John Burroughs Quotes

When we are young... we often experience things in the present with a nostalgia-in-advance, but we seldom guess what we will truly prize years from now.

We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory.

And your own life while it's happening to you never has any atmosphere until it's a memory.

But all years are stupid. It's only when they're over that they become interesting.

Strange, how the best moments of our lives we scarcely notice except in looking back.

Look. We both know life is short, Macy. Too short to waste a single second with anyone who doesn't appreciate and value you." You said the other day life was long," I shot back. "Which is it?" It's both," she said, shrugging. "It all depends on how you choose to live it. It's like forever, always changing." Nothing can be two opposite things at once," I said. "It's impossible." No," she replied, squeezing my hand, "what's impossible is that we actually think it could be anything OTHER than that.

Everything looks more beautiful in retrospect.

Everything we feel is made of Time. All the beauties of life are shaped by it.

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.

Life moves so fast. You gotta document the good times, man.

I don't know why it is, but sometimes I feel like I'm 60. It's like I've been around for a long time. I felt that way even when I was 8.

I feel like I've dreamed half of my life that hasn't happened yet, so a lot of times I'm going along, and I do stuff, and I know that I've done it. I have deja vus more than I have regular experiences. If half of your day is a deja vu, then you start to wonder, 'What is real and what isn't?'

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

Old age and the passage of time teach all things.

It's taken me longer still to realize what a short span there is between those life experiences and the rest of your life. That's a job for the people who lived through it.

Stories always seem to get better with age.

Memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape.

Sometimes, you know - I think, with a lot of things, at the time, everything is extremely upsetting, and then you look back on it, and it actually can be sort of funny.

I have never heard anyone say This is it. I know right now is the high point of my life. It will never get any better. Only in retrospect do we recognize the best times and of course then it is too late.

Turning 60 had an impact on my heart and soul, I must say, because you're dealing with time: past, present, and future. You suddenly realize you've come down the road quite a ways.

You'll find as you grow older that you weren't born such a great while ago after all. The time shortens up.

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

When you are in the future, the past looks different.

Life must be understood backwards. But it must be lived forwards.

There is something to be said for being older - and memories.