Quotes & Sayings About Recalling The Past

I felt amazingly confident, - it's not particularly pleasant recalling that I was an ass. — H.G.Wells

Do I forget, or do I refuse to remember? — Craig D. Lounsbrough

At the conference I was asked whether all Yugoslav writers were now forced to live in exile. I answered that I was far more concerned about the people who were not writers who were forced into exile. Writers are familiar with the conditions of exile; exile is not foreign to writers, they often choose to live that way. Exile can be one's state of mind even while living in one's own homeland. I've chosen to live in many different countries over the years because I've always felt closer to mankind per se than to any nation in particular, even my own. Until recently it had seemed banal to say that every person is entitled to think and breathe under the same sky, but as our imperfect human race has difficulty recalling its own history, we're now obligated to state the obvious over and over again. — Nina Zivancevic

I don't so much mind looking back on having lost the election, or having been denied a role in the play, or having had my novel repeatedly rejected, or having been turned down for a date, or recalling laughter at my expense when I attempted some silly challenge. Those things simply prove that I lived life. What I do mind, however, is looking back on the lost opportunities where imagined concerns kept me from even trying - lose or win. I've learned that there is no regret in a brave attempt, only in cowering to fear. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I carried this problem around in my head basically the whole time. I would wake up with it first thing in the morning, I would be thinking about it all day, and I would be thinking about it when I went to sleep. Without distraction I would have the same thing going round and round in my mind.
(Recalling the degree of focus and determination that eventually yielded the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.) — Andrew John Wiles

Recalling, some time later, what I had felt at the time, I distinguished the impression of having been held for a moment in her mouth, myself, naked, without any of the social attributes which belonged equally to her other playmates and, when she used my surname, to my parents, accessories of which her lips - by the effort she made, a little after her father's manner, to articulate the words to which she wished to give a special emphasis - had the air of stripping, of divesting me, like the skin from a fruit of which one can swallow only the pulp, while her glance, adapting itself to the same new degree of intimacy as her speech, fell on me also more directly and testified to the consciousness, the pleasure, even the gratitude that it felt by accompanying itself with a smile. — Marcel Proust

Eddis looked around as if recalling a question that had nagged at her for several hours. "Where's Eugenides?" she asked.
For a moment the Attolian queen was immobile, her smile gone as if it had never been. The horse under her threw up its head as if the bit had twitched against its delicate mouth.
"Locked in a room," Attolia said flatly. "In Ephrata."
The smile faded from Eddis' face.
"I ordered the other prisoners released," Attolia explained. "I forgot that I had him locked up separately. I doubt my sensechal will have released him without my specific instruction to do so."
"You forgot?" Eddis asked.
"I forgot," Attolia said firmly, daring Eddis to contradict her.
"You will marry him?" Eddis asked, hesitant again.
"I said I would," snapped Attolia, and turned her horse away. Eddis followed. When they joined their officers, Attolia gave brisk orders and then rode on, heading back toward Ephrata without waiting for Eddis. — Megan Whalen Turner

Robert A. Bjork It is natural for people to think that learning is a matter of building up skills or knowledge in one's memory, and that forgetting is a matter of losing some of what was built up. From that perspective, learning is a good thing and forgetting is a bad thing. The relationship between learning and forgetting is not, however, so simple, and in certain important respects is quite the opposite: Conditions that produce forgetting often enable additional learning, for example, and learning or recalling some things is a contributor to the forgetting of other things. — Aaron S. Benjamin

Recalling and confessing our sin is like taking out the garbage: once is not enough. — Cornelius Plantinga

Readers who come to the Bible expecting something more like an accurate textbook, a more-or-less objective recalling of the past - because, surely, God wouldn't have it any other way - are in for an uncomfortable read. But if they take seriously the words in front of them, they will quickly find that the Bible doesn't deliver on that expectation. Not remotely. — Peter Enns

Negative emotions often make things even more memorable than positive ones because recalling things that are threatening - and avoiding those situations in the future if possible - is often critical to survival. — Bruce D. Perry

Recalling those gone times, old memories lit by the fire of the new, I did not this time wonder how long it would last; I was too smart for that now. Take what you get, and don't think. Of course it could never be that easy, but there were moments, like now, that I could successfully pretend that it was, and I had no inclination to try to peer past those moments. I'm not one who wants to know the future: at the best it spoils the present, with longing or dismay, and at the worst, well. Who really wants to find out how tight the sling is, for your own very personal ass, who wants to know how deep the shit will really be. Not you. Not me either. Because it's rarely bliss saved up, is it, when you finally get there. I'll take my now, waking with a lover's scent on me, around me, take my hopes before they're maybe tragedy; a good morning is a good morning, even if it leads to apocalypse at night. — Kathe Koja

It should surprise no one that the life of the writer
such as it is
is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world. This explains why so many books describe the author's childhood. A writer's childhood may well have been the occasion of his only firsthand experience. — Annie Dillard

Time past, even God is deprived of the power of recalling. — Aristotle.

If you throw even a cursory glance into the past, at the life which lies behind you, not even recalling its most vivid moments, you are struck every time by the singularity of the events in which you took part, the unique individuality of the characters whom you met. This singularity is like the dominant note of every moment of existence; in each moment of life, the life principle itself is unique. The artist therefore tries to grasp that principle and make it incarnate, new each time; and each time he hopes, though in vain, to achieve an exhaustive image of the Truth of human existence. The quality of beauty is in the truth of life. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Recalling an old magistrate's words to a young attorney, The rain it raineth on the just And also on the unjust fella; But chiefly on the just, because The unjust steals the just's umbrella. — Sam Ervin

I answered that I was sure, and he asked me again, and this time I understood his concern. 'I'm not embarrassed!' I said, or at least tried to say, before recalling that embarazada means something entirely different to 'embarrassed' and that I'd just wailed at the doctor that I wasn't pregnant, something his medical training had presumably made evident to him. — Peter Allison

Recalling "Love Games," she returned to the present with a jolt and glanced at the set in time to find the show over for the day. She'd missed it! — Barbara Delinsky

It's not that I can't remember. It's that I prefer not to remember, which means that I prefer not to remember what not remembering did to me the last time I did it. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

After the deep, warm nothingness, there was no pleasure in recalling who he was. Without coming fully awake, he nonetheless felt the weight of his own being settling on his heart. Despair and anger and the constant gnawing worry sounded in his mind like a man in the next room clearing his throat. — George R R Martin

Once his hair was smooth and free of mats, Martise ran the comb through it for sheer pleasure. He had beautiful hair, straight and black and falling to his waist. It spread across a strong back and wide shoulders, dampening his shirt to a transparent thinness. She slid her hand under its weight and caressed his nape with light strokes of the comb. His shoulders slumped, and he lowered his head in mute invitation for her to continue. He breathed deep, relaxing under her touch. Martise was anything but relaxed. She was on fire, recalling those moments in the library when he'd given her a taste of the passion burning within him. He was her dreams manifested, a bright and volatile star in a winter sky. — Grace Draven

I used to tell you everything," I said, wistfully recalling all the letters and phone calls from years past.
"You did."
No bullshit.
Honesty.
I lifted up to my tiptoes, so I could almost look him eye to eye, and said, "I'm really looking forward to having sex with you, Quentin."
At my admission, he threw his head back and filled the entire first floor of his house with laughter. — J.B. Hartnett

There was no way that these guys were going to let a bleeding, barefoot woman simply wander off alone into the streets. Two of them were already running toward her with hands reaching out in a manner that, in normal circumstances, would have seemed just plain ungentlemanly. What would have been designated, in a Western office, as a hostile environment was soon in full swing as numerous rough strong hands were all over her, easing her to a comfortable perch on a chair that was produced as if by magic, feeling through her hair to find bumps and lacerations. Three different first aid kits were broken open at her feet; older and wiser men began to lodge objections at the profligate use of supplies, darkly suggesting that it was all because she was a pretty girl. A particularly dashing young man skidded up to her on his knees (he was wearing hard-shell knee pads) and, in an attitude recalling the prince on the final page of Cinderella, fit a pair of used flip-flops onto her feet. — Neal Stephenson

The novelist Thomas Wolfe, recalling a lifelong struggle with illness, wrote in his last letter, "I've made a long voyage and been to a strange country, and I've seen the dark man very close." I had not made the journey myself, and I had only seen the darkness reflected in the eyes of others. But surely, it was the most sublime moment of my clinical life to have watched that voyage in reverse, to encounter men and women returning from the strange country - to see them so very close, clambering back. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

It is worth recalling that it took brave pioneers many years to overcome the powerful taboo against the dissection of human cadavers during the early years of modern medicine. And we should note that, notwithstanding the outrage and revulsion with which the idea of dissection was then received, overcoming that tradition has not led to the feared collapse of morality and decency. We live in an era in which human corpses are still treated with due respect - indeed, with rather more respect and decorum than they were treated with at the time dissection was still disreputable. — Daniel C. Dennett

Under dictatorship, people are enslaved but they know it," he told de Mohrenschildt, recalling his days in the Soviet Union. "Here, the politicians constantly lie to people and they become immune to these lies because they have the privilege of voting. But voting is rigged and democracy here is a gigantic profusion of lies and clever brainwashing." Oswald worried about the FBI's police-state surveillance tactics. And he believed that America was turning more "militaristic" as it increasingly interfered in the internal affairs of other countries. — David Talbot

It was a while before my mind was quiet enough for reading. The conversation with Shevraeth I was determined not to think about. What was the use? It was over, and it was clear it wasn't going to be repeated.
Recalling the name he'd mentioned, Lady Trishe
one of the names Bran had spoken earlier that morning
I realized it was Shevraeth they were planning to go riding with. She wouldn't enjoy this ride was what Nee had said, meaning that I wouldn't enjoy it because Shevraeth would be along. What it probably also meant, I realized glumly, was that they wouldn't enjoy having me along if I glared at Shevraeth and started squabbling. — Sherwood Smith

"Hence," goes on the professor, "definitions of happiness are interesting." I suppose the best thing to do with that is to let is pass. Me, I never saw a definition of happiness that could detain me after train-time, but that may be a matter of lack of opportunity, of inattention, or of congenital rough luck. If definitions of happiness can keep Professor Phelps on his toes, that is little short of dandy. We might just as well get on along to the next statement, which goes like this: "One of the best" (we are still on definitions of happiness) "was given in my Senior year at college by Professor Timothy Dwight: 'The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.'" Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake, and Poe."
-Review of the book, Happiness, by (Professor) William Lyon Phelps. Review title: The Professor Goes in for Sweetness and Light; November 5, 1927 — Dorothy Parker

I take great pride in recalling that I could open in a play on Broadway or in London's West End and fill a theatre on the strength of my name - Steed's name. — Patrick Macnee

That means, in turn, that this is an experience which shatters time and liberates people from the confinement of time by at once recalling all that has gone before and anticipating all that is to come. — William Stringfellow

Aamir, recalling back to the idyllic days of his college youth, pictured himself once again sitting quietly on a familiar neighbourhood rooftop. He often enjoyed relaxing there, alone or with friends, while watching the colourful fluttering prayer flags on rooftop poles, especially in the warmth of an early evening breeze, as wispy clouds drifted against the jagged Himalayan backdrop. He has oft times wondered, ever since his childhood, if the prayers to the spirits of the dead, flying out from those slowly tattering rags, will ever really be answered. Perhaps it will be in another place, in another time, when we're living another life that we shall finally know. Aamir had calmly thought at the time. He was that sort of philosophical guy. — Andrew James Pritchard

When the sun sets like fire, I will think of you, when the moon casts its light, I'll remember, too, if a soft rain falls gently, I'll stand in this place, recalling the last time, I saw your kind face. Good fortune go with you, to your journey's end, let the waters run calmly, for you, my dear friend. — Brian Jacques

Lest conservatives be too proud, it's worth recalling that conservatism's rise was decisively enabled by liberalism's weakness. — Bill Kristol

How strange and foolish is man. He looses his health in gaining wealth. Then to regain health he wastes his wealth. He ruins is present while worrying about his future - but weeps in the future by recalling his past. He lives as though death shall never come to him - but dies in a way as if he were never born. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

Most of the times,
we feel more enjoyment from just recalling good memories of the past rather from those moments we lived,not because we did not have a good time but because realization has come late. — Dionisis Agelakis

There are moments in history when brooding tragedy and its dark shadows can be lightened by recalling great moments of the past. — Indira Gandhi

Memory has the singular characteristic of recalling in a friend absent, as in a journey long past, only that which is agreeable. — Charles Dudley Warner

No doubt you are right ... there would be far less suffering amongst mankind if men ... did not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with equanimity. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Introverts and extroverts also direct their attention differently: if you leave them to their own devices, the introverts tend to sit around wondering about things, imagining things, recalling events from their past, and making plans for the future. The extroverts are more likely to focus on what's happening around them. It's as if extroverts are seeing "what is" while their introverted peers are asking "what if." Introverts — Susan Cain

The act of vividly recalling a patch of the past is something that I seem to have been performing with the utmost zest all my life, and I have reason to believe that this almost pathological keenness of the retrospective faculty is a hereditary trait. — Vladimir Nabokov

Extroverts are more likely to take a quick-and-dirty approach to problem-solving, trading accuracy for speed, making increasing numbers of mistakes as they go, and abandoning ship altogether when the problem seems too difficult or frustrating. Introverts think before they act, digest information thoroughly, stay on task longer, give up less easily, and work more accurately. Introverts and extroverts also direct their attention differently: if you leave them to their own devices, the introverts tend to sit around wondering about things, imagining things, recalling events from their past, and making plans for the future. The extroverts are more likely to focus on what's happening around them. It's as if extroverts are seeing "what is" while their introverted peers are asking "what if. — Susan Cain

A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don't find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting. — James M. Barrie

You're smiling. But you must know yourself, since you are a literary person, that the work of fiction is always a form of recovery of the past, even if that past has to be falsified to seem real. The act of recalling the past in what we write doesn't mean knowing the way it really was, but rather becoming the master of memories as they burn in the perilous instant of creation. — Raymond Federman

Those of us who obsess over every word and action are constantly recalling past events, but that doesn't make them any less painful, nor does it help us transcend them. To write memoir, you have to not only recollect past events, you have to revisit them. You have to get back to the mental and emotional state you were in during those events. — Janice Erlbaum

Time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, signifying thereby that we must take time by the forelock; for, when it is once past, there is no recalling it. — Jonathan Swift

Leigh did what any sane female faced with such an e-mail would do: deleted it to resist the temptation of replying, cleared her trash to resist the temptation of recalling it, and then called tech support to restore all her recently deleted e-mails. (Chasing Harry Winston) — Lauren Weisberger

One can repent of a sin and have done with it; but the wages of foolishness is the eternal recalling of it. — Jetta Carleton

Prison left me with some strange little tics.' She has taken all the door off their hinges in all the apartments she has lived in since. It's not that she has anxiety attacks about small spaces, she says, it's just that she starts to sweat and go cold. 'This apartment is perfect for me,' she says, looking around the open space.
'How about elevators?' I ask, recalling the schlepp up the stairs.
'Exactly,' she replies, 'I don't like them much either.'
One day, years later, her husband Charlie was fooling around at home, playing the guitar. Miriam said something provocative and he stood up suddenly, lifting his arm to take off the guitar strap. He was probably just going to say 'That's outrageous', or tickle her or tackle her. But she was gone. She was already down in the courtyard of the building. She does not remember getting down the stairs-it was an automatic flight reaction. — Anna Funder

Theological study offers a level of thinking about God recalling the insight of Abraham Heschel who noted that thinking without roots will bear flowers, but not fruits. — Anonymous

At the same time, it's a family story and more of an epic. I needed the third-person. I tried to give a sense that Cal, in writing his story, is perhaps inventing his past as much as recalling it. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Recalling his mother's endless drudgery, (Senator) Richard (Russell) Jr. was to say that he was ten years old before he saw his mother asleep; previously, he had thought that mothers never had to sleep. — Robert A. Caro

By recalling God's past provision, we can reassure ourselves that what He has done in the past, He will do again in the future. — Suzanne Elizabeth Anderson

Recalling that a good chunk of the 47 percent who don't pay income taxes are Romney supporters - especially of course seniors (who might well 'believe they are entitled to heath care,' a position Romney agrees with), as well as many lower-income Americans (including men and women serving in the military) who think conservative policies are better for the country even if they're not getting a tax cut under the Romney plan. So Romney seems to have contempt not just for the Democrats who oppose him, but for tens of millions who intend to vote for him. — William Kristol

The agony of martyrdom is almost too much to bear. In the early hours, when the loss is fresh, there is no comfort in knowing Glory will live on. We speak of the martyrs in History but we cannot know the actual pain they suffered in their final living hours. They enter the realm of the mythic, but we must never forget these were men like ourselves. When their flesh is torn, they cry out. They suffer as you or I would suffer, although more bravely. Remember Christ. Although I am now an enemy to Joseph's legacy, I shudder when recalling his pain. — David Ebershoff

And of course there was no help for it, except recalling bits of conversations she had overheard from time to time about marriage. That's what knitting groups and sewing groups were for, wasn't it? Commiserating about marriage. — Jane Smiley

Flyers have a sense of adventures yet to come, instead of dimly recalling adventures of long ago as the only moments in which they truly lived. — Richard Bach

The servants were evil," he said, recalling the tale the way the whiskey priest they sent to Creedmoor told it, sitting with Mr. Persichetti at the nurses' station late into the night, those watery blue eyes forever bloodshot and sleepless. "They told the crazy chieftain that he should marry his beautiful daughter instead. Which he tried to do." ("If you get my meaning," the priest had said.) "But Dymphna ran off to Belgium." He saw her grimace and purse her lips, her face seemed to swell with color. "Her crazy father followed her," he said, tightening his own grip on her hand. "I guess he cut off her head. — Alice McDermott

How foolish is man! He ruins the present while worrying about the future, but weeps in the future by recalling his past! — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

Lost love belongs in a three-minute song, pullling back feelings from a time when they came unbidden, recalling the infatuation, the walking on sunshine that cannot last and the pain of its loss, whether through parting or the passage of time, reminding us that we are emotional beings — Graeme Simsion

Let not the rash marble risk
garrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence,
in many words recalling
name, renown, events, birthplace.
All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.
Let not the marble say what men do not.
The essentials of the dead man's life
the trembling hope,
the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight
will abide forever.
Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continue
when it is the lives of others that will make that happen,
as you yourself are the mirror and image
of those who did not live as long as you
and others will be (and are) your immortality on earth. — Jorge Luis Borges

It is strong proof of men knowing things before birth, that when mere children they grasp innumerable facts with such speed as to show that they are not then taking them in for the first time, but are remembering and recalling them. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man who plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric ... — Thomas Huxley

Recalling, for me, is a great way of living, so not to forget. — Hilton Als

Seated opposite me in the railway carriage, the elderly lady in the fox-fur shawl was recalling some of the murders that she had committed over the years. — John Boyne

You know what nostalgia is, don't you? It's basically a matter of recalling the fun without reliving the pain. — Bette Davis

When that happens [the demise of golf], old men will furtively beckon to their sons and, like fugitives from the guillotine recalling the elegant orgies at the court of Louis XV, will recite the glories of Portmarnock and Merion, of the Road Hole at St. Andrews, the sixth at Seminole, the eighteenth at Pebble Beach. They will take out this volume from its secret hiding place and they will say: "There is no question, son, that these were unholy places in an evil age. Unfortunately, I had a whale of a time." — Alistair Cooke

People actually seemed to enjoy recalling that on a Saturday afternoon forty years ago Empire Avenue was bustling with people and cars and commerce, whereas now, of course, you could strafe it with automatic weapons and not harm a soul. — Richard Russo

As I write, Johnny Rotten's first moments in "Anarchy in the U.K."-a rolling earthquake of a laugh, a buried shout, then hoary words somehow stripped of all claptrap and set down in the city streets-I AM AN ANTICHRIST-Remain as powerful as anything I know. Listening to the record today-listening to the way Johnny Rotten tears at his lines, and then hurls the pieces at the world; recalling the all-consuming smile he produced as he sang-my back stiffens; I pull away even as my scalp begins to sweat. — Greil Marcus

Far from being aloof or detached from power, the church is all about power - the end of power, meaning the purpose of power, the taming of power, and the unleashing of power for true flourishing. The church proclaims the true story of power. By telling the whole story from Genesis to Revelation, with its astonishing bookends of good, very good and glorious news, the church recognizes and affirms our human ambitions and aspirations, placing them in the context where they truly make sense and can find their rightful place. By telling the full truth about idolatry and injustice, not least by recalling the stories of how our own heroes fell into compromise and foolishness, the church makes clear just how damaging our pride is to ourselves, our neighbors and the whole groaning creation. And by recounting over and over the immense cost of redemption, the church leads us to abashed and grateful humility before the one who gave up everything for us. — Andy Crouch

One night last year when my father and I were eating supper at 6.17 p.m., I said to him, "Did you have a favourite?"
"A favourite what?" asked my father.
"A favourite foster mother."
"Yes, I did," said my father. "Her name was Hannah Pederson."
"That is very interesting," I told him, recalling Mrs Leibler's conversational tips, "because 'Hannah' is a kind of word called a palindrome. That means you can spell it the same way whether you start at the beginning or the end. My name is not a palindrome because if you spell it backwards it's E-S-O-R. But it does have a homonym."
My father said, "Don't get started on homonyms, Rose."
So I said, "Did you have any favourite foster brothers or sisters?"
"Yes," said my father after a moment.
"How interesting," I replied. "Did any of their names have homonyms? — Ann M. Martin

The past does not haunt us. We haunt the past. We allow our minds to focus in that direction. We open memories and examine them. We reexperience emotions we felt during the painful events we experienced because we are recalling them in as much detail as we can. — Augusten Burroughs

Recalling days of sadness, memories haunt me. Recalling days of happiness, I haunt my memories. — Robert Breault

The thing is, baby, I've had a taste of you now." Recalling how her mouth had felt beneath mine in the bar, I almost groaned. "There's no going back. As far as I'm concerned, you already belong to me. Every single inch of you. And what's mine stays mine." Reluctantly releasing her, I stepped back. "Accept it, Ava. The sooner you do that, the simpler things will be. — Suzanne Wright

There's something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold. — Gillian Flynn

But she didn't want to recall things. She wanted to live things - or as a compromise, relive rather than reminisce. — Betty Smith

You can be sad recalling sad times, but if you really want to be sad, recall happy times. — Robert Breault

But recalling how my ex had nasty BO after track practice never made me feel better. It seemed disingenuous to hold things against him that before I readily accepted as the price of love. — Daria Snadowsky

The moral faculties are generally esteemed, and with justice, as of higher value than the intellectual powers. But we should always bear in mind that the activity of the mind in vividly recalling past impressions is one of the fundamental though secondary bases of conscience. This fact affords the strongest argument for educating and stimulating in all possible ways the intellectual faculties of every human being. — Charles Darwin