In this bright future you can’t forget your past.

There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

I’m living in the present, thinking about the past, hoping for the future.

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.

That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.

To me the ego is the habitual and compulsive thought processes that go through everybody’s mind continuously. External things like possessions or memories or failures or successes or achievements. Your personal history.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering – because you can’t take it in all at once.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‚Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on.

I think 9/11 affected everybody in one way or another.

I’m constantly thinking.

San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories.

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

My grandfather was smart and had a whole lot of pride. He didn’t speak a terrible amount, but you could tell there was a ton on his mind – like a quiet acceptance of how life had turned out.

Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair.

Wonder is the basis of worship.

How great is the mystery of the first cells which were one day animated by the breath of our souls! How impossible to decipher the welding of successive influences in which we are forever incorporated! In each one of us, through matter, the whole history of the world is in part reflected.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

Fashion is inspired by youth and nostalgia and draws inspiration from the best of the past.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

Contemplation of life after retirement and life after death can help you deal with contemporary challenges.

The concept of loneliness and exile and self-sufficiency continually bucks me up.

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

There’s a deceptive sin that can keep us from walking in love: pride. It’s deceptive because when you have pride, you’re usually too proud to admit it. I know this because I used to have teachings on pride and they didn’t sell well.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

If you don’t know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it’s kind of hard to put things together.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.

The things hardest to bear are sweetest to remember.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

Love is a really scary thing, and you never know what’s going to happen. It’s one of the most beautiful things in life, but it’s one of the most terrifying. It’s worth the fear because you have more knowledge, experience, you learn from people, and you have memories.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.

Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

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.