Quotes & Sayings About Romanticizing The Past

Anglers have a way of romanticizing their battles with fish. — Ernest Hemingway,

At the Hospital, everyone thinks about dying.And I'd never been much for romanticizing death-especially not suicide. I'd always been a fan of staying alive.
After all, you basically do all you can not to die. All the time. The search for immortality isn't just from storybooks. every day you do it. You buckle your seat-belt, you take vitamin supplements, look both was before you cross the street. And you really think your doing all you can. Bullshit. We can lift weights for fucking hours and we're still going to die. — Hannah Moskowitz

Twentieth century women's fashions (with their cult of thinness) are the last stronghold of the metaphors associated with the romanticizing of TB in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. — Susan Sontag

The boy's mother said he was autistic and sometimes spaced out, staring at his hands, but because I didn't know what autism was, really, I figured he was more or less mesmerized by his existence. I was romanticizing the situation because the kid was probably distracting himself or daydreaming or something, but I thought maybe he was like Hamlet looking at his hands, thinking sincerely about what it means to have been born. — Donald Miller

Google's thing is not advertising because it's not a romanticizing operation. It doesn't involve expression. It's a link. What they're doing is selling access. — Jaron Lanier

I don't know if I am romanticizing, mythologizing, or being nostalgic. I assume all three. That seems to be how the brain breaks things down after a certain age. I — Marc Maron

Brian's death was the clearest and most horrifying example of my terrific obsession with the unattainable. Alive, his biggest flaw was most likely that he liked me. Dead, his perfections were clearer. — Marina Keegan

David Gulden captures animals in all their wonder and intrigue, without glorifying or romanticizing them. He knows Kenya's wildlife intimately, and it shows in the depth of his images. He has an artist's eye, which delivers beauty and transport in every picture. — Susan Minot

There is no point in romanticizing other religions that reject the deity and saving work of Christ. They do not know God. And those who follow them tragically waste their lives. — John Piper

I'm not a good guy, Jacey. I'm not the person that you'd like to believe. Please know that. Don't make the mistake of romanticizing me. — Courtney Cole

If you get careless or go romanticizing scientific information, giving it a flourish here and there, Nature will soon make a complete fool out of you. It does it often enough anyway even when you don't give it opportunities. — Robert M. Pirsig

I longed for it in that excruciating way one has of romanticizing the life she didn't choose. — Sue Monk Kidd

The girl has a funny way of romanticizing things. — Karen Russell

We insist on being Someone, with a capital S. We get security from defining ourselves as worthless or worthy, superior or inferior. We waste precious time exaggerating or romanticizing or belittling ourselves with a complacent surety that yes, that's who we are. We mistake the openness of our being - the inherent wonder and surprise of each moment - for a solid, irrefutable self. Because of this misunderstanding, we suffer. — Pema Chodron

I like romanticizing romance. — Ansel Elgort

The root of all fears. Not being accepted by those we care about. Being rejected and isolated. It's a primal fear. As a species, we are meant to be part of a group. A community. We mistrust loners because we don't understand them. With the exception of our romanticizing the loner in movies and novels, of course. — Susan Mallery

We have this habit of romanticizing the lives of writers. I remember when I was a kid, I was like, 'I want to be Kurt Vonnegut.' — John Green

I have no interest in romanticizing poor black people, having been one of them myself in our beloved hometown of Detroit. — Michael Eric Dyson

Romanticizing the act of writing or any other art is not very helpful to the artist or the art. It's much better if one simply does. — Anne Roiphe

Your talents are for pointing guns and removing necklaces off ladies' necks?'
'I charm the necklaces off their necks ... Kindly make the distinction.'
'Oh, please.'
'I charmed you.'
She was all indignation. 'You did not.'
'Recall the night in question, Miss Eversleigh. The moonlight, the soft wind.'
'There was no wind.'
'You're spoiling my memory,' he growled.
'There was no wind,' she stated. 'You are romanticizing the encounter.'
'Can you blame me? he returned, smiling at her wickedly. 'I never know who is going to step through the carriage door. Most of the time I get a wheezy old badger. — Julia Quinn

I am, of course, romanticizing; a chronic tendency of mine. — Tana French

We have scholars galore, and kings and emperors, and statesmen and military leaders, and artists in profusion, and inventors, discoverers, explorers - but where are the great lovers? After a moment's reflection one is back to Abelard and Heloise, or Anthony and Cleopatra, or the story of the Taj Mahal. So much of it is fictive, expanded and glorified by the poverty-stricken lovers whose prayers are answered only by myth and legend. — Henry Miller

I'm not romanticizing black people, because we've got gangsters like everybody else. — Cornel West

"Romanticizing the past" is a familiar accusation, made mostly by people who think it is more grown-up to romanticize the future. — Paul Kingsnorth

I was totally romanticizing the idea of Los Angeles when the Doors, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young were hanging out there. — Lykke Li

I so don't want to be attracted to him, and the fact that I am surprises me. Sometimes when I get home, I convince myself that I'm just romanticizing anyone who's actually spoken to me, but then I see him the next day and my heart starts beating fast and I can't really kid myself. — Melina Marchetta

The collapse of communism and a recognition of its economic and humanitarian catastrophes took the romance out of revolutionary violence and cast doubt on the wisdom of redistributing wealth at the point of a gun. — Steven Pinker

In 'For Whom the Bell Tolls,' Hemingway cozies up to revolution by romanticizing it (and not only with those execrable love scenes). — Madison Smartt Bell

In the end, there wasn't a right thing to say, only a right thing to do. So I sat further up on the bed and put my hand on Manuelle's cheek and our mouths did the rest, finding each other even though our eyes were closed. I ceased to care about anything that wasn't her body or mine as we wrapped ourselves around each other on the flower patterned quilt and I was closer to her than I'd ever been before. It wasn't that we left the
rest of the world behind; it was the opposite. I could feel the world turning underneath us, I could hear birds outside and people laughing, and I felt that I was
part of it at last. With no part of my skin not touching Manuelle's, I was part of the world at last. Or maybe I'm romanticizing, and we were just two kids doing everything two kids can do in a cramped room at the back of a caravan. — Chloe Rattray

Recent fads in history and biography have increasingly exalted the aridity of chronology and fact, and have, with some valid reason, rejected romanticizing and the presumption of guessing at the inner thoughts of historical figures. Unfortunately, the result has largely been not to demythologize the past, but merely to dehumanize and depersonalize it. As Roger Mudd has pointed out, 'Too many of today's historians [and biographers] ... seem to have forgotten that the writing of history is a literary art. — Markham Shaw Pyle

The thing about dead people ... The thing is you sound like a bastard if you don't romanticize them, but the truth is ... complicated, I guess. — John Green

Most rappers are black men. If you're a black man, you owe something to the community that you came from. If you're rapping about the community that you came from, and you're romanticizing parts of it for the entertainment of people who don't look like you, you certainly owe something to the community. — Killer Mike

I'm not a fan of people romanticizing their loved ones in death. — Taya Kyle

I view advertising as being this romanticizing element that helps us appreciate, understand and enjoy how remarkable it is that we've been able to do so much, and learn so much. I view it as really vital, even though sometimes it can be really annoying. — Jaron Lanier