A Quote by Adam Garfinkle
What interests us about the past is at least partly a function of what bothers us or makes us curious in the present.
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The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
Adam Roberts is the affable and infectiously curious friend we all wish we had with us in the kitchen—the one who prods us with questions, entertains us with amusing tales, and makes us feel better when our cake flops.
We can never run away from our past. The past will catch up to us because it is us. It is a part of us; it's what makes us we are. It's what delineates the borders of our societies.
It's not what happens in life that bothers us. It's what we're believing about it that bothers us.
A look at the past reminds us of how great is the distance, and how short, over which we have come. The past makes us ask what we have done with us. It makes us ask whether our very achievements are not ironical counterpoint and contrast to our fundamental failures.
We are members of one another. What binds us together is far greater than what separates us... because of our interconnectivity, what happens to the least of us happens to all of us. Whatever you do for the least of us, you do for all of us.
The resurrection is not a static and an isolated event fixed in the past, but the unleashing of a power and force that takes the form of a death defying love. Resurrection is ever present, constantly accosting us, challenging us, stretching us, cracking us open and seeking to have its way with us in order that we might come to maturity in Christ.
We are a part of everything that is beneath us, above us, and around us. Our past is our present, our present is our future, and our future is seven generations past and present.
A woman whom we need and who makes us suffer elicits from us a whole gamut of feelings far more profound and vital than a man of genius who interests us.
A film like Hoop Dreams is what the movies are for. It takes us, shakes us, and makes us think in new ways about the world around us. It gives us the impression of having touched life itself.
Mindfulness is about finding ways to slow down and pay attention to the present moment-which improves performance and reduces stress. It’s about having the time and space to attend to what’s right in front of us, even though many other forces are trying to keep us stuck in the past or inviting us to fantasize or worry about the future. It’s about a natural quality each of us possesses, and which we can further develop in just a few minutes a day.
Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.
History in Burckhardt's words is 'the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another.' The past is intelligible to us only in light of the present; and we can fully understand the present only in light of the past. To enable man to understand the society of the past and to increase his mastery over the society of the present is the dual function of history.
The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.
Joy makes us want to invest more deeply in the people around us. It makes us want to learn more about our communities. It makes us want to be able to find ways of being able to make this a better external world for all of us.
It's not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned; and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.
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