There are times in our lives when we have to realize our past is precisely what it is, and we cannot change it. But we can change the story we tell ourselves about it, and by doing that, we can change the future.

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day.

So now you must choose... Are you a child who has not yet become world-weary? Or are you a philosopher who will vow never to become so? To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course. This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. To him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable - bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder?

Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.

Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people.

Just because I'm not forever by your side doesn't mean that's not precisely where I want to be.

I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.

It is precisely our job as Catholics to speak the truth as plainly and precisely as we can.

To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality vulnerability mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.

Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data.

They might not need me but they might. I'll let my head be just in sight a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.

We believe in fact that the one act of respect has little force unless matched by the other - in balance with it... The acting out of that dual respect I would name as precisely the source of our power.

Now I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings.

I'm not precisely saying that a really good board meeting at the MLA (Museums Libraries and Archives Coucil) makes me want to go and write poetry but there is a pleasure in doing that sort of thing well.

My impression is that most women public service workers have a long fuse. Precisely because they care so deeply about services more than anyone they still want to find a sensible and fair negotiated agreement. But their patience has run out.

A new father quickly learns that his child invariably comes to the bathroom at precisely the times when he's in there as if he needed company. The only way for this father to be certain of bathroom privacy is to shave at the gas station.

The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.

Woman or more precisely put perhaps marriage is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.

You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.

If we are to negotiate the coming years safely we may need a new kind of leadership. To put it more precisely we need the rediscovery of an ancient kind of leadership that has rarely been given the prominence it deserves. I mean the leader as teacher.

But the scientific importance of a change in knowledge of fact consists precisely in j its having consequences for a system of theory.

Accuracy is paramount in every detail of a work of history. Here's my rule: Ask yourself 'Did this thing happen?' If the answer is yes then it's historical. Then ask 'Did this thing happen precisely this way?' If the answer is yes then it's history if the answer is no not precisely this way then it's historical drama.

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.