Robert James Waller Quotes

That's why we have memory. And the opposite of memory— hope. So things that are gone can still matter. So we can built off our pasts and make future.

I've always been aware that to be named after someone from the past carries with it all kinds of bittersweetness.

Things that came before, people and things and experiences - that does mean something to me. It doesn't mean I don't embrace the new, but I don't forget the past, either.

The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memorized glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past.

A measure of victory has been won, and honors have been bestowed in token thereof. But honours fade or are forgotten, and monuments crumble into dust. It is the battle itself that matters - and the battle must go on.

Nothing fine and noble will ever perish from the earth as long as there are hearts to remember.

For children preserve the fame of a man after his death.

I'll never forget the first time I saw someone who had died. It was my grandfather. And I knelt next to his coffin. And all I could do was eye level was look at his hands. They were enormous hands. And all I could think was, 'Those hands dug freedom for me.'

I don't believe necessarily the past is in the past. It's eternal, it's all around us.

When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.

Sometimes the past seems too big for the present to hold.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

You die, but most of what you have accumulated will not be lost; you are leaving a message in a bottle.

We, who are the living, possess the past. Tomorrow is for our martyrs.

The past is where its supposed to be.

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

I've given my life to the principle and the ideal of memory, and remembrance.

We are tomorrow's past.

History takes time... History makes memory.

The past is a present force.

My generation is now the door to memory. That is why I am remembering.

The world that birthed that story is long gone, all its people are dead, but it continues to touch the present and future because someone cared enough about that world to keep it. To put it in words. To remember it.

I can feel his presence here in every stone he has touched, every person he has lifted up, every street and alley and city that he has changed in the few years of his life, because he is the Republic, he is our light, and I love you, I love you, until the day we meet again I will hold you in my heart and protect you there, grieving what we never had, cherishing what we did. I wish you were here. I love you, always.

Survival in the conventional sense of the term means to continue to live, but also to live after death.

The lonely heart you see tonight will not give up without a fight.