I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts…it is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.

Ghosts! […] I almost think we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that ‘walks’ in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.

It's not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that walks in us. It's all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them.

Ghosts? Pah. We are the most substantial things in the world, the foundations of the present. We are memories.

Almost all civilized peoples have been brought up to think of themselves as ghosts in machines,

In contrast to mourning and burial, it is the deep-seated conception that some part of a person does not vanish forever that separates us absolutely from the whole animal kingdom. No gorilla or bald-headed eagle ever had an inkling of their inner self finishing up somewhere once the proud body had collapsed into chemicals. It is only the early human mind that grew to strive against the prospect of the final annihilation of self, a hallmark rebellion that became hard-wired into, and always an essential element of, human nature. It is the incalculable antiquity of the first stirrings towards post-mortem existence that explains the enduring and universal belief in ghosts. Ghosts have waited in the wings from the beginning and have fluttered persistently as part of human cultural, religious or philosophical baggage ever since. Practically speaking, as a result, they are inexpungible.

Oh, the laws of physics and of logic…the number system…the principle of algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real.

Through our sentences and paragraphs long-gone ghosts still have their say within the collective mind.

OH, Heaven,it is mysterious,it is awful to consider
that we not only carry a future Ghost within us. but
are,in very deed, GHOSTS !

Are there other Librarian ghosts here?" she asked.
"Ghosts? Yes, I suppose that's the best word for it. Collections of memories, maybe. We are all the sum of our memories, after all.

Ghosts are those memories that are too strong to be forgotten for good, echoing across the years and refusing to be obliterated by time.

A ghost, Larry, is someone who hasn't made it -- in other words, who died, and they don't know they're dead. So they keep walking around and thinking that you're inhabiting their -- let's say, their domain. So they're aggravated with you.

The world was filling with ghosts. We were a haunted country in a haunted world.

you imagine there is nothing within, and indeed there are many ghosts, bones given up to the land. They stand here and there against the sky, and you approach them for a longer time than you expect. They belong in the distance; it is their domain.