Selected nostalgia quotes

1. Tell me not here, it needs not saying, What tune the enchantress plays In aftermaths of soft September Or under blanching mays, For she and I were long acquainted And I knew all her ways.

2. I watched them from the window, thy children at their play, And I thought of all my own dear friends, who were far, oh, far away, And childish loves, and childish cares, and a child's own buoyant gladness Came gushing back again to me with a soft and solemn sadness; And feelings frozen up full long, and thoughts of long ago, Seemed to be thawing at my heart with a warm and sudden flow.

3. Dance on, dance on, we see, we see Youth goes, alack, and with it glee, A boy the old man ne'er can be; Maternal thirty scarce can find The sweet sixteen long left behind.

4. Keep some souvenirs of your past, or how will you ever prove it wasn't all a dream?

5. Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to.

6. I started racing go-karts. And I love karts. It's the most breath taking sport in the world. More than F1, indeed, I used to like it most.

7. There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.

8. Just sitting back trying to recapture a little of the glory of... Well, the time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of Glory days - yeah, they'll pass you by, Glory days - in the wink of a young girl's eye.

9. If one more person tells me this is just like old times, I swear I'll jump out the window.

10. Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.

11. There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

12. Near the lake where drooped the willow, Long time ago!

13. Remember when the music Came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire And as we sang the words, it would set our minds on fire, For we believed in things, and so we'd sing.

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

15. 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.

16. Oh, to be home again, home again, home again! Under the apple-boughs, down by the mill!

17. What do you suppose makes all men look back to the time of childhood with so much regret (if their childhood has been, in any moderate degree, healthy or peaceful)? That rich charm, which the least possession had for us, was in consequence of the poorness of our treasures.

18. When I grow up I want to be a little boy.

19. People are always talking about the old days. They say that the old movies were better, that the old actors were so great. But I don't think so. All I can say about the old days is that they have passed.

20. Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.

21. Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.

22. I wonder how many men, hiding their youngness, rise as I do, Saturday mornings, filled with the hope that Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam and Daffy Duck will be there waiting as our one true always and forever salvation?

23. In America, nostalgia for things is apt to set in before they go.

24. The particular qualities and intentions of photographs tend to be swallowed up in the generalized pathos of time past.

25. In memory everything seems to happen to music.

26. Looking back on things, the view always improves.

27. Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.

28. And oh! I shall find how, day by day, All thoughts and things look older; How the laugh of pleasure grows less gay, And the heart of friendship colder.

29. All these relics gave... Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine to memory. I liked the hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats in the day; but I by no means coveted a night's repose on one of those wide and heavy beds: shut in, some of them, with doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought old-English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of strange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings, - all which would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of moonlight.

30. I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell: I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet, keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

31. O tender yearning, sweet hoping! The golden time of first love! The eye sees the open heaven, The heart is intoxicated with bliss; O that the beautiful time of young love Could remain green forever.

32. So in the heart, When, fading slowly down the past, Fond memories depart, And each that leaves it seems the last; Long after all the rest are flown, Returns a solitary tone,- The after-echo of departed years,- And touches all the soul to tears.

33. I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, Just like the ones I used to know.

34. My coolest job was when I was 12 and I was a dishwasher at the Three Pigs Bar-B-Que for $2.50 an hour. All the fleabags and stoners worked there, so that's where I wanted to be.

35. Where is home? I've wondered where home is, and I realized, it's not Mars or someplace like that, it's Indianapolis when I was nine years old. I had a brother and a sister, a cat and a dog, and a mother and a father and uncles and aunts. And there's no way I can get there again.

36. Here was what Kilgore Trout cried out to me in my father's voice: 'Make me young, make me young, make me young!'

37. In my experience, milady, we can never get back to exactly where we started, no matter how hard we try.

38. When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past- For years fleet away with the wings of the dove- The dearest remembrance will still be the last, Our sweetest memorial the first kiss of love.

39. Watching old movies is like spending an evening with those people next door. They bore us, and we wouldn't go out of our way to see them; we drop in on them because they're so close. If it took some effort to see old movies, we might try to find out which were the good ones, and if people saw only the good ones maybe they would still respect old movies. As it is, people sit and watch movies that audiences walked out on thirty years ago. Like Lot's wife, we are tempted to take another look, attracted not by evil but by something that seems much more shameful - our own innocence.

40. In the sixties, the recycling of pop culture - turning it into Pop art and camp - had its own satirical zest. Now we're into a different kind of recycling. Moviemakers give movies of the past an authority that those movies didn't have; they inflate images that may never have compelled belief, images that were no more than shorthand gestures - and they use them not as larger-than-life jokes but as altars.

41. 'I used to bang broads like they were going outta style. Back in them days you could bang 'em for about--10 at a time for a dime. We used to even make songs about it. (sings) Ten at a time for a dime, ten at a time for a DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME.' (from 'Kissel Sails')

42. OK, you trained monkeys, everybody jump up and down. Let's bring back the good old pogo! (12/31/93 at Oakland Coliseum Arena, Oakland, California)

43. Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife, When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life; Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield, Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field

44. I'd like to wake up in the morning and hear on CNN that Elvis lives again

45. Savanna had said, 'Come back soon. Come back while you're still young enough to want me. For I'm going to be young forever' I wasn't young anymore, not by any definition of the word. But I wanted her. Perhaps I only wanted the innocence of the children we had been, making love beside the river, oblivious to the pain that could and surely would come to them. Still, I wanted her more than I wanted anyone else in the world, not because my passion was so overwhelming, but because all the other things I wanted were either painfully accomplished or so hopeless that I had given up on them. Only she was left

46. People always believer things were better - before

47. Once upon a time... When the cold wind that blows, when the cold wind that blows in my heart, was a summer breeze and she would meet me in Chinatown, for opium and a bumming and she always brought me flowers but I spared you those old bollards Or songs that I couldn't play But every giro day she'd dress me like a lady boy And take me out of the way Don't let the horse chase the new deal away, no If we make love in the morning I see your eyes look like two pins in your head

48. And you know you gotta go On that train from Dublin up to Sandy Row Throwing pennies at the bridges down below And the rain, hail, sleet, and snow Say goodbye to Madame George Dry your eye for Madame George Wonder why for Madame George

49. At Harvey House ...

50. I'd give a year of my life if I could hit a homerun on opening day of this great new park.

51. Mr Michener, as timeless as a stack of National Geographics, is the ultimate Summer Writer. Just as one goes back to the cottage in Maine, so one goes back to one's Michener.

52. I remember, I remember The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon Nor brought too long a day; But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away.

53. But there's this one thing I wanted to say... I'm so ashamed of myself... When Jack quoted something, it was usually classical... no, don't protect me now... I kept saying to Bobby, I've got to talk to somebody, I've got to see somebody, I want to say this one thing, it's been almost an obsession with me, all I keep thinking of is this line from a musical comedy, it's been an obsession with me... At night before we'd go to sleep... we had an old Victrola. Jack liked to play some records. His back hurt, the floor was so cold. I'd get out of bed at night and play it for him, when it was so cold getting out of bed... on a Victrola ten years old-and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record, the last side of Camelot, sad Camelot... 'Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.'...There'll never be another Camelot again...

54. There are places I remember All my life though some have changed Some forever not for better Some have gone and some remain

55. Who is there who has not felt a sudden startled pang at reliving an old experience or feeling an old emotion?

56. 'The apartments of the rich are cabinets of curiosities: a conglomeration of classical antiquity, gothic, renaissance; Louis XIII...Something from every century but our own, a predicament that has arisen in no other period... so that we seem to be subsisting on the ruins of the past, as if the end of the world were near' (this quotation is useful for explanations of the period of art nouveau, and the causes of the art movement)

57. I keep seeing the Backstreet Boys on TV and all their fans and I'm thinking, I was one of those girls when I was little. Ohmigod.

58. Emmy's exquisite youth and her virginal air, Eyes and teeth in the flash of a musical smile, Come to me out of the past, and I see her there As I saw her once for a while.

59. They pass upon their old, tremulous feet, Creeping with little satchels down the street, And they remember, many years ago, Passing that way in silks. They wander, slow And solitary, through the city ways, And they alone remember those old days Men have forgotten.

60. When she had got to the third page [of another story] and come to the end, she said, 'That is the loveliest story I've ever read or ever shall read in my whole life. Oh, I wish I could have gone on reading it for ten years. At least I'll read it over again.' - But here part of the magic of the Book came into play. You couldn't turn back. The right-hand pages, the ones ahead, could be turned; the left-hand pages could not. ... 'It was about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill, I know that much. But I can't remember, and what shall I do?' (ch. 10)

61. ''Is the hotel Marge? It has to be Marge. I want atmosphere.' Marge is Anna-Louise's word describing sad, 1950s-ish diner-type places where the waitresses are named Marge.'

62. The problem is, after a week of intense googling, we've started to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. God must feel that way all the time. I think people in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless.

63. Ce qui fait le poete, n'est-ce pas l'amour, la recherche desesperee du moindre rayon de soleil d'autrefois jouant sur le parquet d'une chambre d'enfant?

64. We 'conserve' nothing; neither do we want to return to any past periods; we are not by any means 'liberal'; we do not work for 'progress'; we do not need to plug up our ears against the sirens who in the market place sing of the future: their song about 'equal rights,' 'a free society,' 'no more masters and no servants' has no allure for us.

65. My choice is the old world - my choice, my need, my life.

66. 'It is hard to spend one's fifteenth Easter away from his native country. If throughout the year of an exile's life one constantly feeds on longing as if it were his daily bread, on solemn holidays this longing becomes doubled and I can think of nothing but my country.[...] I tell you that when my native land loomed closer to me than my old age, I did not care about it [...]; today, when I see my old age closer to me than my country, I feel so much the worse for it.'

67. God has given us memories that we may have roses in December.

68. I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born.

69. Jimmy Porter: They spend their time mostly looking forward to the past.

70. Innocence and purity are definitely themes that I've plodded about in over the years. They're themes I'm fascinated with, because for me, growing up in America in the '50s and just into the '60s, there was still some kind of innocence. There was hope. (2004)

71. 'You don't remember when you was my sweetest? You don't remember I called you Reese's Pieces? 'Cause there's no wrong way to do you know what!'

72. When I was 14 or 15 I was into the whole Spice Girls and I was a huge fan, but two years ago I heard The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and I was like - fucking hell, I've been born in the wrong bloody decade!

73. What do I miss about the UK? Sadly, almost nothing. Maybe the midnight sun, in June in the north. That's all.

74. What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?

75. I've been down with kickball since the third grade, man.

76. You can't appreciate home till you've left it, money till it's spent, your wife till she's joined a women's club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.

77. That strain once more; it bids remembrance rise.

78. I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.

79. The low dive had set a standard that only middle-aged hooligans could remember and to which they looked back as Mrs Lot at Sodom.

80. Other arms reach out to me Other eyes smile tenderly Still in peaceful dreams I see The road leads back to you. Georgia, oh Georgia, no peace I find... Just an old sweet song Keeps Georgia on my mind.

81. Be it granted me to behold you again in dying, Hills of home!

82. By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea, There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me; For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say: 'Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!'

83. One may speculate whether the contemporary idea of American society in decay is not a false notion which has been created, at least partially, by this old movie portrait of a society that was once stable, orderly and governed by the immutable justice of the Hollywood censorship code. This is the ever-popular myth of a golden age which persuades so many generations that there was once a wonderful moment in the past when the world was sound and good people ruled and evil was justly punished. After Camelot came chaos and despair, except, of course, that Camelot never existed, any more than the world portrayed by those old Hollywood films existed.

84. The road was new to me, as roads always are, going back.

85. We are apt to form romantic and exaggerated notions about the moral innocence of our ancestors. Ages of ignorance and simplicity are thought to be ages of purity. The direct contrary, I believe, is the case...In the middle ages, not only the most flagrant violations of modesty were frequently practised and permitted, but the most infamous vices. Men are less ashamed as they are less polished.

86. He was the future, once...

87. The west has always shown a sympathetic, although patronizing, appreciation of the old Japan. Many a foreign observer would remark with a sigh: 'What a pity that things of the past, of beauty and joy forever, should be so mercilessly sacrificed on the altar of modernism!'

88. Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.

89. Oh, bring again my heart's content, Thou Spirit of the Summer-time!

90. I remember being in seventh grade and I was one of the kids that was considered a burnout. I had the most intense crush on this very popular girl. I pined for this girl, like beyond Romeo and Juliet. Shocking. I just chewed my tongue up for her. Eighth grade comes along, we hang out a little at those parties where you end up making out. So we did that and I just couldn't have been happier. Then she goes for the football guy, and leaves me just dangling in the breeze. Years later, after I dropped out of high school. I'm playing a club. I'm on stage and I look out and I'm like, 'Fuck, it's her!' So I finish the set and I go directly to the bar where she's sitting and I walk up to her and it's that face, man - incredible. And I went, 'It's so nice to see you!' And I look at her and she's 250 pounds! She is mammoth! She's as wide as this table, but her face is still the same. And I went, 'Oh my, nice to see you - how many kids do you have?' And she had four kids. And I thought, 'What fitting payback for fucking breaking my heart when I was a little kid.' (1995)

91. While early American society was an agrarian society, it was fast becoming more commercial, and commercial goals made their way among its agricultural classes almost as rapidly as elsewhere. The more commercial society became, however, the more reason it found to cling in imagination to the noncommercial agrarian values. The more farming as a self-sufficient way of life was abandoned for farming as a business, the more merit men found in what was being left behind. And the more rapidly the farmers' sons moved into the towns, the more nostalgic the whole culture became about its rural past. The American mind was raised upon a sentimental attachment to rural living and upon a series of notions about rural people and rural life that I have chosen to designate as the agrarian myth. The agrarian myth represents a kind of homage that Americans have paid to the fancied innocence of their origins. Like any complex of ideas, the agrarian myth cannot be defined in a phrase, but its component themes form a clear pattern. Its hero was the yeoman farmer, its central conception the notion that he is the ideal man and the ideal citizen.

92. Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town. The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you Who only has at heart your getting lost, May seem as if it should have been a quarry - Great monolithic knees the former town Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered. And there's a story in a book about it: