Shadows And The Future Quotes & Sayings

If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief. — Charles Dickens

I expect if you are going to come out of the shadows, then you're going to want to have some type of hope in the future that you're going to improve your life and, yes, accomplish that American Dream. — Jeff Denham

Adam delayed only a second longer before traversing into the uncertain future, crossing the hidden divide; the fabric separating worlds. He moved from the shadows that paralleled the town, where unseen lives existed alongside of unsuspecting, oblivious people. With his seemingly mundane act of taking one step forward, he effectively walked from myth to reality. — J.M. Northup

Yes Siddhartha,' he said. 'Is this what you mean: that the river is in all places at once, at its source and where it flows into the sea, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the ocean, in the mountains, everywhere at once, so for the river there is only the present moment and not the shadow of the future?'
'It is,' Siddhartha said.'And once I learned this I considered my life, and it too was a river, and the boy Siddhartha was separated from the man Siddhartha and the graybeard Siddhartha only by shadows, not by real things ... Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has being and presence. — Hermann Hesse

Life on the run was filled with dreams, some at night during sleep, real dreams, and some when the mind was awake but drifting. Most were terrifying, the nightmares of the shadows growing bolder and larger. Others were pleasant wishes of a rosy future, free of the past. These were rare, Patrick had learned. Life on the run was life in the past. There was no closure — John Grisham

From the shadows, the young heir to the throne came forward, his expression far older than his seven years. Wrath, son of Wrath, was, like Tohrment, the spitting image of his sire, but there the comparison between the two pairs ended. The regent king was sacred, not just to his parents, but to the race.
This small male was the future, the leader to come ... evidence that in spite of the affronts committed by the Lessening Society, the vampires would survive.
And he was fearless. Whereas many a wee one had shrunk back behind a parent when facing a single Brother, the young Wrath stood his own, staring up at the males before him as if he knew, regardless of his tender age, that he would command the strong backs and fighting arms of those before him. — J.R. Ward

Where I am today is my starting point. Who I am today is my starting point. My failures and successes of the past, my fears and hopes of the future are all shadows. Today is my reality, and I'll use it to create my world. — Taylor Stevens

I can say that the happiest period of my life has been since I emerged from the shadows and superstitions of the old theologies, relieved from all gloomy apprehensions of the future, satisfied that as my labors and capacities were limited to this sphere of action, I was responsible for nothing beyond my horizon, as I could neither understand nor change the condition of the unknown world. Giving ourselves, then, no trouble about the future, let us make the most of the present, and fill up our lives with earnest work here. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I'm just as ambitious as ever. Only I've changed the object of my ambitions. I'm going to be a good teacher- and I'm going to study at home here and take a little college course all by myself. Oh, I've dozens of plans Marilla. I've been thinking them out for a week and I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return. When I left Queens my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see ti along for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own that bind, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes - what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows - what new landscapes- what new beauties - what curves and hills and valley's further on. — L.M. Montgomery

As I age in the world it will rise and spread,
and be for this place horizon
and orison, the voice of its winds.
I have made myself a dream to dream
of its rising, that has gentled my nights.
Let me desire and wish well the life
these trees may live when I
no longer rise in the mornings
to be pleased with the green of them
shining, and their shadows on the ground,
and the sound of the wind in them. — Wendell Berry

You told me Dorian would fix the world, make it better. But if he's gone, if we made the mistake today in keeping him alive, then I will find another way to attain that future. And another one after that, if I have to. I will keep getting back up, no matter how many times those butchers shove me down. — Sarah J. Maas

What I miss is the feeling that nothing has started yet, that the future towers over the past, that the present is merely a planning phase for the gleaming architecture that will make up the skyline of the rest of my life. But what I forget is the loneliness of all that. If everything is ahead then nothing is behind. You have no ballast. You have no tailwinds either. You hardly ever know what to do, because you've hardly done anything. I guess this is why wisdom is supposed to be the consolation prize of aging. It's supposed to give us better things to do than stand around and watch in disbelief as the past casts long shadows over the future. — Meghan Daum

If we could stop thinking of 'meaning' and 'purpose' as artifacts of some divine creative act and see them instead as the yield of our own creative future, they become goals, intentions and processes very much in reach rather than the shadows of childlike, superstitious mythology. — Douglas Rushkoff

Holding the knife with the blade against my palm, it became so clear how my life would only contain shadows now. Shadows of things gone; not just the people themselves but everything connected to them. Was this my future? Every moment, every tiny thing I saw and did and touched, weighted by loss. Every space in this house and
my town and the world in general, empty in a way that could never be filled. — Jennifer Castle

But they held tighter to each other, past and present and future; flickering between an ancient hall in a mountain castle perched above Orynth, a bridge suspended between glass towers, and another place, perfect and strange, where they had been crafted from stardust and light. A wall of night knocked them back. But they could not be contained. The darkness paused for breath. They erupted. — Sarah J. Maas

Nighthawks

I wanted to run away with you tonight
but you are a difficult woman
the rules of you -

Past and future circle round us
now we know more now less
in the institute of shadows.

On a street black as widows
with nothing to confess
our distances found us

the rules of you -
so difficult a woman
I wanted to run away with you tonight. — Anne Carson

It wasn't what lay at the end of her road that frightened Ammu as much as the nature of the road itself. No milestones marked its progress. No trees grew along it. No dappled shadows shaded it. No mists rolled over it. No birds circled it. No twists, no turns or hairpin bends obscured even momentarily, her clear view of the end. This filled Ammu with an awful dread, because she was not the kind of woman who wanted her future told. She dreaded it too much. So if she were granted one small wish perhaps it would have been Not to Know, Not to know what each day hed in store for her. Not to know where she might be, next month, next year. Ten years on. Not to know which way her road might turn and what lay beyond the bend. — Arundhati Roy

Should you see the light of your future, within the shadows of your present,
The resilience of life dancing over vast deserts of death,
Witness if you so shall, the majesty of Creation.
The connectedness of All was and always will be.
Entanglement? No. We call it Love." ~ Sargon of Akkad 2345 B.C.
Excerpt from Andulairah's upcoming book "The Erunisis Medallion — Andulairah

Damien is my anchor to this world, and I am his. But if we are going to keep each other, we have to fight the shadows of
our pasts to move forward into our future. — J. Kenner

...I believe that nothing that once was can be completely undone. Even if destroyed in the material world and forgotten by men, it remains and will remain alive in the memory of an infinite being for which the past as well as the future is always present, and that is thus the greatest, the only true historian, and the keeper of the eternal tradition of which even our best human traditions ...are but shadows and images. — Paul Oskar Kristeller

The future was becoming past, everything vanished into the void, and reaching back to grasp for something, one came out clutching - what? A bit of string, scraps of cloth, shadows of the golden time. If one could only reverse it, turn the past into future, and catch it on the wing, on its journey across the always shifting line of the present ... — Rohinton Mistry

Cold as winter, strong as stone;
She faced the darkness all alone.
A silver goddess; a reflection.
A mirage; a recollection.
No return; no turning back.
The past is gone, the future, black.
Serpents gather in their nest,
And she stands above the rest.
Shadows hunt; she hunts the shadow.
The moon is risen; she stands below.
She views her world through the eyes of others.
Black and white; there are no colors,
As she looks down upon a shattered youth.
A shattered mirror shows a shattered truth. — Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Have you also learned that secret for the river; that there is no such thing as time?" A bright smile spread over Vasudeva's face. "Yes, Siddhartha. Is this what you mean? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future?" "That is it," said Siddhartha, "and when I learned that, I reviewed my life and it was also a river, and Siddhartha the boy, Siddhartha the mature man and Siddhartha the old man, were only separated by shadows, not through reality." He spoke with delight, but Vasudeva just smiled radiantly at him and nodded his agreement. — Deepak Chopra

Seen from that future time, when every commodity the human mind could imagine would flow from the industrial horn of plenty in dizzy abundance, this would seem a scanty, shoddy, cramped moment indeed, choked with shadows, redeemed only by what it caused to be created.
Seen from plenty, now would be hard to imagine. It would seem not quite real, an absurd time when, for no apparent reason, human beings went without things easily within the power of humanity to supply and lives did not flower as it was obvious they could. — Francis Spufford

Somewhere there is a Dona of tomorrow, a Dona of the future, of ten years away, to whom all of this will be a thing to cherish, a thing to remember. Much will be forgotten then, perhaps, the sound of the tide on the mud flats, the dark sky, the dark water, the shiver of the trees behinds us and the shadows they cast before them, and the smell of the young bracken and the moss. Even the things we said will be forgotten, the touch of hands, the warmth, the loveliness, but never the peace that we have given to each other, never the stillness and the silence. — Daphne Du Maurier

I want to terrify little kids, too! I want to build spires in their minds and dance shadows through like marionettes, chased by whispers and hints of the unspeakable. I want to torture future generations with the Puppet That Bites. — Laini Taylor

And you realize that you've finally grown up. That youth has finished. In its place you have knowledge, which you must carry. You must also learn to accept that death is the most sophisticated form of beauty, and the most difficult to accept.
From this moment on, you will always be conscious of what you are doing. And any future feeling, whether joy or grief or excitement or regret, will come now with an awareness of its own end - with shadows you never noticed in youth. Variation of feeling will become depth of feeling. And you will appreciate tiny things - and step with the confidence of someone overjoyed to know he is doomed. — Simon Van Booy

She had always suffered from a curious fear of what was going to happen round the next corner. Even when life went smoothly and nothing occurred to justify her vague apprehensions, they did not altogether disperse. She had tried to face these fears and conquer them, but she could never do so entirely, she could only strain forward into the darkness of the future, expecting and fearing the unknown. She was brave in the face of dangers she could see, but she could not arm herself against shadows. These fears were her weakness. — D.E. Stevenson

We would never know the music of the harp - if the strings were left untouched. We would never enjoy the juice of the grape - if it were not trodden in the winepress. We would never discover the sweet perfume of cinnamon - if it were not pressed and beaten. We would never feel the warmth of fire - if the coals were not utterly consumed. The wisdom and power of the great Workman are revealed by the trials through which His vessels of mercy are permitted to pass. Present afflictions tend also to heighten future joy. There must be dark shadows in the picture - to bring out the beauty of the lights. Could we be so supremely blessed in heaven - if we had not known the curse of sin and the sorrow of earth? Will not peace be sweeter - after conflict? Will not rest be more welcome - after toil? Will not the bliss of the glorified - be enhanced the recollection of past sufferings? — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

However vivid they might be, past images and future delights did not protect Sylvia from the present, which "rules despotic over pale shadows of past and future". That was Sylvia's genius and her Panic Bird- her total lack of nostalgia. She had no armor. This left her especially vulnerable in New York, where she was removed from the context of her life, severed from that reassuring arc. — Elizabeth Winder

If you have had an unfortunate experience, forget it. If you have made a failure in speech, your song, your book, your article, if you have been placed in an embarrassing position, if you have fallen and hurt yourself by a false step, if you have been slandered and abused, do not dwell upon it. There is not a single redeeming feature in these memories, and the presence of their ghosts will rob you of many a happy hour. There is nothing in it. Drop them. Forget them. Wipe them out of your mind forever. If you have been indiscreet, imprudent, if you have been talked about, if your reputation has been injured so that you fear you can never outgrow it or redeem it, do not drag the hideous shadows, the rattling skeletons about with you, Rub them off from the shite of memory. Wipe them out. Forget them. Start with a clean slate and spend all your energies in keeping it clean for the future. — Orison Swett Marden

Because you're exactly like me- you don't want your whole life planned out. You're tired of following Talon's rules, of not having any say in your future. You want to know who Talon really is, but it's even more than that, isn't it? You want to be free." His eyes gleamed, golden and brilliant in the shadows. "And I can show you how. — Julie Kagawa

Times moves differently down here in the dark. With no sunlight or shadows. No weather at all.
There's no future, no right now. Nothing but your memory to keep you company. But they keep me so angry and weak. I can barely think straight.
How long have I been locked up ... wuuks? months?
I don't even konow how I got to this place. There are times I don't even know who I am anymore. — Scott Snyder

The imagination places the world of the future either far above us, or far below, or in a relation of metempsychosis to ourselves. We dream of traveling through the universe - but is not the universe within ourselves? The depths of our spirit are unknown to us - the mysterious way leads inwards. Eternity with its worlds - the past and future - is in ourselves or nowhere. The external world is the world of shadows - it throws its shadow into the realm of light. At present this realm certainly seems to us so dark inside, lonely, shapeless. But how entirely different it will seem to us - when this gloom is past, and the body of shadows has moved away. We will experience greater enjoyment than ever, for our spirit has been deprived. — Novalis

He walks through your future, but he's in the past as well. He's always in shadows, never in the light. And though he's dangerous, the shadowed man doesn't pose a threat to you. — Deborah Harkness

And what do the Theban hoplites see in this extended rending of the sky, this white-bright glory of Enlil's lightning? The future, but not theirs: paired cavalry fighters; formed ranks of armored death; grim men on their tall horses with lightning limning weapons tailored to the task; men spoiling for a fight if the gods allowed - the Sacred Band of Stepsons, out from shadows and the dark. — Janet Morris

Shadows go in front of you, leading into your future, and trail behind you, leaving a part of you in the past. They are clearest when we are in the light, and disappear when we lose ourselves in darkness. — Kiersten White

FINISTERRE
The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water, going where shadows go,
no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you brought
and light their illumined corners, and to read
them as they drifted through the western light;
to empty your bags; to sort this and to leave that;
to promise what you needed to promise all along,
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water's edge, not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves. — David Whyte

Why is it that we are so busy with the future? It is not our province; and is there not a criminal interference with Him to whom it belongs, in our feverish, anxious attempts to dispose of it, and in filling it up with shadows of good and evil shaped by our own wild imaginations? To do God's will as fast as it is made known to us, to inquire hourly
I had almost said each moment
what He requires of us, and to leave ourselves, our friends, and every interest at His control, with a cheerful trust that the path which He marks out leads to our perfection and to Himself,
this is at once our duty and happiness; and why will we not walk in the plain, simple way? — William Ellery Channing

Now - after years of knowing what real problems were, after living with a man who was cautiously loving but no longer fawningly committed, a man who was rational and smart but not quite passionate or spontaneous, after slowly spinning away from the person I vowed to be true to for the rest of my years, after feeling like I lost myself in his shadows and goals - the arguments over restaurants, over who took the trash out last seemed futile, silly, and so much easier than the hurdles that Henry and I would come to face in the road of the future. — Allison Winn Scotch

Some lights cast more than one shadow. Stand before nightfall and you'll see for yourself. The flames shift and dance, never still. The shadows grow tall and short, and every man casts a dozen. Some are fainter than others, that's all. Well, men cast shadows across the future, as well. One shadow or many. - Stannis — George R R Martin

You can never run from your past; it defines who you are today. But, use your Awo given intelligence and enjoy the future ... because THAT only comes once.' VAALBARA The Land of Shadows — Michelle Horst

There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves — Ray Bradbury

Behind them in the garden the little stone house brooded among the shadows. It was lonely but not forsaken. It had not yet done with dreams and laughter and the joy of life; there were to be future summers for the little stone house; meanwhile, it could wait. And over the river in purple durance the echoes bided their time. — L.M. Montgomery