Quotes: Pain. Parents and Children. Paris. Parties. Past.

A collection of quotes on various topics. The sentence in bold face is a plain statement of the quote that follows.

Pain
He can hurt you with his words, but he cannot make you change your mind.
Pain 136 Antigone: …whatever pain his words may give, he cannot wrench your will away. Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus.

Pain individualizes.
Pain individual 307 Pain is the most individualizing thing on earth. E. Hamilton. The Greek Way.

Parents and Children
Who doesn’t desire his father’s death?
Parents and children 621 Ivan: He [Smerdyakov] murdered him and I incited him to do it…who doesn’t desire his father’s death? Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

If every child asks his father why he (the child) should love him, the foundations of society would crumble.
Parents and children 678 …if every child is to ask his father why he is to love him, what…will become of the foundations of society? Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

We are happier with our children’s playing than we are with their actions when they grow up, as if they are more important as entertainers than they are as people.
Parents and children 131 …and most commonly we feel ourselves more roused by the prancings, the games, and the infantile antics of our children than we do afterwards by their grown-up actions, as if we had loved them for our pastime, as monkeys, not as men. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

Paris
Impressions of Paris.
Paris 90 Paris: Two hundred people sat at little tables on the sidewalk, sipping wine and coffee; the streets were thronged with light vehicles and with joyous pleasure seekers; there was music in the air, life and action all about us, and a conflagration of gaslight everywhere. Twain, Innocents Abroad.

Parties
Large parties are intimate; with small parties there is no privacy.
Parties 50 …I like large parties; they’re so intimate; at small parties there isn’t any privacy. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

Past
The past exists simultaneously with the present.
Past 129 ...the actuality of Albert Einstein’s simultaneously existing past.... Finney, From Time to Time.

Of course, you can repeat the past.
Past 111 Gatsby: “Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously; “why of course you can!” Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

Writing about the events of the past makes them seem determined, without the freedom that accompanied those events.
Past 105 Thornton Wilder: A great deal of writing and talking about the past is unacceptable …freezes the historical in a determinism…rob[s] those events of their character of having occurred in freedom. Cowley, ed., Writers at Work.

Writers write about the past as if the characters knew what was going to happen to them.
Past 106 Thornton Wilder: [The writer] recounts the past as though the characters knew what was going to happen next. Cowley, ed., Writers at Work.

Can’t we ever get rid of the past that lies on the present like a giant dead body?
Past and present 509 Holgrave: “Shall we never, never get rid of this past…[which] lies upon the present like a giant’s dead body!” Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables.

An old home is poisoned by the forefathers and relatives who lived there.
Past and present 576 There is no such unwholesome atmosphere as that of an old home, rendered poisonous by one’s defunct forefathers and relatives. Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables.

Don’t alter the past because you can do unseen damage to the future.
Past future 264 Dr. D: don’t ever, ever alter the past...or you’ll alter the future in a way or ways you cannot know. Finney, From Time to Time.

The idea that people of old handled these pages, but are now gone beyond memory.
Past present 275 …the idea that those same musty pages have been handled by people—once alive and bustling among the scenes there recorded, yet now in their graves beyond the memory of man. Hawthorne, Tales and Sketches

The past is a burden on the present.
Past present 461 “The present is burthened too much with the past.” Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

The old New York of 1912 is lying all around me at the same time that I am living in the present.
Past present 130 ...that another New York was here, too, lying invisibly all around me [--the New York of 1912]. Finney, From Time to Time.

The great sin is interfering with the past.
Past sin 120 ...interfering with the past, the great sin. Finney, From Time to Time.

In the old days, there were a lot of queer people around; now, everybody’s the same and there’s no one to laugh about.
Past vs. present 428 "What a lot o' queer folks there used to be about here, anyway, when we was young, Almiry[;] everybody's just like everybody else, now; nobody to laugh about, and nobody to cry about." Jewett, The country of the Pointed Firs.