198 Nostalgia Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Looking back on things, the view always improves.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The little toy dog is covered with dust, But sturdy and stanch he stands; And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands. Time was when the little toy dog was new, And the soldier was passing fair; And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue Kissed them and put them there.

'I have been here before,' I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest.

'There's nothing to beat these old English country houses.' said Charlie, becoming lyrical. 'All those parks and gardens and terraces and stuff. Makes you think of bygone ages and knights in armour and all like that. I saw one of these joints in a movie in Cicero once with Fred Astaire in it, and I remember thinking those guys have it pretty soft.'

If you say '90 miles' to any Cuban, they'll know exactly what it means. It's the stretch of water between Key West, which is the southernmost tip of the continental United States, and Cuba. And for any Cuban who cannot go back, it represents not just a physical distance, but a spiritual one. That's why in most of the songs there is the word 'distancia.' The idea was to take the nostalgia and the sounds that we started with on 'Mi tierra,' which was meant to sound like it was made in a past era, and do the opposite. We moved forward to 2007, with the technological equipment we have today, and gave it a very vibrant sound.

Till I had you I didn't know that I was missing out. Had to grow up and see the world through different shades of doubt. Give me one more chance to dream again. One more chance to feel again through your young heart. If only for one day let me try. I wanna see Christmas through your eyes. I want everything to be the way it used to be. Back to being a child again, thinking the world was mine . . . I see the rain, you see the rainbow hiding in the clouds. Never afraid to let your love show. Won't you show me how. Wanna learn how to believe again. Find the innocence in me again, through your young heart. Help me find a way, help me try. I wanna see Christmas through your eyes. I want everything to be the way it used to be. Back to being a child again, thinking the world was kind. I wanna see Christmas, Christmas through your eyes.

[The hardest thing about '90 Millas' was the concept of] combining the old and the new without losing the authenticity. The simple solution, of course, would have been to record covers. [But] emotionally it wouldn't have been the same We left Cuba as children: Gloria was 1, I was 14. So, there ia a part that does exist in nostalgia, but a the same [time] there is another part that is contemporary music that we've made all over the world.

Sometimes when earth's gods are homesick they visit in the still of the night the peaks where once they dwelt, and weep softly as they try to play in the olden way on remembered slopes.

It took a while, but she looked in the mirror, And she glanced at the license for my name. A smile seemed to come to her slowly, It was a sad smile, just the same. And she said, 'How are you Harry?' I said, 'How are you Sue? Through the too many miles and the too little smiles I still remember you.'

Oh, give me again the rover's life--the joy, the thrill, the whirl! Let me feel thee again, old sea! let me leap into thy saddle once more. I am sick of these terra firma toils and cares; sick of the dust and reek of towns. Let me hear the clatter of hailstones on icebergs, and not the dull tramp of these plodders, plodding their dull way from their cradles to their graves. Let me snuff thee up, sea-breeze! and whinny in thy spray. Forbid it, sea-gods! intercede for me with Neptune, O sweet Amphitrite, that no dull clod may fall on my coffin! Be mine the tomb that swallowed up Pharaoh and all his hosts; let me lie down with Drake, where he sleeps in the sea.

The city's frightening now. That's the basis of my reaction to Las Vegas. It's not the city I wrote about. It's not the same place at all. You'll notice that even the - what do you call them? - milestone or trademark casinos are now gone.

'Hmm, corn nuts. Can't say I'm a big fan. I'm more of an apple pie kinda guy because it reminds me of sex and death.'

Occasionally, I'd pick up the lifeguard buoy and run down the beach Baywatch-style, like something was actually happening.

Time, they say, must the best of us capture, And travel and battle and gems and gold No more can kindle the ancient rapture, For even the youngest of hearts grows old.

He wedded a wife of richest dower, Who lived for fashion, as he for power. Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow, He watched a picture come and go: And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes Looked out in their innocent surprise.

In our brave new world, blushing is a form of nostalgia.

I get letters from people who say 'I hadn't listened to your programme for twelve years, and I was driving home the other night and heard something I thought was fantastic. I've listened every night since, and it was just how it used to be.' Sometimes kids write in and say, 'I was listening to your programme in my bedroom the other night when I was doing my homework, and my mum came in and said, 'What are you listening to?' I said, 'John Peel,' and she said, 'Oh, I used to listen to him when I was your age.'' It's nice being woven into people's lives in that way.

Some of the old songs I sing often, because they help me to reflect on where I've been and that's important for me to do - so I don't lose track of where I am going.

'It's a nice feeling. I was not like the popular guy in high school. This is revenge for all the bullies in high school [laughter]. It's a great feeling. Maybe women sometimes are more open to romantic music.'

All the colours look brighter now. Everything they say seems to sound new. Slipping into tomorrow too quick, Yesterday always too good to forget. Stop the swing of the pendulum! Let us through!

They took the game right out of it. When I am a man I will be an astronaut, And find Peter Pan.

Oh! England, my Lionheart! Dropped from my black Spitfire to my funeral barge. Give me one kiss in apple-blossom. Give me one wish, and I'd be wassailing In the orchard, my English rose, Or with my shepherd, who'll bring me home.

She sent him scented letters, And he received them with a strange delight. Just like his wife But how she was before the tears, And how she was before the years flew by, And how she was when she was beautiful.

I want you as the dream, Not the reality. That clumsy good-bye kiss could fool me. But looking back over my shoulder at you happy without me.

'One thing I am very glad of is that I went through the sixties. People who didn't really don't know what they missed. We pushed a certain consciousness, a way of life and it was exciting - no AIDS, people weren't dying so much from drug abuse and it was truly a time of freedom and change.'

Things started to go downhill. Instead of singing about taking tea with Mary Jane and boppin' your dingus on ol' Sweet Slit Annie it was Help me God I don't know the meaning of life or I believe that love is gonna cure the world of psoriasis and cancer both and I'm gonna tell the people all about it 285 different ways whether you like it or not. And Why is there war well go ask the children they know everything we need to know, and Gee I sure like black folks even if my own folks don't and endless vinyl floods of drivel in similar veins. At that point I started to pack in and resort back to my good old ' 66 goof squat rock. I got out records like 96 Tears by Question Mark and the Mysterians, who were mysterious indeed, and re-whooped to jungle juju cackles like 'Wooly Bully,' which is indescribable and was recorded by a bunch of guys who drove around in a hearse wearing turbans.

Do you pine for the days when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?

He seems To have seen better days, as who has not Who has seen yesterday?

O Mirth and Innocence! O milk and water! Ye happy mixtures of more happy days.

As you turned to go I heard you call my name, You were like a bird in a cage spreading its wings to fly 'The old ways are lost,' you sang as you flew And I wondered why.

I loved ECW, back in the days when it was run by a visionary, when it was owned by a true creative genius. Let's hear it for Stephanie McMahon. Long live the Alliance! Long live the Alliance!

So I wish I could play little league now, I'd kick some fuckin' ass.

'There is a town in north Ontario / With dream comfort memory to spare / And in my mind, I still need a place to go / All my changes were there.' - 'Helpless'

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away Now it looks as though they're here to stay. Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play Now I need a place to hide away. Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Little kid dancin' in the grass, legs like rubber band. It's summertime, summertime. There's a line at the candy stand. Keep an eye on them children, eye on them children in the pool. You'd better keep an eye on them children, eye on them children in the pool.

You will remember (you WILL remember!) Where you could go (you WILL remember!) When you would go Away. ~ 'When You See The Light'

You would never have the time. I would love to change your mind. You were there. And it was good in the beginning. ~ 'Crystal Village'

New York City's very pretty in the night-time But oh, don't you miss Soho?

For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne!

I was 23 when I came to Bellingham in 1960 - from Mars, they must have thought. I've always had a very sentimental feeling about the importance of that first ministry in my life.

I wish things were like when Ronald Reagan was still president.

If you close your eyes, you could just as well imagine me to be vintage Ali MacGraw, circa 1968.

Sadly I roam, Still longing for de old plantation, And for de old folks at home.

The day goes by like a shadow o'er the heart, With sorrow where all was delight; The time has come when the darkies have to part: Then my old Kentucky home, good night!

[W]e do live in a conceptual trough that encourages such yearning for unknown and romanticized greener pastures of other times. The future doesn't seem promising, if only because we can extrapolate some disquieting present trends into further deterioration: pollution, nationalism, environmental destruction, and aluminum bats. Therefore, we tend to take refuge in a rose-colored past [:]. I do not doubt the salutary, even the essential, properties of this curiously adaptive human trait, but we must also record the down side. Legends of past golden ages become impediments when we try to negotiate our current dilemma.

Ye distant spires, ye antique towers, That crown the wat'ry glade.

For just a minute there I was dreaming, for just a minute is was all so real. For just a minute she was standing there with me.

I'll be the boy in the corduroy pants. You be the girl at the high school dance.

There was Rock 'N' Roll across the dial. When I think of her, it makes me smile.

Nostalgia's nice enough in little bitty doses, it puts personal peach fuzz on the hard ass of history.

'I don't have fun. Actually, I had fun once. In 1962. I drank a whole bottle of Robitussin cough medicine and went in the back of a 1961 powder-blue Lincoln Continental to a James Brown concert with some Mexican friends of mine. I haven't had fun since. It's not a word I like. It's like Volkswagens or bell-bottoms, or patchouli oil or bean sprouts. It rubs me up the wrong way. I might go out and have an educational and entertaining evening, but I don't have fun.'

Hey where did we go, Days when the rains came Down in the hollow, Playin' a new game, Laughing and a running hey, hey Skipping and a jumping In the misty morning fog with Our hearts a thumpin' and you My brown eyed girl, You my brown eyed girl.

To Santa Fe Do you need it? Can you feel it in the same old way? I can feel it from the mountain top Runnin' down to the foamy brine In a rest'rant 'cross a table top Looking into a glass of wine Whispering in the evening breeze Green leaves glist'ning eucalyptus trees Can you hear them? Or get near them?

Upon the bank, she stood In the cool Of spent emotions. She felt, among the leaves, The dew Of old devotions.

As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose colour, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world. In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there.

Thackeray is everybody's past - is everybody's youth. Forgotten friends flit about the passages of dreamy colleges and unremembered clubs; we hear fragments of unfinished conversations, we see faces without names for an instant, fixed forever in some trivial grimace: we smell the strong smell of social cliques now quite incongruous to us; and there stir in all the little rooms at once the hundred ghosts of oneself.

'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')

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)

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

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