Wyndham Lewis Quotes

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more

As soon as a man recognizes that he has drifted into age, he gets reminiscent. He wants to talk and talk; and not about the present or the future, but about his old times. For there is where the pathos of his life lies - and the charm of it. The pathos of it is there because it was opulent with treasures that are gone, and the charm of it is in casting them up from the musty ledgers and remembering how rich and gracious they were.

It becomes increasingly easy, as you get older, to drown in nostalgia.

The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.

Past happiness augments present wretchedness.

Nostalgia! I feel it even for someone who meant nothing to me, out of anxiety for the flight of time and a sickness bred of the mystery of life. If one of the faces I pass daily on the streets disappears, I feel sad; yet they meant nothing to me, other than being a symbol of all life.

Whiles in the early Winter eve We pass amid the gathering night Some homestead that we had to leave Years past; and see its candles bright Shine in the room beside the door Where we were merry years agone But now must never enter more, As still the dark road drives us on. E'en so the world of men may turn At even of some hurried day And see the ancient glimmer burn Across the waste that hath no way; Then with that faint light in its eyes A while I bid it linger near And nurse in wavering memories The bitter-sweet of days that were.

Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.

Nostalgia locates desire in the past where it suffers no active conflict and can be yearned toward pleasantly.

Why does the past look so enticing to us? For the same reason why from a distance a meadow with flowers looks like a flower bed.

And as we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads attached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them.

And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

Forgotten tones of love recur to us, and kind glances shine out of the past--oh so bright and clear!--oh so longed after!--because they are out of reach; as holiday music from within a prison wall--or sunshine seen through the bars; more prized because unattainable--more bright because of the contrast of present darkness and solitude, whence there is no escape.

Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.

Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.

I've changed my ways a little, I cannot now Run with you in the evenings along the shore, Except in a kind of dream, and you, if you dream a moment, You see me there.

I sometimes think it's a mistake to have been happy when one was a child. One should always want to go on, not back.

Sometimes I miss the old me.

I love the nostalgic myself. I hope we never lose some of the things of the past.

Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past without looking forward to the future.

The old happiness is unreturning. Boy's griefs are not so grievous as youth's yearning. Boys have no sadness sadder than our hope.

I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.

Past and to come, seems best; things present, worse.