Years Ago Quotes

There's an idea I came across a few years ago that I love: My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance and in inverse proportion to my expectations. That's the key for me. If I can accept the truth of 'This is what I'm facing - not what can I expect but what I am experiencing now' - then I have all this freedom to do other things.

Michael J. Fox

Success, Acceptance, Ideas

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If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.

Richard Dawkins

Thinking, Years, Doubt

Richard Dawkins (2009). “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

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Whether or not you find your own way, you're bound to find some way. If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago. I imagine by now it's quite rusty.

Norton Juster

Years, Way, Return

Norton Juster (2011). “The Phantom Tollbooth”, p.25, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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More poignant for us, at Laetoli in Tanzania are the companionable footprints of three real hominids, probably Australopithecus afarensis, walking together 3.6 million years ago in what was then fresh volcanic ash. Who does not wonder what these individuals were to each other, whether they held hands or even talked, and what forgotten errand they shared in a Pliocene dawn?

Richard Dawkins

Real, Hands, Years

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The good news is that by the second year, those cravings were about as half as frequent, and by the third year, half as much again. I'm still a little bent, a little crooked, but all things crooked, I can't complain. After all those years of all kinds of abuse and crashing into trees at eighty miles an hour and jumping off buildings and living through overdoses and liver disease, I feel better now than I did ten years ago. I might have some scar tissue, but that's alright, I'm still making progress.

Anthony Kiedis

Feel Better, Jumping, Years

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A very special case. A few years more, and that pretty creature who you love too much, I think, will, without ever loving them, have known as many men as there are beads on her aunt's rosary. No happy medium! Either a nun or a monster! God's bosom or sensual passions! It would, perhaps, be better to put her in a convent, since we put hysterical women in the Saltpetriere! She does not know vice, she invents it!" That was ten years ago before the day our story begins and... Raoule was not a nun.

Rachilde

Passion, Aunt, Men

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I'm not saying I'm glad it happened. Not exactly. But I'm not sorry to be the person I am today, and to have the life I have now. Even though it's not what I thought I wanted for my future, a year ago, it is what I want now.

Nancy Werlin

Sorry, Years, Want

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Why are you not smarter? It's only the rich who can't afford to be smart. They're compromised. They got locked years ago into privilege. They have to protect their belongings. No one is meaner than the rich. Trust me. But they have to follow the rules of their shitty civilised world. They declare war, they have honour, and they can't leave. But you two. We three. We're free.

Michael Ondaatje

War, Smart, Years

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I'm a big believer in first impressions," he finally said. "Tell me what your first thought was when Jason walked into the courtroom." Taylor took a sip of her drink and grinned. This one was easy. "I vowed to hate him forever." Jeremy's brown eyes twinkled at this. "That's exactly what I said nineteen years ago, five minutes after he first walked into our dorm room.

Julie James

Hate, Eye, Years

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Sometimes, in the trenches, you get the sense of something, ancient. One trench we held, it had skulls in the side, embedded, like mushrooms. It was actually easier to believe they were men from Marlborough's army, than to think they'd been alive a year ago. It was as if all the other wars had distilled themselves into this war, and that made it something you almost can't challenge. It's like a very deep voice, saying; 'Run along, little man, be glad you've survived

Pat Barker

Running, War, Believe

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If I existed 200 years ago, all the other farmers in my community would be like, 'That guy is worthless! He's sitting on a rock, jumping up like a frog, coming up with weird concepts and ideas, making faces, and combing his hair into a giant pastry.' It's a good thing I was born in this century, when superfluous television seems to be part of the economy.

Conan O'Brien

Jumping, Hair, Rocks

Interview with Nathan Rabin, www.avclub.com. August 30, 2006.

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I see no advantage in these new clocks. They run no faster than the ones made 100 years ago.

Henry Ford

Running, Years, Innovation

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Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.

John Maynard Keynes

Eye, Science, Years

John Maynard Keynes (2015). “The Essential Keynes”, p.516, Penguin UK

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One glance and I knew exactly who and what he was. The classic alpha male, the kind who had spurred evolution forward about five million years ago by nailing every female in sight. They charmed, seduced, and behaved like bastards, and yet women were biologically incapable of resisting their magic DNA.

Lisa Kleypas

Sight, Dna, Years

Lisa Kleypas (2015). “The Travis Family Series, Books 1-3: Blue-Eyed Devil, Smooth Taking Stranger and Sugar Daddy”, p.198, St. Martin's Press

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[...] and as I walked, I tried to see the funny side. It wasn't easy, and I'm still not sure that I managed it properly, but it's just something I like to do when things aren't going well. Because what does it mean, to say that things aren't going well? Compared to what? You can say: compared to how things were going a couple of hours ago, or a couple of years ago. But that's not the point. If two cars are speeding towards a brick wall with no brakes, and one car hits the wall moments before the other, you can't spend those moments saying that the second car is much better off than the first.

Hugh Laurie

Couple, Wall, Mean

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But Harry . . . even if we had met and married three years ago, you’d still say it wasn’t enough time.” “You’re right. I can’t think of a single day of my life that wouldn’t have been improved with you in it.” “Darling,” she whispered, her fingertips coming up to stroke his jaw, “that’s lovely. Even more romantic than comparing me to watch parts.” Harry nipped at her finger. “Are you mocking me?” “Not at all,” Poppy said, smiling. “I know how you feel about gears and mechanisms.

Lisa Kleypas

Thinking, Years, Lovely

Lisa Kleypas (2009). “Tempt Me at Twilight”, p.368, Macmillan

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Infuriatingly stupid analysts - especially people who called themselves Arabists, yet who seemed to know next to nothing about the reality of the Islamic world - wrote reams of commentary [after 9/11]. Their articles were all about Islam saving Aristotle and the zero, which medieval Muslim scholars had done more than eight hundred years ago; about Islam being a religion of peace and tolerance, not the slightest bit violent. These were fairy tales, nothing to do with the real world I knew.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Zero, Real, Stupid

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The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.

Wilkie Collins

Reading, Writing, Years

Wilkie Collins (2014). “My Miscellanies”, p.60, The Floating Press

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Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

New York, Mean, Years

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A year ago,' I said, 'you wouldn’t have asked this of me.' 'A year ago,' he answered, 'you wouldn’t have hesitated to drink.' I crossed to the desk and tossed it down.

Charlaine Harris

Years, Drink, Desks

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In the ordinary jumble of my literary drawer, I sometimes find texts I wrote ten, fifteen, or even more years ago. And many of them seem to me written by a stranger: I simply do not recognize myself in them. There was a person who wrote them, and it was I. I experienced them, but it was in another life, from which I just woke up, as if from someone else's dream.

Fernando Pessoa

Dream, Writing, Years

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But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: "It's there.

Helene Hanff

Years, People, Guy

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And what good is it to me that you're here now? Where where you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?

Peter S. Beagle

Years, Twenties, Dare

Peter S. Beagle (1968). “The Last Unicorn”, Roc

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He had never liked October. Ever since he had first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother's house many years ago and heard the wind and saw the empty trees. It had made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with spring. But, it was a little different tonight. There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years. There would be no spring. ("The October Game")

Ray Bradbury

Spring, Sadness, Autumn

FaceBook post by Ray Bradbury from Oct 01, 2015

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Because you have no memory for things that happened ten or twenty years ago, you're still mouthing the same nonsense as two thousand years ago. Worse, you cling with might and main to such absurdities as 'race,' 'class,' 'nation,' and the obligation to observe a religion and repress your love.

Wilhelm Reich

Memories, Race, Years

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