Past Comes Back Quotes & Sayings

What happens in the past, is in the past. But don't be surprised if it comes back and haunts you. — Nicholas Sparks

Childhood is a human water, a water which comes out of the shadows. This childhood in the mists and glimmers, this life in the slowness of limbo gives us a certain layer of births. What a lot of beings we have begun! What a lot of lost springs which have nevertheless, flowed! Reverie toward our past then, reverie looking for childhood seems to bring back lives which which have never taken place, lives which have been imagined. Reverie is a mnemonics of the imagination. In reverie we re-enter into contact with possibilities which destitute has not been able to make use of. — Gaston Bachelard

Time plays no role in the life of one man - the subtle consciousness of it floating past me is more than enough. Years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds - what does it matter? Floating by, it rubs against my skin, face, and hair - wearing me down, yet polishing me all the while. Time is like fine grains of sand in a desert storm. At first, you don't pay any attention to it, but the more it hits you in the face, the more aware of it you become, the more annoying it gets until, one day, you find yourself suffocating. The weight of it eventually bends your spine, until you are crawling on your hands and knees, unable to stand straight. Then comes the time to crawl back into the womb, crawl inside and wait for rebirth. — Henry Martin

Vonnegut could not help looking back, despite the danger of being turned metaphorically into a pillar of salt, into am emblem of the death that comes to those who cannot let go of the past — Kurt Vonnegut

JENNET:
They also say that I bring back the past;
For instance Helen comes
Brushing the maggots from her eyes,
And, clearing here throat of the dust of several thousand years
She says "I loved ... "; but cannot any longer
Remember names. Sad Helen. Or Alexander, wearing
His imperial cobwebs and breastplate of shining worms
Wakens and looks for his glasses, to find the empire
Which he knows he put beside his bed. — Christopher Fry

Stop a minute, Ambrose!" interrupted Master Nathaniel. "I've got a sudden silly whim that we should take an oath I must have read when I was a youngster in some old book ... the words have suddenly come back to me. They go like this: We (and then we say our own names), Nathaniel Chanticleer and Ambrose Honeysuckle, swear by the Living and the Dead, by the Past and the Future, by Memories and Hopes, that if a Vision comes begging at our door we will take it in and warm it at our hearth, and that we will not be wiser than the foolish nor more cunning than the simple, and that we will remember that he who rides the Wind needs must go where his Steed carries him. — Hope Mirrlees

Look back, hold a torch to light the recesses of the dark. Listen to the footsteps that echo behind, when you walk alone.
All the time the ghosts flit past and through us, hiding in the future. We look in the mirror and see the shades of other faces looking back through the years; we see the shape of memory, standing solid in an empty doorway. By blood and by choice, we make our ghosts; we haunt ourselves.
Each ghost comes unbidden from the misty grounds of dream and silence.
Our rational minds say, "No, it isn't."
But another part, an older part, echoes always softly in the dark, "Yes, but it could be. — Diana Gabaldon

Shy South comes home to her farm to find a blackened shell, her brother and sister stolen, and knows she'll have to go back to bad old ways if she's ever to see them again. She sets off in pursuit with only her cowardly old step-father Lamb for company. But it turns out he's hiding a bloody past of his own. None bloodier. Their journey will take them across the lawless plains, to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feuds, duels, and massacres, high into unmapped mountains to a reckoning with ancient enemies, and force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, a man no one should ever have to trust ... — Joe Abercrombie

What would you do if someone breaks your heart and just when you are set to lose yourself in that abyss of emotions and feelings that you no longer understand, when you are numbed by the pain and life seems to be whizzing past you in fast forward , at this time that person comes back to heal you, only to break your heart all over again. Would you let her touch you one more time, to heal you to break you for the third time? No? And what if that person is someone you'd loved more than life, if she had changed the way you lived , would you hold back if she stood in front of you with her arms outstretched? — Atul Randev

You can not bring back the past. But you certainly can not repeat it. Life is short, even if live to ninety. Live to the fullest - that's how I feel. Appreciate every moment, every hour, every day, because they do not blink of an eye, all over. I am absolutely sure that for most people their death comes as a surprise. — Bruce Willis

All of us, I suppose, like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth, bravely and forthrightly, without thought of personal loss or discredit. Certainly that was my conviction back in the summer of 1968. Tim O'Brien: a secret hero. The Lone Ranger. If the stakes ever became high enough - if the evil were evil enough, if the good were good enough - I would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage that had been accumulating inside me over the years. Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down. It was a comforting theory. It dispensed with all those bothersome little acts of daily courage; it offered hope and grace to the repetitive coward; it justified the past while amortizing the future. — Tim O'Brien

Perhaps not passionate but comfortable. We could have gone on like that forever and then you came, the rambling man, with all these expatriate philosophies that we've outgrown ourselves over the past 20 years. This is really not our problem, Dick. You're leading a ghost town life, infecting everyone who comes near you with a ghost disease. Take it back, Dick. We don't need it. — Chris Kraus

Striding, finally, into the solitude. You feel as if part of your body has been ripped from you, as if flesh has been torn from flesh. But you feel powerful too, for you're free, after so long; the great burden of uncertainty, and guilt, has gone.

But then the anger comes.

At all the times in the past you've said I love you and felt stripped. All the times they never rang back. All the love affairs that evaporated, bleakly, into one-night stands. All the times they've drowned you out. Drained your energy. Your confidence. Stood you up. Walked out. Wanted a Chinese girl next. — Nikki Gemmell

We've incentivized people in the past to maybe turn their vehicles over, you know sooner rather than later. And in the United States with the squeeze on discretionary income and credit that even as the economy comes back there's probably more of a chance than not that it'll be a slower recovery on auto sales. — Alan Mulally

Analysis is like a shock treatment, it throws you back into childhood in order to recapture the reparable elements, to reconstruct the personality. To reconstruct the personality it is necessary to find the original wound. You have to revaluate the past so it will not remain an incubus or succubus.
For example, I look at others with my own eyes, my own values, I evaluate them by my own standards, but when it comes to looking at myself, I look at myself through my father's eyes. I judge myself by his standards, and in his eyes I was not beautiful, I had flaws. — Anais Nin

There are no lessons to be learned from the past. This is the first thing I learned from it. There is nothing back then that there isn't here now. There is nothing here now - nothing that matters - that wasn't back then. What matters. Are you a good person? Do you have any love in your heart? What would you do in a given circumstance? It all comes down to something like that. — Tom Lichtenberg

Perhaps a past of bingeing, restricting, or purging comes back to haunt you from time to time. Maybe you have to fight hard battles against vanity, gluttony, and shame. But with God's saving power, every new day is a gift, an opportunity to detach yourself from tormenting thoughts about food or how you look and to attach yourself to God. Remember, we all hunger for God, more than we hunger for a big bowl of ice cream or a perfect physique. — Kate Wicker

I have a good friend in the East, who comes to my shows and says, you sing a lot about the past, you can't live in the past, you know. I say to him, I can go outside and pick up a rock that's older than the oldest song you know,
and bring it back in here and drop it on your foot. Now the past didn't go anywhere, did it? It's right here, right now.
I always thought that anybody who told me I couldn't live in the past was trying to get me to forget something that if I remembered it it would get them serious trouble. No, that 50s, 60s, 70s, 90s stuff, that whole idea of decade packaging, things don't happen that way. The Vietnam War heated up in 1965 and ended in 1975
what's that got to do with decades? No, that packaging of time is a journalist convenience that they use to trivialize and to dismiss important events and important ideas. I defy that. — Utah Phillips

Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

He kisses me and for that kiss, for that moment, I forget how worried I am. It comes back, of course, but with Caleb, I feel more whole - I am more whole - than I have been since Mom died.
I love him.
I love him because of who he is, who he really is past what everyone else sees; the lost boy, the druggie, the car thief. I love him because he is strong and caring. I love him because he broke and put himself back together again. I love him because he is beautiful inside and out.
I love him for being here with me. I love him for not telling me that everything will be all right. I love him because he knows what life is like, what it can do, and is always honest about it. — Elizabeth Scott

It's funny how life goes merrily along and then, boom, the past comes back and bites you in the butt. — Barbara Freethy

Much of the oxygen we breathe comes from plants that died long ago. We can give thanks to these ancestors of our present-pay foliage, but we can't give back to them. We can, however, give forward. When we are unable to return the favor, we can pay it forward to someone or something else. Using this approach, we can see ourselves as part of a larger flow of giving and receiving throughout time. Receiving from the past, we can give to the future. When tackling issues such as climate change, the stance of gratitude is a refreshing alternative to guilt or fear as a source of motivation. — Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone

When Jesus Christ comes back, it is not the liberal politicians who ought to be trembling, it's the pastors ... because so many men have built their 'ministries' on the dry dead bones of
unconverted church members. — Paul Washer

After Tom leaves for work, I take Evie to the park, we play on the swings and the little wooden rocking horses, and when I put her back into her buggy she falls asleep almost immediately, which is my cue to go shopping. We cut through the back streets towards the big Sainsbury's. It's a bit of a roundabout way of getting there, but it's quiet, with very little traffic, and in any case we get to pass number thirty-four Cranham Road. It gives me a little frisson even now, walking past that house - butterflies suddenly swarm in my stomach, and a smile comes to my lips and colour to my cheeks. I remember hurrying up the front steps, hoping none of the neighbours would see me letting myself in, getting myself ready in the bathroom, putting on perfume, the kind of underwear you put on just to be taken off. Then I'd get a text message and he'd be at the door, and we'd have an hour or two in the bedroom upstairs. — Paula Hawkins

Raise your self-esteem to such a level that you only allow loving experiences in your life. Don't waste time trying to get even. It doesn't work. What we give out always comes back to us. So lets drop the past and work on loving ourselves in the now. Then we will have a wonderful future. — Auliq Ice

Now, tell me, my dear, I said, what are you crying about?
About the years that are gone, Mr. Betteredge," says Rosanna quietly. My past life still comes back to me sometimes.
Come, come, my girl, I said, your past life is all sponged out. Why can't you forget it?
"She took me by one of the lappets of my coat. I am a slovenly old man, and a good deal of my meat and drink gets splashed about on my clothes. Sometimes one of the women, and sometimes another, cleans me of my grease. The day before, Roseanna had taken out a spot for me on the lappet of my coat, with a new composition, warranted to remove anything. The grease was gone, but there was a little dull place left on the nap of the cloth where the grease had been. The girl pointed to that place, and shook here head.
The stain is taken off, she said. But the place shows, Mr. Betteredge
the place shows! — Wilkie Collins

Every kid in every school no matter their background, deserves to learn the basics about food - where it comes from, how to cook it and how it affects their bodies. These life skills are as important as reading and writing, but they've been lost over the past few generations. We need to bring them back and bring up our kids to be streetwise about food. — Jamie Oliver

For example, the sound of the telephone can make us irritated and anxious. That is the sound of the telephone which comes as a result of past actions and afflictions. If, however, we practice and acknowledge the sound of the telephone as a bell of mindfulness, then when the telephone rings we shall know how to bring our mind back to our breathing, smile, and make our mind and body peaceful. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Though my hair has grown grey now, and my sight dim, and my heart cold with years, and ennui, and disappointment, and treachery of friends, and yet I have but to lean back in my arm-chair and think, and those sweet figures comes rising up before me out of the past, with their smiles, and their kindnesses, and their bright tender eyes! — William Makepeace Thackery

For people who have something in the present it is easier to forget the past, although you never wholly do so. When winter comes, spring is a vague memory, something looked back at with nostalgia, but winter is the here and now and requires all your energies. If spring were to vanish and there were nothing, an abyss, if that were even possible to imagine, then you would live with memories of spring for ever and ever or else become a part of the abyss itself. The same can sometimes be said for love, but not always. There are some loves that live on for years, inexplicably, although the lovers are parted and there is no hope that they may ever reunite except as polite and distant friends. — Rona Jaffe

When a sin comes back (its memory) you absolutely must bury it. How to bury the memory of a sin that comes from a distant past? I shut it up in a clay pot. Then I dug right into the cold hard ground, deep down. Without of course telling anyone what I had in the pot,then I stuck this pot the size of a little quart saucepan into the ground and I covered the hole in the ground with ice for a long time, and that despite the presence of people who had no inkling what I was ridding myself of in this little improvised coffin. — Helene Cixous

The core of the problem comes back to the same inescapable fact that has both blocked climate action and accelerated emissions: all of us are living in the world that neoliberalism built, even if we happen to be critics of neoliberalism. In practice that means that, despite endless griping, tweeting, flash mobbing, and occupying, we collectively lack many of the tools that built and sustained the transformative movements of the past. — Anonymous

Next year, when you return, you'll bring the ashes back and toss them onto that year's bonfire. In this way, each of us comes back to this place, bringing some of the past, leaving with some of the future. — Lurlene McDaniel

It is our hope that writing releases us. Instead maybe it deepens the echo. We call out to our past and the call comes back. We are alone
and not alone. — Natalie Goldberg

Stained is about a lonely bookshop keeper, and her past comes back to haunt her. I play a femme fatale, schizophrenic serial killer. They offered me the part and I was like, "I'm just curious why you thought I would be perfect for this role," and the director (Karen Lam) said, "You have this look that, when you're smiling, you're really sweet, but when you're not smiling, you look like you could kill somebody." — Tinsel Korey

It doesn't matter where we are going, or what the future brings and what people might do to us, the past always comes back one way or another. — Isabella Kruger

People who achieve great things are people who make choices. Far too many people today let life dictate their future instead of the other way around. Choices are hard - that's why so few actually make them. But as the saying goes - not to make a choice is to make a choice. When it comes to choices, The question is - what choices will you make today? The world doesn't care about your problems, or what's holding you back. They don't care about your past failures, or any other obstacles you face. Stop making excuses and start making choices. — Phil Cooke

Now i believe that the way to anyone's heart is through their stomach, and, my boy, i'm here to tell you, we ware in the heart business. we're going to reach deep past the menu and into the emotional power of food because a person comes back to a restaurant again and again for one reason only - to fee their soul. — Joan Bauer

I wish life could be edited as deftly as prose. It would be nice to go back and write a better story, correcting weaknesses and follies in the light of what I now know. What I've noticed though is that any attempt to trim out the dark matter takes away some of the good that was also buried in the muck. The past is a package deal and I don't believe there's a way to tell some of the truth without telling most.Wisdom comes at a price, and I have paid dearly for mine. — Sue Grafton

Oh life to live, life already lived,
time that comes back in a swell of sea,
time that recedes without turning its head,
the past is not past, it is still passing by,
flowing silently into the next vanishing moment — Octavio Paz

It is funny how our past comes back around to find us again. — Sarah Jio

It was great but intense to try to go back into a character's mind, a mind that is filled with self-loathing and a mind that is male. It is fun to try to psychoanalyze why a character acts and feels the way he/she does, and doing it as a different gender lends itself to many challenges. My desire to delve into the male psyche comes from many years of being drawn to men that seem to have a darker side. But there is also light in them, and it is that duality and intensity that makes me feel alive. Thorne is very much that man as is my first male protagonist, Michael, from the Natalie's Edge series. Each man, while plagued with a dark past and demons, has this glorious light within them, fighting noble causes. I picture them as true anti-heroes, like the likes of Batman, the Dark Knight. — R.B. O'Brien

I pictured love as a big hairy giant with a dead fish in his mouth. Grizzly bear claws and his heart half out of his chest cause it's too big and the lungs have to fit. He never stops walking. Over mountains. Through the desert. On top of icy lakes. Past huge cities. And he hunts and kills for you and always comes back with plenty to eat. — Adam Rapp

Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back. — Wendell Phillips

One comes back [reborn] as a son because of harmony with us [from the past life] and one comes back as a son also because of enmity [vengeance from the past life], [but] needlessly arises the illusion [wrong belief] that 'they are mine...they are mine'. — Dada Bhagwan

There comes a moment in life when one must acknowledge that you just can't keep looking back into your past for reasons to keep someone in your present and future. Regardless of how much looking that cruel reality in the eye hurts ... memories can't be enough. — Eiry Nieves

I really do see the good in people, and I don't want to change that. That's really how I view things, so sometimes I'll look past a lot of huge red flags because I see something else in someone. Then, of course, it always comes back to haunt me in the long run. — Jennifer Morrison