PHRASES ABOUT NOSTALGIA: THE DESIRE FOR A PAST THAT CANNOT RETURN

The term nostalgia comes from the ancient Greek. It comes from the fusion of two terms, nóstos. which means "return", e àlgos, or "suffering". Therefore, nostalgia indicates the pain and sadness felt by the desire for something to return or by the desire to return at a precise moment in our life. This suffering can be declined in various ways. It can refer to a past love, a "friendship, a specific person, but also a place, an" experience and even a particular object. What characterizes it is the attachment to a past that can no longer return and this triggers in us that feeling of emptiness, lack, due to temporal and physical distance.

Given the complexity of this sentiment, many great authors of past centuries and today have tried to tell nostalgia and to describe what it is, how it manifests itself and how much, at times, it can have an almost positive effect on those who experience it. In any case, it is always better to live in the present so as not to risk regretting lost opportunities in the future and, in the same way, to say what you feel to those you love.

Phrases and aphorisms about what nostalgia is

Like all complex feelings or themes, such as love, happiness or the meaning of life, even nostalgia cannot be defined univocally. Nevertheless, poets, novelists and philosophers have tried to explain what nostalgia. For some it is an indefinite desire, which has no specific purpose and therefore cannot be satisfied. For others it is the lack of the past or the desire to return to a certain place or period of time. Here are some sentences that summarize the their point of view.

Nostalgia is an archive that removes the edgy sides from the good old days.
Doug Larson

No more pain
than remembering the happy time
nor the misery.
Dante Alighieri

Nostalgia is realizing that things weren't as unbearable as they seemed back then.
Arthur Bloch

We all receive a gift.
Then, we don't remember anymore
neither by whom nor who it is.
We only keep them
- pungent and without amnesty -
the thorn of nostalgia.
Giorgio Caproni

Nostalgia: the memory of past things.
William Shakespeare

Nostalgia is the suffering caused by the unfulfilled desire to return.
Milan Kundera

Phrases about suffering due to nostalgia

This lack of something inevitably triggers sadness and suffering.Although nostalgia manifests itself above all for the detachment, forced or wanted, from a loved one or from an important place, it very often happens to try it even for an unknown place, which we see almost as a means to achieve dreams and goals that still elude us. This form of nostalgia is perhaps much more complex, because we do not know how to give it either a "face" or a name. We are missing something that we have never known, visited or seen.

I'd like to trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday.
Kris Kristofferson

We are divided between nostalgia for the familiar and the impulse for the stranger and the strange. More often than not, we feel more homesick for places we've never known.
Carson McCullers

My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? It's like climbing a ladder. I'm at the top of the stairs, look back and see the steps. That's where I was. We are here now. Tomorrow, we will be somewhere else. So why the nostalgia?
Jeanne Moreau

It's a weird pain… Dying of longing for something you will never experience.
Alessandro Baricco

Amaranta was thinking of Rebeca, because loneliness had selected her memories, and had incinerated the numb piles of nostalgic garbage that life had accumulated in her heart, and had purified, magnified and eternalized the others, the most bitter.
Gabriel García Márquez

The belly is empty but the heart is filled with virile nostalgia. Nostalgia for the air of home and also a little for the air in general.
from the movie Fascists on Mars

I am nostalgic, it is difficult for me to be outside the house, I have always felt like a little Ulysses.
Riccardo Muti

There is no more painful nostalgia than that of things that never were!
Fernando Pessoa

Phrases on the importance of nostalgia

There is no lack of those who have seen positive or constructive effects in nostalgia. In fact, according to some authors, it would give the opportunity to reflect on the past and also on the present. What has not been appreciated back in time can be an opportunity to recognize its value in the future, should a certain occasion recapitulate.
Furthermore, nostalgia could be understood as a reminder of the happy moments that have already passed, which return to make room in our minds, tearing us a smile and arousing in us a sense of gratitude for having lived them.
Finally, nostalgia can also occur for events not yet happened, people never known or places never seen. For this reason it could push us to leave our usual "world" and throw in a sea of new experiences.

What do you have against nostalgia, huh? It is the only entertainment that remains for those who are wary of the future, the only one.
From the movie The great beauty

Think about the past only when you are happy to remember it.
Jane Austen

Sometimes we think we feel nostalgia for a distant place, while in truth we miss the time we spent there, when we were younger and fresher. In this case, time deceives us, taking the mask of space.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Every act of rebellion expresses nostalgia for innocence and a demand for the essence of being.
Albert Camus

To travel, you need to be nostalgic for something.
Susanna Tamaro

People seem to miss a lot of things that didn't make them so crazy once.
Anonymous

Is it possible to miss a world you've never known? Is it possible that a civilization capable of building all this will be destroyed to build… this?
From the movie The motorcycle diaries

And when the light of memories shines in your eyes, let yourself be carried away on the journey, even if your hands remain empty.
Anonymous

When you are homesick it is not lack. It is the presence of people, places, emotions that come back to find you.
Erri De Luca

Aphorisms about nostalgia taken from the songs

Nostalgia is a strong feeling, which is felt several times in the course of life. Obviously it could not fail to fascinate singers and musicians, who used it as a theme in their most beautiful songs. In the various songs, we often talk about nostalgia for love, perhaps not using the term itself but recalling its effects of lack and suffering. through music and words.

Why did she have to go?
I don't know, he didn't mean it.
Did I say something wrong,
Now I long for yesterday.
Beatles, Yesterday

And now I'll wait for tomorrow
To have nostalgia
Freedom lady miss fantasy
As precious as wine, as free as sadness
With your cloud of doubts and beauty.
Fabrizio De André, If they cut you into pieces

Life never lasts one evening
The time of a madness
What short then runs away
Then
What remains inside us
This heavenly nostalgia
This always knowing you again
Still mine
My...
Riccardo Cocciante, Heavenly nostalgia

But give me back my six hundred,
My twenties and a girl you know
Milan sorry I was joking,
Lights at San Siro will no longer turn on.
Roberto Vecchioni, Lights at San Siro

Turn around,
From time to time I am melancholy and you are never there
Turn around,
From time to time I get a little tired of hearing the sound of my tears
Turn around,
I get a little nervous from time to time because my best years are gone.
Bonnie Tyler, Total Eclipse Of the Heart