Quotes & Sayings About The Past Defines You

NO, WE DO NOT HAVE PENS!
Bring your own. You'll need them. You see, like every other department in the city, Records runs on Almighty Forms. There are forms that tell the Night Mayor's office what we hunters are doing - starting an investigation, ending one, or reaching various points along the way. There are forms that make things happen, from installing rat traps to getting lab work done. There are forms with which to requisition peep-hunting equipment, from tiger cages to Tasers. (The form for commandeering a genuine NYC garbage truck may be thirty-four pages long, but one day I will think of some reason to fill it out, I swear to you.) There are even forms that activate other forms or switch them off, that cause other forms to mutate, thus bringing newly formed forms into the world. Put together, all these forms are the vast spiral of information that defines us, guides our growth, and makes sure our future looks like our past - they are the DNA of the Night Watch. — Scott Westerfeld

There are three aspects to perspective. The first has to do with how the size of objects seems to diminish according to distance: the second, the manner in which colors change the farther away they are from the eye; the third defines how objects ought to be finished less carefully the farther away they are. — Leonardo Da Vinci

What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives. — Douglas Coupland

Conan O'Brien has talked about how comedians try to emulate their heroes, fall short, and end up doing their own thing. Johnny Carson tried to be Jack Benny but ended up Johnny Carson. David Letterman tried to copy Johnny Carson but ended up David Letterman. And Conan O'Brien tried to be David Letterman but ended up Conan O'Brien. In O'Brien's words, "It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique." Thank goodness. — Austin Kleon

After you're dead and buried and floating around whatever place we go to, what's going to be your best memory of earth? What one moment for you defines what it's like to be alive on this planet. What's your takeaway? Fake yuppie experiences that you had to spend money on, like white water rafting or elephant rides in Thailand don't count. I want to hear some small moment from your life that proves you're really alive. — Douglas Coupland

Don't do the right thing for the wrong reasons. It is the "why" that keeps us committed to our choices and defines our character. — Shannon L. Alder

Your death defines my life. I want to find the love we never had and explicate it in your name.
I want to take your secrets public. I want to burn down the distance between us.
I want to give you breath. — James Ellroy

Freedom is what we all seek, but it's what we do with that freedom that ultimately defines our character. In the end, a man's character cements his fate, good or bad. — Sonny Barger

What we have, what we go through - defines us. Makes us. Changes us, whether for better or worse, it crafts who we are. — Ronie Kendig

A small change at the beginning of the design process defines an entirely different product at the end. — Jonathan Ive

You must achieve the confidence of knowing that you possess absolute, unbending, unimpeachable integrity. Everyone must know that. Above all else, it is integrity that defines your character. — Dave Calhoun

Our conscience is our salvation. Our questioning of everything, of right and wrong, of action and consequence, is what defines our purpose. — R.A. Salvatore

My bat mitzvah portion is about many things, but I think it is primarily about who we are wholly there for, and how that, more than anything else, defines our identity. — Jonathan Safran Foer

One of the things that defines our character is how we handle mistakes. — Terry Goodkind

For the Arab, the past does not merely live. The past defines the present. — Davis Bunn

The expressive word "quiet" defines the dress, manners, bow, and even physiognomy of every true denizen of St. James and Bond street. — Nathaniel Parker Willis

I support and have always supported passage of a federal constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman. As President, I will fight for passage of this amendment. My personal belief is that marriage is between one man and one woman, for life. — Mike Huckabee

The nicest characters in 'A Week in December' are, in fact, Muslims - and their religious devotion is one of the things that defines them. — Sebastian Faulks

Conflict, not progress, is the word that defines man's path from darkness into light. No holiness is won by any other means than this, that wickedness should be slain day by day, and hour by hour. — Alexander MacLaren

Athletic competition clearly defines the unique power of our attitude. — Bart Starr

When you are caught in the mind, your past defines you. When you are present, you are beyond definition. — Leonard Jacobson

I changed it. I had to. Do you know why?" She studied him, her eyes grave. "Because that was then and this is now. Because the past is gone, even though it defines the present. — Stephen King

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

To say that you can 'have experience,' means, for one thing, that your past plays into and affects your present, and that it defines your capacity for future experience. As a social scientist, you have to control this rather elaborate interplay, to capture what you experience and sort it out; only in this way can you hope to use it to guide and test your reflection, and in the process shape yourself as an intellectual craftsman — C. Wright Mills

The report defines acts of ethnic cleansing as including the separation of men from women, the detention of men, and the destruction of houses and their repopulation by another ethnic group later on. This was precisely the repertoire of the Jewish soldiers in the 1948 war. — Noam Chomsky

The thing that defines a species is that all members have the same addressing system for their DNA. — Richard Dawkins

In English-speaking countries, the connection between heresy and homosexuality is expressed through the use of a single word to denote both concepts: buggery ... Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (Third Edition) defines "buggery" as "heresy, sodomy. — Thomas Szasz

Success is different for everyone; everybody defines it in their own way, and that's part of what we do in 'Close Up', finding what it was each person wanted to achieve and what their willingness to sacrifice for that was. — William Shatner

The demon bowed his head. "There are many kinds of Hunts. It is what defines us, renews us. It is the same for you, Hunter. We are born in blood, and we will die in blood, but in the interim, we must put fire to our veins and find new paths to tread upon." Tendrils of hair tapped his head. "Paths, up here. — Marjorie M. Liu

Everyone has their weaknesses. What defines us is being able to acknowledge them and still find our strengths too. — Rebecca Espinoza

I think love, both kinds of love, which you remember Plato defines in his "Symposium" - both kinds of love serve a touchstone for men. Some men understand only the one, some only the other. Those who understand only the non-platonic love need not speak of tragedy. For such love there can be no tragedy. "Thank you kindly for the pleasure, good bye," and that's the whole tragedy. And for the platonic love there can be no tragedy either, because there everything is clear and pure. — Leo Tolstoy

If we are co-eternal with God, then it is not God's creation of the human out of nothing that defines our essential relationship to him. It is His freely made choice to inaugurate and sustain loving relationships, and our choice to reciprocate, that are at the core of our relationship to the Divine. — Terryl L. Givens

It is our courage which defines us, not our constraints — Gyan Nagpal

Do one heroic thing today; big or small doesn't matter because it defines who you are and what you really believe — Bob Goff

I have no desire to be hip to the latest black slang and do the stereotypical black thing. I was a Richard Pryor fan, and I have used profanity in my act. But when it becomes a whole thing that defines blacks, we're limiting ourselves. The enemy is us. — Franklyn Ajaye

Why am I so interested in politics? But if I were to answer you very simply, I would say this: why shouldn't I be interested? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence, that is to say the society in which we live, the economic relations within which it functions, and the system of power which defines the regular forms and the regular permissions and prohibitions of our conduct. The essence of our life consists, after all, of the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves.
So I can't answer the question of why I should be interested; I could only answer it by asking why shouldn't I be interested? — Michel Foucault

It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do. — Jane Austen

My best life lessons and education didn't come from a classroom - they've come from the wild. How you act in the big moments, the ones that challenge you, scare you, tempt you, and force you to make the right decisions, is what defines you. — Bear Grylls

What then is to be the lot of Rossetti's fame and influence? 'An amateur who failed in two arts', it is true; yet it hardly harms Rossetti or touches his standing. On the contrary, it defines both very brilliantly. The small word 'failed' is a small word and little more to artists who are forever going on until they give up over a game that must be lost. Every artist, when confronted by the immensities of art, which is life, must confess to failure. A failure is a thing very relative. — Ford Madox Ford

The calculus was the first achievement of modern mathematics and it is difficult to overestimate its importance. I think it defines more unequivocally than anything else the inception of modern mathematics; and the system of mathematical analysis, which is its logical development, still constitutes the greatest technical advance in exact thinking. — John Von Neumann