Dick Gregory Quotes

But where are the snows of yester year?

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")

Ah, tell me not that memory sheds gladness o'er the past, what is recalled by faded flowers, save that they did not last?

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

Nostalgia is not a place to live.

I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Can't bring back time. Like holding water in your hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning then. Would you?

I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is past-can't be restored.

I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you actually left them.

I'm 65 years old. Everyday the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it, well, it just keeps on getting brighter all the time.

The old days were the old days. And they were great days. But now is now.

Nostalgia is not what it used to be.

Nostalgia is, 'Hey, remember the other mall that used to be there?'

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.

Nostalgia is something we think of as fuzzy. But it's pain. Pain concerning the past.

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.

I'm just fascinated by the past. You know, both by the possibilities it holds and by the complete tyranny of it, the way it sort of keeps you in this stranglehold and makes you want things that you no longer have and you can never get back.

How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.

I am not nostalgic for the past.

The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages.

Time, you old gypsy man, will you not stay, put up your caravan just for one day?

How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start, When memory plays an old tune on the heart.

I would have liked the old days.

The only time I get a tear in my eye is when I think of what I can possibly miss.

I only felt a cold wind blow while I tried to hang on to the past.