Past Scars Quotes & Sayings

All humans at some time experience injustice, assault, disqualification, invasion and betrayal. No person is completely shielded. We need not trace our family trees very far back or study for long what life was like for our forbears to uncover humanity's abusiveness. The inherited scars of our multigenerational families exist in our family systems as we know them today. The abuse of the past often exists as the shame of today, and the shame is perpetuated through our patterns of interaction. — Merle A. Fossum

People like to say that time heals all wounds, but I don't believe it. I remember once Grandpa took me firewood cutting, and as we looked at the rings of the tree together, he pointed out the years where there was drought and the years where there was fire. So while time allowed for new growth that hid the scars of the past, those scars were still there, inside the tree, and part of the tree. I think about how I am like that tree. — Kaya McLaren

Scars are memory. Like sutures. They stitch the past to me. — China Mieville

The damned could be saved ... anytime. But they refused to give up their sins. Though they suffered endlessly, they would not give them up, even for salvation, perfect divine love.
I hadn't understood at the time. If sinners were unhappy, why would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why. Without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life. — Janet Fitch

If sinners were so unhappy, why would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why. Without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life. It wasn't like I didn't know where all this remembering got you, all that hunger for beauty and astonishing cruelty and ever-present loss. But I knew I would never go to Bill with a troubling personal matter, a boy who liked me too much, a teacher who scolded unfairly. I had already seen more of the world, its beauty and misery and sheer surprise, than they could hope or fear to perceive. — Janet Fitch

That was the dirty secret associated with her past. Not that she'd been abused but that somehow she felt that she deserved it because she'd let it happen. Even now, it shamed her, and there were times when she felt hideously ugly, as though the scars that had been left behind were visible to everyone. — Nicholas Sparks

Count your salted wounds then name them
like the stars of a bright constellation
Count your scars and bruises then give them
the wings of forgiveness to fly — Malak El Halabi

I knew this for a fact. Little by little, the ache to see him, to hear him would disappear. Little by little I'd forget how his arms felt, how his fingers felt, how his lips felt..the sound of his voice, the intensity of his gaze, all of it. Trace by trace it would slip from my mind, recede into foggy memory. The painful haze that dulled my present would melt into the past. Maybe not all the way, maybe there would be a few scars. Maybe I'd be different, but I'd be me again. Little by little. — Jennifer DeLucy

Continued From Previous Quote
I Wondered if His Interest Had Began When I Tended His Shoulder. I Remembered His Odd Look of Surprise When I Touched Him,as If No One Had Shown Him a Kindness Before. If
Gruz,Finch abd Malich Were Any Indication of His Past. Maybe No-One Had. They Showed a Certain Steely Devotion to One Another.That In No Way Resembled Kindness. And Then There Were Those Scars on His Back. Only Cruel Savages Could Have Delievered That. Yet Somewhere Along The Way,Kaden Had Learned Kindness,Tenderness Even.It Surfaced in Small Actions. He Seemed Like He Was Two Separate People,The Intensely Loyal
Venden Assassin and Someone Else Far Different,Someone He Had Locked Away. A Prisoner Like Me. — Mary E. Pearson

one might call this state ["youth" (but that seems inaccurate)] "remembering" but memory is quite eerie like caging a dream, and when I recite the rote details the real event slithers further from me because the telling of it reshapes it, every touch alters it, until it is unrecognizable except as a story [a doppelganger (immediately not myself) a writhing poltergeist summoned to snap at me from the darkness~or benign but vague, like a whisper making it better to remain silent, but I can't~the past is a narrative (that writes us) immanent in the present [proving there is cause and effect in the immaterial (the mythic becomes carnal by leaving marks on the body)] symbol by symbol, building up invisible scars — David David Katzman

When I look back on all the past chapters of my life, I see all the pain I have endured. I see the mistakes and heartbreak, the horror and loss. But when I stand in front of the mirror now, I see all my scars and the strength I've found from them. I see the lessons I have learned about life and the wisdom I've gained from each of my experiences. I will be fine — Christine Zolendz

She twisted her hair as if the question made her uncomfortable. "Seeing the past is simple magic. Seeing the present or the future - that is not." "Yeah, well," Leo said. "Watch and learn, Sunshine. I just connect these last two wires, and - " The bronze plate sparked. Smoke billowed from the sphere. A flash of fire raced up Leo's sleeve. He pulled off his shirt, threw it down, and stomped on it. He could tell Calypso was trying not to laugh, but she was shaking with the effort. "Not a word," Leo warned. She glanced at his bare chest, which was sweaty, bony, and streaked with old scars from weapon-making accidents. "Nothing worth commenting on," she assured him. "If you want that device to work, perhaps you should try a musical invocation." "Right," he said. "Whenever an engine malfunctions, I like to tap-dance around it. Works every time. — Rick Riordan

You have to let go of your past Keira. These scars you hold are only skin deep, they do not connect to your heart or your soul. These scars do not define you, you define them. They do not represent death and destruction like you think, they represent life, the life you chose to want to live ... so ... make it worth it. — Stephanie Hudson

Our past is what shapes us, the scars it leaves behind mold us, and what we do with the shit that's left over is what defines us. — Gail McHugh

Yes, Soteria. I have. I assure you, my life has never been an easy one and you should be grateful every day you live that you can't imagine what kind of childhood I had. (Acheron)
I'm sorry, Ash. I didn't know. (Tory)
It's easy to look at people and make quick judgments about them, their present, and their past, but you'd be amazed at the pain and tears a single smile hides. What a person shows to the world is only one tiny facet of the iceberg hidden from sight. And more often than not, it's lined with cracks and scars that go all the way to the foundations of their soul. (Acheron) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Many displayed in their nudity traces of their past: scars of knife thrusts in the belly, starbursts of guns hot wounds, ridges of the razor cuts of love, Caesarean sections sewn up by butchers. Some of them had their young children with them during the day, those unfortunate fruits of youthful defiance or carelessness, and they took off their children's clothes as soon as they were brought in so they would not feel different in that paradise of nudity. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Only a few hairline fractures around his eyes and lips spoke of the torment he'd been through. I wanted to smooth those lines away, and wished it was that easy to erase the scars of our past." ~ Muse, Drowning In The Dark #4 The Veil Series. — Pippa DaCosta

It's easier to forget the past if nothing ever reminds you of those leathery old scars that can never again feel any loss or pain; the old wounds must be kept open if you are going to remember their cause and regret their occurrence. — Peter Robinson

Scars are souvenirs you never lose, the past is never far, did you lose yourself somewhere out there, did you get to be a star, and don't it make you sad to know that life is more than who you are? — John Rzeznik

Grace studied her hands as they moved across the meat. They looked much like any others the same age - veined, lined, the backs stained with tea-coloured spots. But they'd felt their way through the past seventy years in unique ways. Much of their work had been to the benefit of others, some not. She'd known them as still, listening hands, but also as hands that moved with urgency and madness. For a while they'd been careful nurse's hands. Then hands that cradled three babies and clapped, tickled and taught in turn. She'd bruised, burnt and cut them; some scars suggested badly. They'd dismissed, beckoned, pleaded over the years, and not always successfully. Their goodbyes were too many to recall. — Sally Piper

It's easy to look at people and make quick judgments about them, their present and their past, but you'd be amazed at the pain and tears a single smile hides. What a person shows to the world is only one tiny facet of the iceberg hidden from sight. And more often then not, it's lined with cracks and scars that go all the way to the foundation of their soul. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Just play it cool," Dax says.
He has forced me to don a pair of dark gray slacks and a white button-up shirt. Contrary to his protests, I have pushed the sleeves of the shirt up past my elbows, but I make sure the scars on my arm, which spell out Daphne's name, are covered. I feel overly warm and suffocated in these clothes. "I don't understand. You want me to pretend to be cold?" I fake a shiver. "Like this? What's the point?"
Dax tries to stifle a laugh - not very well - and I realize I've been tripped up by another one of these "figures of speech" that I keep running into. I'm beginning to hate the English language. — Bree Despain

Why the war paint, Pix?
Because I can't stand the girl underneath....
"Why the tattoos ?"
Because I can't bear seeing the scars of my past. — Tillie Cole

Sometimes it's the scars that remind you that you survived. Sometimes the scars tell you that you have healed. — Ashley D. Wallis

There are people out there that will be able to see past your scars to the girl inside. — Kelly Oram

I hadn't understood at the time. If sinners were so unhappy, why would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why. Without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life. It wasn't like I didn't know where all this remembering got you, all that hunger for beauty and astonishing cruelty and ever-present loss. — Janet Fitch

To people who think I'm happy, just look again; the scars of my past will lead you to a place no one knows, a place no other person can imagine, a place that echoes with the desolate cries of a lonely heart, a place where I'm being stabbed to death hundreds of times. — Manoj Kumar Duppala

But even I know that love doesn't steer by logic, nor is power distributed evenly. Lovers arrive at their first kisses with scars as wells as longings. They're not always looking for advantage. Some need shelter, others press only for the hyperreality of ecstasy, for which they'll tell outrageous lies or make irrational sacrifice. But they rarely ask themselves what they need or want. Memories are poor for past failures. Childhoods shine through adult skin, helpfully or not. So do the laws of inheritance that bind a personality. The lovers don't know there's no free will. I haven't heard enough radio drama to know more than that, though pop songs have taught me that they don't feel in December what they felt in May, and that to have a womb may be incomprehensible to those who don't and that the reverse is also true. — Ian McEwan

No matter how many scars we carry from what we have gone through and suffered in the past, our intrinsic wholeness is still here: what else contains the scars? None of us has to be a helpless victim of what was done to us or what was not done for us in the past, nor do we have to be helpless in the face of what we may be suffering now. We are also what was present before the scarring - our original wholeness, what was born whole. And we can reconnect with that intrinsic wholeness at any time, because its very nature is that it is always present. It is who we truly are. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

Maybe your past isn't perfect. Maybe it was brutal. Maybe you were brutal. Maybe you've got more scars than you thought one skin could hold. You can't linger on those thoughts. You will drown in them. After all, it's only an interesting backstory if you can get past it. — Jessica Hagy

Many people feel like they were born into the wrong family. Nevertheless, adults must take responsiblity for the pain of the past and create a productive life in the present. — James P. Krehbiel

In the lingering moments before you die your body releases DMT. The same drug that makes you dream. The same drug found in every living animal. It's not an evolutionary trick to make you survive. Your body is choosing to release this drug now because it believes your fate is too grim for you to comprehend. So you dream. You dream that everything will be fine. You dream that nothing happened at all. It's in this moment that your body sits across from you. It tells you 'looks like we're not gonna make it this time.' You sit around a fire and recollect the past before soon parting ways back to the atomic ether. Your body does this because it loves you. You have never met anyone like your body. Your body has been with you everyday, good and bad. It's even kept a journal of your life carved in scars. Your eyelashes always wiped the tears from your eyes. — Anonymous

I tear my heart open, I sew myself shut
My weakness is that I care too much
And my scars remind me that the past is real
I tear my heart open just to feel — Papa Roach

Cut away the nonsense, the drama, the regret, the scars of the past, and make a decision to no longer let them govern your happiness and freedom. — Steve Maraboli

I hope you aren't too ugly. What a collection of scars you have. Be grateful. Our scars have the ability to give us the reality that our past is real. - Red Dragon — Anonymous

Some people grow up with issues because they did not have their parents around growing up, many others have issues because their parents were around growing up — Quetzal

Working on your deep psychological issues opens the possibility for psychological freedom, making you independent of your past and the scars you carry around with you. These are meaningful choices that go beyond the limited definition of stress management, yet it's this kind of change that transforms someone's life. — Deepak Chopra

I do still get shocked every once in a while when I catch my reflection when I'm walking past a glass building, but it's in my mind about getting older and finding out what I'm going to look like as it unfolds - or as it folds, depending on where the marks and scars land. — Dave Matthews

The terror takes you. The cage is locked and the curtain drawn. Fingers dance along as blades, carving memories into your flesh that will leave scars long past being healed. — Amanda Steele

Your past was the same as your skin: with you for life, both the proverbial beauty marks . . . and the scars. — J.R. Ward

Though Roose had been in battles, he bore no scars. Though well past forty, he was as yet unwrinkled, with scarce a line to tell of the passage of time. — George R R Martin

He cupped my face between his hands. "Is it because Mac's good looking to a fault, damned bastard or because I'm a moron, and read the signals wrong?" He steamrolled ahead before I could respond. "I get it, I'm the beast of jackass past and present, but I'm sure I didn't read you wrong, Heather. Fuck ... " Ry closed his eyes in pain.
Oh no, he's doubting himself and me all because I didn't follow my self-guided principles of right and wrong. "Kiss me," I whispered. — Beth Mikell

My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present. — Steve Goodier

My God, he whispered. What have I done to her? He thought, humbled. The spell was broken, but it wasn't sealed, and her soul was bare to him, the scars of her tragic past and her triumphs over pain and her aching need to find her place. He just wanted to hold her to him and tell her it would be okay, that she had survived and was beautiful. — Kim Harrison

The scars are a way of reminding me that the past is real. They are honorable. — Patrick Califia

Time had past indeed: it had overtaken him and gone ahead. It had left him hopelessly behind with a few poor gifts: the iron grey hair, the heavy fatigue of the tanned face, two scars, a pair of tarnished shoulderstraps; one of those steady, reliable men who are the raw material of great reputations, one of those unaccounted lives that are buried without drums and trumpets under the foundations of monumental success. — Joseph Conrad

The wounds of the past and the scars of the present don't disfigure me in your eyes - because you know the price I pay for loving you ... — John Geddes

Time heals the wounds of the past,
Apology, forgiveness, and acceptance
does lighten the scars. — Rhoendyl RCruz

As he plods behind Cameron and Summer, he can't help but stare at Summer's exposed, glistening skin. His thoughts aren't depraved or even mildly in the splasher. In fact, he focuses on the marks of cruelty crisscrossing her back, stomach, and shoulders. He trudges along, drenched, feet swollen, constantly searching for even a hint of a breeze, all while being forced to stare at the alarming network of burns traversing Summer's delicate skin. This latticework of hate reveals a brutal truth - one he can scarcely comprehend. Yes, he's glimpsed and felt her scars before, but this is the first time he's really, truly seen the severity and extent of her life as a slave. With each step, he must digest the monstrosities of her past, leaving him utterly devastated. — Laura Kreitzer

I yearn to make these scars disappear
And to forget about the past.
To throw away all of my fears
And to be happy at last. — Atarah L. Poling

Being around him felt like being around someone who saw your scars and called them beautiful when you only saw your past mistakes. — Brittainy C. Cherry

Giving advice to a child is like flinging sand at an obsidian wall. Nothing sticks. The brutal truth is that we each suffer our own lessons - they can't be danced round. They can't be slipped past. You cannot gift a child with your scars - they arrive like webs, constricting, suffocating, and that child will struggle and strain until they break. No matter how noble your intent, the only scars that teach them anything are the ones they earn themselves. — Steven Erikson

And be grateful. Our scars have the power to remind us that the past was real. — Hannibal

Wisdom can see the red, the rose, the stained and sculptured curve of grey, the charcoal scars of fire, and see around that living tower of tree the hermit tatters of old bark split down and strip to end the season; and can be quiet and not look for reasons past the edge of reason. — Judith Wright

So it is with my life, a multilayered and ever-changing fresco that only I can decipher, whose secret is mine alone. The mind selects, enhances, and betrays; happenings fade from memory; people forget one another and, in the end, all that remains is the journey of the soul, those rare moments of spiritual revelation. What actually happened isn't what matters, only the resulting scars and distinguishing marks. My past has little meaning; I can see no order to it, no clarity, purpose, or path, only a blind journey guided by instinct and detours caused by events beyond my control. There was no deliberation on my part, only good intentions and the faint sense of a greater design determining my steps. — Isabel Allende

When some people in the crowd act shocked or repulsed, Diamond calmly tells them her scars are part of her past, part of what made her who she is. — Cheryl Rainfield

Michel. In my dreams, you come and get me. You take me by the hand and you lead me away. This life is too much for me to bear. I look at the key and I long for you and for the past. For the innocent, easy days before the war. I know now my scars will never heal. I hope my son will forgive me. He will never know. No one will ever know. — Tatiana De Rosnay

He knew damn well that no one could possibly love her as completely as he once had. Even the man he was today was incapable of that depth of emotion and connection. She'd killed the innocence in him that had made it possible to love a woman without any thought of self-preservation. He'd been wide open when she cut his heart out and scars had formed, creating a thick shield that he couldn't get past and no woman could get through. — Sylvia Day

To age is to embrace a slow hurt inside and out, to collect scars like rings on a tree, dark and withered and sometimes only visible if someone cuts deep enough. Scars keep the past close enough to touch, but healing is forgetting. Healing invites another cut. Healing is the tide that smoothes away our line in the sand. For life to begin, the damage must be permanent. — Fred Venturini

Fortunately, God made all varieties of people with a wide variety of interests and abilities. He has called people of every race and color who have been hurt by life in every manner imaginable. Even the scars of past abuse and injury can be the means of bringing healing to another. What wonderful opportunities to make disciples! — Charles R. Swindoll

Funny how internal scars never healed. They were the souvenirs of the past. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. — Cormac McCarthy

Our two peoples are sworn enemies," he whispered. "You would not do it."
"Call me your enemy no more," Jan bade him, drawing nearer. "I grow weary of our being enemies. The scars your talons left upon my back this autumn past are old scars now, long healed. Time to heal this ancient rift between our peoples as well. — Meredith Ann Pierce

Perhaps we just need little reminders from time to time that we are already dignified, deserving, worthy. Sometimes we don't feel that way because of the wounds and the scars we carry from the past or because of the uncertainty of the future. It is doubtful that we came to feel undeserving on our own. We were helped to feel unworthy. We were taught it in a thousand ways when we were little, and we learned our lessons well. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

Kaladin was the one who had changed, not they. He felt a strange dislocation, as if he'd allowed himself to forget - if only in part - the last nine months. He reached back across time, studying the man he had been. The man who'd still fought, and fought well. He couldn't be that man again - he couldn't erase the scars - but he could learn from that man, as a new squadleader learned from the victorious generals of the past. Kaladin Stormblessed was dead, but Kaladin Bridgeman was of the same blood. A descendant with potential. — Brandon Sanderson

Faith is about going through hell, coming out with some scars, and becoming a wiser person from the lessons you've learned along the way. You must take the scars of your past and appreciate them for what they have taught you. You also have to take the scars, the lessons of your past and not let them control your future ... . — James A. Murphy

Love embraces the totality of the other person. It is impossible to completely and effectively love someone without being included in that other person's history. Our history has made us who we are. The images, scars, and victories that we live with have shaped us into the people we have become. We will never know who a person is until we understand where they have been. The secret of being transformed from a vulnerable victim to a victorious, loving person is found in the ability to open your past to someone responsible enough to share your weaknesses and pains. "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" (Gal. 6:2). You don't have to keep reliving it. You can release it. — T.D. Jakes

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

Our scars make us know that our past was for real — Jane Austen

I love you just the way you are. To me, your scars represent strength. They mark you as a survivor." "You truly believe so?" He seized her hand, speaking past a lump in his throat. "I do." Proving her words, she covered every inch of his scars with light kisses. His eyes burned with unshed tears. "Dios, Querida, you are a treasure." As — Brooklyn Ann