Wit & Attitude Quote by Gilbert Parker

Parker’s line lands with the hard authority of someone who has watched public life grind people down: not through scandal alone, but through the slow, private aftershocks of choices that can’t be unmade. “No refuge” is the key phrase. It refuses the comforting fiction that time, distance, or reinvention can wash a record clean. In politics especially, the past doesn’t simply “come back”; it’s always there, waiting for the moment you’re tired enough to hear it.

The sentence works because it yokes two forces that usually get separated: memory (what happened) and remorse (how it feels to live with it). Parker suggests they’re inseparable and, worse, inescapable. The haunting isn’t supernatural melodrama; it’s a psychological audit. “Spirits” implies a presence that can’t be argued with, only endured. That’s a pointed move from a politician: it quietly demystifies redemption narratives. Repentance may be morally meaningful, but it’s not a delete key.

The subtext is almost prosecutorial. “Foolish deeds” sounds mild, but it’s a trapdoor word: it covers vanity, cruelty, cowardice, expedience - the small compromises that accumulate into a character. Parker’s sting is the final clause: “with or without repentance.” He denies repentance its usual payoff (peace). You can be sorry and still be haunted; you can be shameless and still be haunted. The world, in his view, is not arranged to soothe you. It’s arranged to remember.