon had to fill in those blank spots in the past that he could not reach with his own hands. By using those hands to make a story, he was trying to supply the missing links. From the stories he had heard repeatedly from his mother, he derived further stories in attempt to recreate the enigmatic figure of his grandfather in a new setting. He inherited from his mother's stories the fundamental style he used, unaltered, his own stories: namely, the assumption that fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual. The question of which parts of story were factual and which parts were not was probably not a very important one for Cinnamon. The important question for Cinnamon was not what his grandfather did but what his grandfather might have done. He learned the answers to this question as soon as succeed in telling the story. — Haruki Murakami

All of my plays are about people missing the boat, closing down too young, coming to the end of their lives with regret at things not done, as opposed to things done. II find most people spend too much time living as if they're never going to die. — Edward Albee

Iran has agreed to deepen our coordination as we work to locate Robert Levinson, missing from Iran for more than eight years. Even as we rejoice in the safe return of others, we will never forget about Bob. Each and every day our hearts are with the Levinson family, and we will not rest until their family is whole again. — Barack Obama

Do remember, though, that unless you're a playwright, the result [dialogue] isn't what you want; it's only an element of what you want. Actors embody and re-create the words of drama. In fiction, a tremendous amount of story and character may be given through the dialogue, but the story-world and its people have to be created by the storyteller. If there's nothing in it but disembodied voices, too much is missing. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The missing aren't missing, they're only departed,
All minds keep all thoughts - so like gold - closely guarded, — Trenton Lee Stewart

I've done four videos for older people under my new brand, Prime Time, and the missing link was yoga. I'm aiming it for older people - people who have never worked out or who are recovering from a surgery and have to start slow. It's easy, you can't get hurt, it's very doable, and I've done it in ten-minute segments. — Jane Fonda

...our low regard for nostalgia often seems not to rest on some substantive standard of excellence, in light of which a preference for the past is seen as missing the mark, but rather expresses idolatry of the present. This kind of "forward-thinking" is at bottom an apologetic species of conservatism, as it defers to and celebrates whatever is currently ascendant. — Matthew B. Crawford

There are times in every person's life when they feel lonely, isolated, like maybe they don't belong. For adoptees, this is often exacerbated by the circumstances. Because you were given up, you have a built-in scapegoat; you can blame everything that you feel on the fact that you were adopted. But, I want you to know that this is a fallacy. Finding your biological parents will not fill in the void that you feel. You will get answers to your questions, but no one can fill in the missing pieces except for you. Before you go on a search, take the time to get to know yourself very well. Heal the hurts you've experienced. Acknowledge the past and how it has affected you. Become a whole person who is seeking roots, not a damaged person who is seeking fulfillment. — Janet Louise Stephenson

They say I am a brave girl
I'm a hailstorm for the rain
I'm a volcano for the mountain
I'm a diamond for the stone
And I wonder if I can be real me.
I see the crowd
I hear the noise
I keep my patience.
But inside I want to scream
Yes I want to scream like hell.
And when she call me on phone,
I wonder how she knows it.
I wonder how she hears those silent words..
How she sees those forbidden tears ...
I wonder how she knows I am missing somewhere ... — Emma Brynstein

There was this song I was working on called 'Swing.' It was almost finished, but there was something missing, and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. And then this little piece of information - this little tweet - came to the forefront of my mind. — Imogen Heap

Do not look back,
No one knows how the world ever began.
Do not fear the future, Nothing lasts forever.
If you dwell on the past or future,
You will miss the moment. — Rumi

Digital held no romance for me at all. I hated it. I miss my big cameras. The working process, I miss it. — Gregory Heisler

You know what shows today are missing? Stars. — Aaron Spelling

Miss my daily Mass, and have a superstitious feeling that anything may happen on the days I don't go. However, nothing in particular has. — Rose Macaulay

Give yourself some credit," he went on, "not a lot of silkies would have made it this far."
"I stopped you from killing Chorda," (...)
"Hey, come one," Rafe said. "It's your first time in the Feral Zone. Of course you made mistakes."
"Like falling for the wrong boy?" I'd said it to be funny, since he was always teasing me about Everson, but Rafe grew still.
He turned his gaze on the dark skyline. "No, you didn't. He's a stiff, but he's a good guy, he won't crawl out of your window after you fall asleep or come on to your sister."
"I don't have a sister."
"Missing the point. — Kat Falls

Since birds took flight, they were closer to the spirit world than man was, so ignoring a message from a bird might mean missing some warning or promise from powers greater than oneself. — Jodi Picoult

Half an ear cocked, something in me, all night, every night, is waiting for you to come home. — Lionel Shriver

Missing someone is the whetstone that sharpens want. — Leah Raeder

"Ah, Miss, hope is an excellent thing for such as has the spirits to bear it!" said Mrs Wickam, shaking her head. "My own spirits is not equal to it, but I don't owe it any grudge. I envys them that is so blest!" — Charles Dickens

It's not that I wait for you.
It's that my arms are doors I cannot close. — Derrick Brown

The trick to not getting mired in the past and missing out on the future lies solely in our ability to let go and move on, yet this seems to be the most difficult thing in the world for most people (including myself) to do. — Mandy Hale

It's here somewhere," I assured him.
"Please tell me you haven't lost it already."
"We did fall out of the sky, you know," I said indignantly. "It's easy for things to go missing. — Alexandra Adornetto

Do we miss not only the past but every future the lost past describes? Is that just the nature of missing? All the lost might-have-beens? The certainty that those uncertain futures are gone? If we can't embrace uncertainty do we miss the point of love? — Mark Z. Danielewski

The center was not holding. It was a country of bankruptcy notices and public-auction announcements and commonplace reports of casual killings and misplaced children and abandoned homes and vandals who misplaced even the four-letter words they scrawled. It was a country in which families routinely disappeared, trailing bad checks and repossession papers. Adolescents drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins, children who were never taught and would never now learn the games that had held the society together. People were missing. Children were missing. Parents were missing. Those left behind filed desultory missing- persons reports, then moved on themselves. — Joan Didion

All the faces on the photographs have changed,
To not confuse it all, the names remain the same — Antimatter

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes - I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they're missing? Uh huh. — Frank O'Hara

Time is not an enemy as such, but a missing person, sending cryptic postcards from the past. — Carla H. Krueger

We'll meet again, but you're a lifetime away, and I need you now. — Karen Quan

There's not a day that goes by, without me thinking of you, dying, in someone else's arms. — Anthony Liccione

You are the witness of the three bodies: the gross, the subtle, and the causal, and of the three times: past, present and future, and also this void. In the story of the tenth man, when each of them counted and thought they were only nine, each one forgetting to count himself, there is a stage when they think one is missing and do not know who it is; and that corresponds to the void. We are so accustomed to the notion that all that we see around us is permanent and that we are this body, that when all this ceases to exist we imagine and fear that we also have ceased to exist. — Ramana Maharshi

Just as I could not imagine a world in stereo depth, an individual with normal normal stereopsis cannot experience the worldview of a person who has always lacked steropsis. This may be surprising because you can eliminate clues from stereopsis simply by closing one eye. What's more, many people do not notice a great difference when viewing the world with one eye or two. When a normal binocular viewer closes one eye, however, he or she still uses a lifetime of past visual experiences to re-create the missing stereo information. — Susan Barry

There is (as I now find) no remorse for time long past, even for what may have mortified us or made us ashamed of ourselves when it was happening: there is a pleasant panoramic sense of what it all was and how it all had to be. Why, if we are not vain or snobbish, need we desire that it should have been different? The better things we missed may yet be enjoyed or attained by someone else somewhere: why isn't that just as good? And there is no regret, either, in the sense of wishing the past to return, or missing it: it is quite real enough as it is, there at its own date and place — George Santayana

Though not necessarily aware of when we feel purpose and meaning, we are nearly always aware of the sickening feeling when we don't possess them. This isn't an intellectual misapprehension; it is a gut sense of disorientation and a loss of personal direction. Rarely are brute mental effort and self-help pep talks able to rekindle the missing feeling. For most of us, we simply wait patiently, knowing from past experience that the feeling will return in its own sweet time ... Of particular interest is [Tolstoy's] conclusion as to the inability of science and reason to provide a personal sense of meaning. — Robert A. Burton

There aren't any looks or customs I wish would come back. Today almost anything goes. Culture constantly devours the past so there's not much that's missing. — Graydon Carter

The baby explodes into an unknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story - of course that is how we all live, it's the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after it has started. It's like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It's like arriving after curtain up. The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you - and it can't, and it shouldn't, because something IS missing. That isn't of its nature negative. The missing part, the missing past, can be an opening, not a void. It can be an entry as well as an exit. It is the fossil record, the imprint of another life, and although you can never have that life, your fingers trace the space where it might have been, and your fingers learn a kind of Braille. — Jeanette Winterson

That is the simple secret of happiness. Whatever you are doing, don't let past move your mind; don't let future disturb you. Because the past is no more, and the future is not yet. To live in the memories, to live in the imagination, is to live in the non-existential. And when you are living in the non-existential, you are missing that which is existential. Naturally you will be miserable, because you will miss your whole life. — Osho

Plane Ride -
In our sport it is natural and necessary to set up goals to inspire us. We all want to achieve the next level, the break-thru performance. What we (all of us) must not forget is that the journey to these goals is the best part. The daily process of obtaining success takes up the majority of our time and effort throughout our lives. Remember to appreciate what you've done in the past and what you are doing in the present on your way to higher goals. This will allow you to always strive for something more without missing out on the fact that your path to success is as much a starting point as it is a finish line. — Matthew Alan

In a time like that, the past meets you wherever you turn. The days do not use their own hours and minutes, they find ones you have lived through with the person you are missing. — Ivan Doig

that I thought of you - of the air that slipped
between the strands of your hair, and blue stones
in my hand, before the autumn damasks

bloom their last, before these blue stones are lain
forgotten as the blossoms of plum trees
I could not render in my artless hands — John Daniel Thieme

I remember an insight that taught me much about life. One day I felt that I had everything that I really wanted in life. I had a creative and meaningful work as a therapist and course leader, I had a relationship with a beautiful woman, who I loved and who loved me, I had friend that I trusted and I had money to do what I wanted.
But in spite of all this, I still had a feeling that there was something missing in my life. I was not satisfied. The thirst and longing in my heart was still searching for something more. It made me realize that the deepest pain in my heart was that I was still separated from the Whole and that no outer things or relationships could ease this pain. — Swami Dhyan Giten

If there's anything I've learned it's that love is an unstoppable human drive, fierce and universal, and that sex is the physical manifestation of love. And that sex without love is missing the whole damn point. Sex brings us home to love. — Sarah Katherine Lewis

People need to be given enough so that they feel like they're not missing something. There's a thing that you have when you watch a movie where, if you feel like you're not following and you're going to get tested on it later, you're going to get disengaged. So, you have to give people just enough information, so that they're able to keep up with the story. — Mark Waters

If there were a Jessica Chase instruction manual, it would be written backwards in Arabic Pig Latin and twelve thousand pages long with random pages missing. — Olivia Cunning

Red, brown, yellow, green, black. Five colours to say everything that could be said. And what Cy suddenly wanted, more than anything in the world just then, what he wanted was that missing blue, primary and resistant to the trade. Blue that was unstable and misbehaved when left in skin. Blue like the sea that had taken his father. Blue, for his mother's sake, and for the true colour of every bereaved and bloodless heart when it is collapsing. — Sarah Hall

Can somebody explain to me why Pepsi and Coke advertise? Are we missing something? Seriously, everyone in this room has drank enough Pepsi and Coke in their lifetime they could piss it for a week. — Lewis Black

When I discovered Mose Allison I felt I had discovered the missing link between jazz and blues — Ray Davies

Social psychology, the science of how people behave toward one another, is often a mishmash of interesting phenomena that are "explained" by giving them fancy names. Missing is the rich deductive structure of other sciences, in which a few deep principles can generate a wealth of subtle predictions - the kind of theory that scientists praise as "beautiful" or — Steven Pinker

If his voice hasn't been the melody of my life, it's been the bass line, so subtle you don't notice it until it's missing. — Jodi Picoult

Like any collection of family photographs, it was a random selection that told only fragments of a story. The real tale would be revealed by the pictures that were missing or never even taken at all, not the ones that had been so carefully framed or packed away neatly in an envelope. — Victoria Hislop

Blink and you miss a sprint. The 10,000 meters is lap after lap of waiting. Theatrically, the mile is just the right length: beginning, middle, end, a story unfolding. — Sebastian Coe

Perhaps I'm missing the gene for making enemies. — Larry Wall

Wide awake to the presence of God, I realized I had been so focused on asking why a good God allowed bad things to happen that I was missing out on the nearness of God all along. In becoming preoccupied with the why, I was missing the who. — Margaret Feinberg

You've missed a lot of things. But mostly I think you've missed several opportunities to leave. Let me assist you to the door so that you won't miss this next one. — Victoria Laurie

If you say, Well, OK, I don't believe in God. There's no evidence of God, then you're missing the stars in the sky and you're missing the sunrises and sunsets and you're missing the fact that bees pollinate all these crops and keep us alive and the way that everything seems to work together. Everything is sort of built in a way that to me suggests intelligent design. — Stephen King

I tend to gravitate toward the "act two," or "act three," or "act four" stories - either things that are underreported, where we think we already know the common narrative, or things that are at the margins of an over-reported story, where we're all so focused in one direction that we're missing something crucial that's unfolding off to the side. — Sarah Stillman

The witch's words were cut off and Izzy stumbled back into the earth.
Izzy looked up at the dragoness standing over her. her grandmother smiled. "What did I miss? I sensed I was missing something!"
Rhiannon looked down at her claws, "Did I step in something? I feel like I stepped in something. — G.A. Aiken

The pathologized images have moved the soul in several ways: we are afraid; we feel vulnerable and in danger; our very physical sustance and sanity appear to be menaced; we want to prevent or rectify. Especially this last seizes us. We feel protective, impelled to correct, straighten, repair. For we have confused something sick with something wrong. [ ... ]
affliction reaches us partly through the guilt it brings. Guilt belongs to the experiences of deviation, the the sense of being off, failing, 'missing the mark'. [ ... ]
However the true missing of the mark is taking the guilt literally, where failings becomes faults to be set right. This places the guilt on the shoulders of the ego who 'should not' have failed. Then pathologizing reinforces the ego's style and guilt serves a secondary gain, increasing the ego's sense of importance: ego becomes superego, drivenly busy with repairing wrongs. A guilty ego is no less egocentric than a proud one. — James Hillman

Jack, who apparently always had to be moving in some way, had made up for the missing knife by grabbing a half loaf of French bread and methodically ripping it into tiny pieces.
"What," I said, narrowing my eyes. "Why don't faeries like bread?"
"Hmm?" Jack looked up, then shrugged. "I dunno."
Lend picked up a piece, crumbling it. "My dad said he thought it was because it was the staff of life for people."
"Nasty stuff tastes like mold," Jack said. "I tried a piece once a while ago when I was still trying to force myself to eat normal food so I could stay here. It was like a shock to my whole system." He shuddered at the memory. — Kiersten White

Miss Havisham is a glitch in the smooth functioning of the Patriarchy, enforcing awareness of a moment of social disaster and personal shame, something it seems she would want us to forget (but no one would forget). (Maybe an interesting "discussion question" for readers of Complicated Grief might be, "What do Terry Barton and Miss Havisham have in common?"?) — Laura Mullen

He kissed her, and knew he was trying to tell her the depth of how he felt. Even as he lost himself in her, felt her hair sweep across his face, his chest, her lips meet his skin, her fingers, he understood that there were people for whom one other was their missing part. — Jojo Moyes

You cannot move forward if you are always thinking backwards — Bathsheba Dailey

There is no music in a "rest" that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody. — John Ruskin

Whoever is missing in action turns
Into a flower, after he reappears
In stories, such as the old people were
Telling... — Simeon Dumdum Jr.

The inner life is bruised by a running against the laws of the Kingdom. The bruises are guilt complexes, a sense of inferiority, of missing the mark, of being out of harmony with God and with oneself, a sense of wrongness. Divine forgiveness wipes out all that sense of inner hurt and condemnation. Brings a sense of at-homeness- at home with God and oneself and with life. The universe opens its arms and takes one in. You are accepted- by God, by yourself, and by life. All self-loathing, self-rejection, all inferiorities drop away. You are a child of God; born from above, you walk the earth, a conqueror, afraid of nothing. Healed at the heart, you can say to life: Come on, I'm ready for anything. — E. Stanley Jones

I hurt all over even more now, like someone has shattered my insides, like I've been torn apart and put back together but I'm missing something.
Her.
And him. My brother. — Elizabeth Scott

This wasn't a commodifiable realization, the kind of thing in college essays or inspirational books or the hardbound journals of gentle ladies. There was no ah, no ha, no relaxation or humor folded into this realization. There was just something real in my head - a rescue boat in a sea where there was no one left to save. — Catherine Lacey

The sorrow of war inside a soldier's heart was in a strange way similar to the sorrow of love. It was a kind of nostalgia, like the immense sadness of a world at dusk. It was a daness, a missing, a pain which could send one soaring back into the past. The sorrow of the battlefield could not normally be pinpointed to one particular event, or even one person. If you focused on any one event it would soon become a tearing pain. — Bao Ninh

That was always the hardest part, missing you. — Justin Cronin

Our God is a three-part being (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Mark T. Barclay-The Missing Red Letters — Mark T. Barclay

Her life was no more than a ghostly pageant of exhausted endurance, no more real than a television drama. Death, who now stood by her side, was as familiar to her as a family member, missing for a long time but now returned. — Han Kang

But we always avoided talking about these things - difficult things - and I wondered if that meant we'd be a little uncomfortable with or disappointed by each other for the rest of our lives. — Catherine Lacey