Quotes & Sayings About Troubled Past

In Memory of M. B.

Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,
not sticks of burning incense.
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.
You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,
and suffocated inside stifling walls.
Alone you let the terrible stranger in,
and stayed with her alone.
Now you're gone, and nobody says a word
about your troubled and exalted life.
Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn
at your dumb funeral feast.
Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I,
I, sick with grief for the buried past,
I, smoldering on a slow fire,
having lost everything and forgotten all,
would be fated to commemorate a man
so full of strength and will and bright inventions,
who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me,
hiding the tremor of his mortal pain. — Anna Akhmatova

The thing you don't realize, my dear girl, is that I have been forced by the economic realities to start taking publishing very seriously. For example, it has been brought to my attention that our ability to continue to pay the hordes of people employed by M&S (God knows how many mouths have to be fed) depends directly on the number of copies of your new book [Life Before Man] that we are able to sell between September and Christmas. In past I have been able to treat this whole thing as a fun game. I have never been troubled by the cavalier explanations about lost manuscripts and fuck-ups of various sorts. Now I have learned that this is a deadly serious game. I don't laugh at jokes about the Canadian postal service. I cry. (in a letter to author Margaret Atwood, dated February, 1979) — Jack McClelland

In a typical college romance novel, he'd be a gorgeous but troubled sex god who'd cure all my deep-seated psych issues with a good hard fuck. I'd smell his misogyny and abusive tendencies from miles off but my brain would turn to hormone soup because abs. That's the formula. Broken girl + bad boy = sexual healing. All you need to fix that tragic past is a six-pack. More problems? Add abs.
It's Magic Dick Lit. — Leah Raeder

It is distrust of God to be troubled about what is to come; impatience against God to be troubled with what is present; and anger at God to be troubled for what is past. — Simon Patrick

Do not be troubled if you do not immediately receive from God what you ask Him; for He desires to do something even greater for you, while you cling to Him in prayer. — Evagrius Ponticus

Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has yet to come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering — Ida Scott Taylor

I like the connection - me touching her. She's oil on my troubled, deep, dark waters.
Hmm ... flowery, Grey. — E.L. James

I have a fondness for writing about precocious, troubled teenagers, who are alienating, but kind of endearing. It's from remembering so clearly that time in my own life. I experienced myself as more dramatically troubled than I was, but I just remember how it felt. — Ann Hood

A person tied to the world of sorrows can return to nature for inspiration. Nature provides solace to troubled hearts. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Finge went on. There are some things, however, they must not know. Prime among them, of course, is the manner in which we alter Reality when necessary. The insecurity such knowledge would arouse would be most harmful. It is always necessary to breed out of Reality any factors that might lead to such knowledge and we have never been troubled with it. — Isaac Asimov

I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don't want to look around any more: I don't need to look around for anything. — Sylvia Plath

I wish to explore the beauty of everyday environments; in troubled times it is especially important to be aware of beauty and wonder. — Elizabeth Barton

I seem to play a lot of troubled kids. — Holliday Grainger

Sexual love is a troubled and problematic relationship in cultures where there is a strong sense of man's separation from nature, especially when the realm of nature is felt to be inferior or contaminated with evil. — Alan Watts

The fossil record is always there, whether or not you discover it. The brittle ghosts of the past. Memory is not like the surface of the water - either troubled or still. Memory is layered. What you were was another life, but the evidence is somewhere in your rock - your trilobites and ammonites, your struggling life-forms, just when you thought you could stand upright. — Jeanette Winterson

A month ago, Gavin had given his employer four weeks' notice. "I'll get a job around here," he'd told her. "Something low-stress, part-time, maybe. We're not paying rent, and Dad's left us plenty. You should quit, too." A year earlier this news would have filled her with delicious, full fat, chocolate-coated joy. But now, after a grueling routine of shitty work, shitty- weird home life in a house where the shadow of a dead boy walked more solidly than the grownups, shitty headaches, shitty worry about a husband who couldn't keep his dick out of other women, the golden offer just weirded Laine out. She didn't trust it. — Stephen M. Irwin

I was very troubled, yes. Me and my brother both - we were troubled and troublemakers. — Chloe Sevigny

The wave came again and carried them out onto the sea of pain, where he wondered again why life ever came into the world...The tide that drew them out into the troubled waters once again spent itself, and they floated slowly back, resting for a minute or so, only to be dragged out again. He held her up while she contracted and pushed inside herself, trying to open the petals of her flowering body...He lifted her, trying to free the load she was struggling with, but she was straining against the traces, getting nowhere, her eyes like those of a draft horse...Who would choose this, thought Laski, this work, this woe? Life enslaves us, makes us want children, gives us a thousand illusions about love, and all so that it can go forward. — William Kotzwinkle

I think of death as a glad awakening from this troubled sleep which we call life; as an emancipation from a world, which, beautiful though it may be, is still a land of captivity. — Lyman Abbott

She missed her mum every day, and it never seemed to get any easier - not until she met Dale. He made her life brighter, making it easier for her to leave her troubled past where it belonged, behind her. The pain never went away , but it faded into the background when she was with him. — Kat Green

Safe from the Neighbors is a novel of unusual richness and depth, one that's as wise about the small shocks within a marriage as it is about the troubled history of Mississippi. Steve Yarbrough is a formidably talented novelist, shuttling between the past and present with a grace that feels effortless. — Tom Perrotta

Youth, hope, and love: To build a new life on a ruined life, To make the future fairer than the past, And make the past appear a troubled dream. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world. — Etty Hillesum

The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument may be distant from our shores, but it will help us understand how healthy marine ecosystems work and how we can revive troubled seas closer to home. — Frances Beinecke

What is death? A "tragic mask." Turn it and examine it. See, it does not bite. The poor body must be separated from the spirit either now or later, as it was separated from it before. Why, then, are you troubled, if it be separated now? for if it is not separated now, it will be separated afterward. Why? That the period of the universe may be completed, for it has need of the present, and of the future, and of the past. What is pain? A mask. Turn it and examine it. The poor flesh is moved roughly, then, on the contrary, smoothly. If this does not satisfy you, the door is open: if it does, bear. For the door ought to be open for all occasions; and so we have no trouble. — Epictetus

If we are not stupid or insincere when we say that the good or ill of man lies within his own will, and that all beside is nothing to us, why are we still troubled? — Epictetus

The simpleness, the sweetness, and the constancy of the tender mercies of the Lord will do much to fortify and protect us in the troubled times in which we do now and will yet live. — David A. Bednar

I'm often troubled by a very strong instinct to share everything that's going on with me. I want to feel that connection, even with people I don't know. Then this other voice says, 'That's not prudent. People will use what you've said to hurt you.' — Rivers Cuomo

Menaced by environmental problems, torn by struggles between the tiny coterie of wealthy Spaniards at the center and a teeming, fractious polyglot periphery, battered by a corrupt and inept civic and religious establishment, troubled by a past that it barely understood - to the contemporary eye, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mexico City looks oddly familiar. In its dystopic way, it was an amazingly contemporary place, unlike any other then on the planet. It was the first twenty-first-century city, the first of today's modern, globalized megalopolises. — Charles C. Mann

A meek spirit gives no trouble willingly to any: a quiet spirit bears all wrongs without being troubled. — John Wesley

Chocolate is a kitchen witch's secret weapon. It makes friends easily, soothes troubled spirits, and is conducive to romance. When nothing else works, go with chocolate.
- Sadie Trevalyn's Book of Kitchen Witchery — Alyssa Goodnight

The trouble is that the whole 'accept Christ' attitude is likely to be wrong. It shows Christ applying to us rather than us to him. It makes him stand hat-in-hand awaiting our verdict on him, instead of our kneeling with troubled hearts awaiting his verdict on us. It may even permit us to accept Christ by an impulse of mind or emotions, painlessly, at no loss to our ego and no inconvenience to our usual way of life. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

There's a thing that if you - somebody in faith is always troubled by doubt, and somebody by doubt is always wanted by faith. So it's a kind of paradox. — Anthony Hopkins

I see," she whispered. She withdrew her hand, but Michael snatched it back just as quickly. "I still want to marry you," he insisted. "I love you and will marry you even though there is no house attached to you." He tilted her chin so she was forced to look at him. Tiny crinkles fanned out from his troubled blue eyes, and never had she seen such concern in a man's face. "Do you believe me, Libby? — Elizabeth Camden

Was coming to that troubled twilight time, a time of regrets that resemble hopes, of hopes that resemble regrets, when youth is past but old age has not yet come. — Ivan Turgenev

What troubled her so, she thinks, is the dream's effect of nullifying the present. For she is passionately attached to her present; nothing in the world would induce her to trade it for the past or the future. That is why she dislikes dreams: they impose an unacceptable equivalence among the various periods of the same life, a leveling contemporaneity of everything a person has ever experienced; they discredit the present by denying it its priviledged status. As in that night's dream: it obliterated a whole chunk of her life; in its place the past came lumbering in. — Milan Kundera

Finn said, "You feel the wind is a bully, beating you. But that is your seeing. That is your story, not the wind's. To a bird who rides it, that wind is only a kind hand. Because the bird rides the wind's power. Do you understand?" Clare, bitter, cold, and wind-battered, frowned stubbornly. "But a bird can fly. I can't fly." He turned to look at her, and his face was troubled. "If you cling to the safety of the rock, indeed you can't. To fly, you open your arms and fall, heart first, trusting the wind to bear you up. That's what the birds do. — Katherine Catmull

I was occupied by a range of questions, often different from those fashionable in the professional philosophy of the past half century, that have sometimes troubled philosophers in the past. It's taken me several decades to work out my own philosophical agenda, and it is wide. — Philip Kitcher

I always feel a bit vulnerable when I begin a new project, especially when I am playing a character with either a troubled past or unique personality. — Jake T. Austin

The present is the transition point between the past and future and flows like a river moving towards the ocean of one's life. One who lives in the present is neither burdened by the weight of the past nor troubled by foreseen events in the future. One who lives in the present is open to all experiences --the gentle sound of the wind rustling in the leaves, the blazing sight of the setting sun, the light touch of a spring rain, the fresh smell of green grass, the salty taste of ocean spray. The present is the past and future rolled into one. The present is here. The present is now. — Francis Fesmire

The Bedouin was troubled by a familiar bundle of Middle Eastern bogeys: America in general and the CIA in particular; Jews, or if not Jews, then Christians; women's sexuality - both the fear of a "past" and the dread of present emancipation signaled by the absence of a veil. — Geraldine Brooks

Once I had thought I was whole -- had seemed to be able to love a man, to bear a child, to heal the sick--and know that all these things were natural parts of me, not the difficult, troubled fragments into which my life had now disintegrated. But that had been in the past, the man I had loved was Jamie, and for a time, I had been part of something greater than myself. — Diana Gabaldon

It was sinister, overpowering; it was like a troubled dream conjured by the evil thoughts of a past day. There was no suggestion of ultimate hope, and no possibility of escape. It was a terrible place. I sat up on the deck with my chin in my hands, looking in front of me thinking of nothing, my heart heavy, longing for some nameless thing that I could not explain even to myself. I did not want to feel depressed like this. I wanted to laugh, and not to care about a thought, and to be with people who did not matter, and to have some fun taking that girl ashore. I did not want to be in a lost mood, wretched and distressed. I wished Gudvangen was different, and the mountains wider apart, and the sun shining in a clear sky, and the blue water warm and shallow. — Daphne Du Maurier

Little is known about the love lives of the undead. Really, past the brain-eating, reanimated corpse angle, not much is said for the zombie's perspective. So they ate brains - big deal! Sure, they were corpses - so what? Indeed, there was the smell, but whose fault was that?
At first glance they were brain-hungry cannibals, (Mmm, brains. Maybe with a little cilantro or a garlic rub - mashed potatoes and brainsloaf - brains pot pie - penne a la brains...) but in reality, zombies were not the mindless man-eaters or virus-addled lunatics jonesing for human flesh depicted in the movies. Just like everything in life - or rather, unlife - things were more complicated. Zombies were, until very recently, people. And with that came wants, desires, longings. Needs.
Asher had been troubled by the zombie loneliness until Brenda, the attractive corpse he'd met in a less animated state earlier, pulled him into the cemetery, threw him down on a slab and shagged him silly. — Daniel Younger

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all. — Queen Elizabeth II

'Eyes Wide Open' took shape from two real life events straight from my own past. One was the sad suicide of my young nephew, a troubled kid, who was found at the bottom of a landmark cliff in central California. The second was a chance encounter forty years ago with none other than, ahem, Charles Manson! — Andrew Gross

Such are the visions which ceaselessly float up, pace beside, put their faces in front of, the actual thing; often overpowering the solitary traveller and taking away from him the sense of the earth, the wish to return, and giving him for substitute a general peace, as if (so he thinks as he advances down the forest ride) all this fever of living were simplicity itself; and myriads of things merged in one thing; and this figure, made of sky and branches as it is, had risen from the troubled sea (he is elderly, past fifty now) as a shape might be sucked up out of the waves to shower down from her magnificent hands, compassion, comprehension, absolution. So, he thinks, may I never go back to the lamplight; to the sitting-room; never finish my book; never knock out my pipe; never ring for Mrs. Turner to clear away; rather let me walk on to this great figure, who will, with a toss of her head, mount me on her streamers and let me blow to nothingness with the rest. — Virginia Woolf

No matter how troubled a character's history, romance novels tell us, love can be built upon it, and happily-ever-after can result. What's more, the darker the past, the brighter the future - and the better the read. — Sarah MacLean

With this last adherent, Florence hurried away in the advancing morning, and the strengthening sunshine, to the City. The roar soon grew more loud, the passengers more numerous, the shops more busy, until she was carried onward in a stream of life setting that way, and flowing, indifferently, past marts and mansions, prisons, churches, market-places, wealth, poverty, good, and evil, like the broad river, side by side with it, awakened from its dreams of rushes, willows, and green moss, and rolling on, turbid and troubled, among the works and cares of men, to the deep sea. — Charles Dickens

You're right, my problems are the biggest problems ever," George said. "No, honestly, it's horrible to be me. I'm rich, talented, and I make girls cry."
"How do you make girls cry, exactly?"
George turned to her. His blue eyes widened. His lovely face took on a forlorn, deeply troubled expression. He leaned forward, and, in a theatrical whisper, said, "My past is tragic. I wouldn't want to burden you with it. It's a pain I must suffer alone. In the rain. In silence. — Ilona Andrews

I remain still and stare blankly at the profile of my handsome, troubled man and wonder whether I could be classed as troubled too, now. My sanity is certainly questionable, but I'm sane enough to admit that. I was a normal, sound-minded girl. I definitely don't qualify for that any more. — Jodi Ellen Malpas

It's sad if people think that's (homemaking) a dull existance, [but] you can't just buy an apartment and furnish it and walk away. It's the flowers you choose, the music you play, the smile you have waiting. I want it to be gay and cheerful, a haven in this troubled world. I don't want my husband and children to come home and find a rattled woman. Our era is already rattled enough, isn't it? — Audrey Hepburn

A quiet mediocrity is still to be preferred before a troubled superfluity. — John Suckling

Ere thou sleepest, gently lay Every troubled thought away; Put off worry and distress As thou puttest off thy dress; Drop thy burden and thy care In the quiet arms of prayer. Lord thou knowest how I live, All I'VE DONE AMISS FORGIVE; ALL OF GOOD I'VE TRIED TO DO STRENGTHEN, bless and carry through; All I love in safety keep While in Thee I fall asleep. — Henry Van Dyke

Steve is troubled by a lot of things. He is twenty-three, was raised in Virginia, and has the idea that California is the beginning of the end. "I feel it's insane," he says, and his voice drops. "This chick tells me there's no meaning to life but it doesn't matter, we'll just flow right out. There've been times I felt like packing up and taking off for the East Coast again, at least there I had a target. At least there you expect that it's going to happen." He lights a cigarette for me and his hands shake. "Here you know it's not going to."
I ask what it is that is supposed to happen.
"I don't know," he says. "Something. Anything. — Joan Didion

No matter what others say or do, even if the wicked succeed, do not be troubled: commit everything to God and put your trust in him. — St. Vincent

It is so much easier to try to help a six-month-old child or a six-year-old child than it is a 16-year-old troubled kid. — Nicholas Kristof

May he die with no joy at his end, The man who won't be troubled To unlock the keys of his heart and make a friend. — Euripides

Many troubled Midwestern towns are grasping for ways to fend off decline and, in some cases, extinction. — Stephen Kinzer

I put my arm around her and said, Jas, I have found that when you are troubled, it is often better to think of others rather than yourself. I think you would feel much better if you got me some milky coffee and jammy dodgers and I told you all about me. — Louise Rennison

Troubled is a polite word for what I am. — Gabrielle

I wouldn't have missed it for the world," said Mrs. Bridge, smiling all around, "and I feel awfully lucky. Even so we were certainly glad to see the Union Station. I suppose no matter how far you go there's no place like home."
She could see they agreed with her, and surely what she had said was true, yet she was troubled and for a moment she was almost engulfed by a nameless panic. — Evan S. Connell

Ambition had never troubled me, so I decided to begin by watching life at my leisure for a few years, waiting until I finally felt tempted to find some circle of influence for myself. — Stefan Zweig

Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.
Beatrice: A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me. -Much Ado About Nothing — William Shakespeare

The people who flood our living-rooms with a smorgasbord of commercial messages about fetid breath, moist underarms and troubled intestines know this: an appropriate time, place and manner to sell a product is any that sells the product. — George Will

The theater troubled her. It had a magic of its own, one that didn't belong to her, one that wasn't in her control. It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn't belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn't know the rules. They altered the world because it sounded better. — Terry Pratchett

I must exist in shadows, while you live under exquisitely blue skies, and yet I don't hate you for the freedom that you take for granted-although I do envy you.
I don't hate you because, after all, you are human, too, and therefore have limitations of your own. Perhaps you are homely, slow-witted or too smart for your own good, deaf or mute or blind, by nature given to despair or to self-hatred, or perhaps you are unusually fearful of Death himself. We all have burdens. On the other hand, if you are better-looking and smarter than I am, blessed with five sharp senses, even more optimistic than I am, with plenty of self-esteem, and if you also share my refusal to be humbled by the Reaper ... well, then I could almost hate you if I didn't know that, like all of us in this imperfect world, you also have a haunted heart and a mind troubled by grief, by loss, by longing. — Dean Koontz

Oh how will crime engender crime! throw guilt
Upon the soul, and like a stone cast on
The troubled waters of a lake,
'Twill form in circles round succeeding round;
Each wider than the first. — George Colman The Elder

The concept of a troubled, lonely, middle-class, gay fifty-eight-year-old living alone in dusty squalor in a chocolate-box cottage in the heart of the Cotswolds was a hard one to grasp in the context of his sweaty, noisy, hectic, foreign, red-light existence. — Lisa Jewell

Did Morris put anybody on Coltraine, specifically?"
"Clipper."
"Die-For-Ty? Talk about the sex. How come so many death doctors are wholly iced?"
"A mystery I've pondered throughout my career."
"No, seriously. Clipper's like ummm. He's gay and has a partner, but a yummy treat for the eyes. His partner's an artist. He paints people, literally I mean. Body painting. They've been together about six years."
"How do you know all this stuff?"
"Unlike you, I enjoy hearing about people's personal lives, especially when it involves sex."
"At least since Clipper's not into women, you won't be troubled by sexual fantasies."
Peabody pursed her lips in thought. "I can work with it. Two naked guys, body paints, me. Oh yeah, endless possibilities. — J.D. Robb

A troubled Necromancer. An Illusionist with a secret. An Incubus marked for death. A Darkborn in hiding. A Siren with a past. — Kami Garcia

Thank you for your kind invitation. However, as a gay man, I must decline. I am deeply troubled by the current attitude toward and treatment of gay men and women by the Russian government. The situation is in no way acceptable, and I cannot in good conscience participate in a celebratory occasion hosted by a country where people like myself are being systematically denied their basic right to live and love openly. — Wentworth Miller

I am not brutal or cruel to animals. My mission has always been to save dogs - especially troubled and abandoned dogs. I've dedicated my life to this. — Cesar Millan

I sighed immersed in a sleeping sea. A ripple that turned into waves and then storm, stirring and blending our troubled waters — Luca Ferrarini

We are troubled, but we have hope and tremendous promise. — Sara Shandler

Still more. When I was three, and four, and five years of age, I was not yet I. I was a mere becoming, a flux of spirit not yet cooled solid in the mold of my particular flesh and time and place. In that period all that I had ever been in ten thousand lives before strove in me, and troubled the flux of me, in the effort to incorporate itself in me and become me. — Jack London

We must never fear robbers or murderers. They are dangers from outside, small dangers. It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, vice the real murderer. Why should we be troubled by a threat to our person or our pocket? What we have to beware of is the threat to our souls'. — Victor Hugo

Apt words have power to suage the tumors of a troubled mind. — John Milton

I always think incipent miracles surround us, waiting only to see if our faith is strong enough. We won't have to understand it; it will just work, like a beating heart, like love. Really, no matter how frightened and discouraged I may become about the future, I look forward to it. In spite of everything I see all around me every day, I have a shaky assurance that everything will turn out fine. I don't think I'm the only one. Why else would the phrase "everything's all right" ease a deep and troubled place in so many of us? We just don't know, we never know so much, yet we have such faith. We hold our hands over our hurts and lean forward, full of yearning and forgiveness. It is how we keep on, this kind of hope. — Elizabeth Berg

Not too many people know how life could be best used, it is a millennial dilemma, that has troubled souls of men for many, many generations. — Sunday Adelaja

The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior - benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one's own chaos was also brought under control.
'Whenever I am troubled,' said the librarian, 'I think about the Dewey decimal system.'
'Then what happens?' asked the junior, rather overawed.
'Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course - as the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness. — Jeanette Winterson

I am troubled that someone would sell a book, trading on their service as a government insider with access to our nation's most valuable intelligence, in order to profit from the suffering that this nation endured on September 11, 2001. — Bill Frist

He accepted what each moment brough him, and never troubled himself with matters that were outside his control. — William Nicholson

Nothingman" is about a troubled relationship. I wrote it before I was married.I might bring something I know from the relationship to "Nothingman," but I'm thinking about someone else going through it, someone who fucked up. I didn't fuck up. The idea is about if you love someone and they love you, don't fuck up ... 'cause you are left with less than nothing. — Eddie Vedder

Once, I believed that space could
have no power over faith, just as I believed the heavens declared the glory of God's
handwork. Now I have seen that handwork, and my faith is sorely troubled. — Arthur C. Clarke

His wet white face and miserable eyesBrought nurses to him more than groans and sighs:But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fellHis troubled voice: he did the business well.(First verse of Died of Wounds) — Siegfried Sassoon