Luise Rainer Quotes

Is there something we have forgotten? Some precious thing we have lost, wandering in strange lands?

Life was so short; so many beautiful things slipped away.

The things that have been and shall be no more, The things that are, and that hereafter shall be, The things that might have been, and yet were not, The fading twilight of joys departed.

Ilk cowslip cup shall kep a tear.

There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough.

From about 5 years old on, I was very contemplative and started to become constantly filled with nostalgia for the present moment and the feeling that it's always fleeting.

The good times of today, are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

Swift speedy time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.

That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.

There's talent on the streets, kids with ideas who have stories to tell and never get a chance.

I'm not afraid of death, but I resent it. I think it's unfair and irritating. Every time I see something beautiful, I not only want to return to it, but it makes me want to see other beautiful things. I know I'm not going to get to all the places I want to go.

There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.

I think the premise of somebody trying to recreate a night from their teenage years stuck with me as something potentially very tragically comic.

A night out isn't just chaos and hedonism. It can be beautiful as well and there's a sadness to the end of it.

The ancients waited for cherry blossoms, grieved when they were gone, and lamented their passing in countless poems. How very ordinary the poems had seemed to Sachiko when she read them as a girl, but now she knew, as well as one could know, that grieving over fallen cherry blossoms was more than a fad or convention.

I didn't realize it, but the days came along one after another, and then two years were gone, and everything was gone, and I was gone.

How those fires burned that are no longer, how the weather worsened, how the shadow of the seagull vanished without a trace. Was it the end of a season, the end of a life? Was it so long ago it seems it might never have been? What is it in us that lives in the past and longs for the future, or lives in the future and longs for the past? (from "No Words Can Describe It")

If I had my life to live over I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.

It’s just that I feel so sad these wonderful nights. I sort of feel they’re never coming again, and I’m not really getting all I could out of them.

There must still be room for the falling note, of course. Even in an undying world there are times when beauty passes from sight, or love passes from the heart, and we feel the sorrow of partition.

What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose?