Quotes about past

"Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity."

Adams, John on past   

"Nothing is improbable until it moves into past tense."

Ade, George on past   

"It is one thing to learn about the past; it is another to wallow in it."

Auchincloss, Kenneth on past
4 fans of this quote   

"One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort."

Bachelard, Gaston on past   

"Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time."

Bacon, Francis on past   

"There is a way to look at the past. Don't hide from it. It will not catch you -- if you don't repeat it."

Bailey, Pearl on past
6 fans of this quote   

"Nostalgia is a seductive liar."

Ball, George W. on past
4 fans of this quote   

"The past should be a springboard, not a hammock."

Ball, Ivern on past
11 fans of this quote   

"I cannot sing the old songs, Or dream those dreams again,"

Barnard, Charlotte on past
8 fans of this quote   

"A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don't find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting."

Barrie, Sir James M. on past   

"As lousy as things are now, tomorrow they will be somebody's good old days."

Barzan, Gerald on past
4 fans of this quote   

"The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again."

Benjamin, Walter on past   

"The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying."

Berger, John on past   

"The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause."

Bergson, Henri L. on past
3 fans of this quote   

"Many are always praising the by-gone time, for it is natural that the old should extol the days of their youth; the weak, the time of their strength; the sick, the season of their vigor; and the disappointed, the spring-tide of their hopes."

Bingham, Caleb on past   

"Yesterday is a canceled check: Forget it. Tomorrow is a promissory note: Don't count on it. Today is ready cash: Use it!"

Bliss, Edwin C. on past   

"If you are carrying strong feelings about something that happened in your past, they may hinder your ability to live in the present."

Brown, Les on past
10 fans of this quote   

"The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth."

Buffett, Warren on past   

"Your past is important, but it is not nearly as important to your present as the way you see your future."

Campolo, Tony on past
6 fans of this quote   

"The past is all holy to us; the dead are all holy; even they that were wicked when alive."

Carlyle, Thomas on past   

"All the king's horses and all the king's men can't put the past together again. So let's remember: Don't try to saw sawdust."

Carnegie, Dale on past
6 fans of this quote   

"If you're still hanging onto a dead dream of yesterday, laying flowers on its grave by the hour, you cannot be planting the seeds for a new dream to grow today."

Chapman, Joyce on past
5 fans of this quote   

"I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on past
4 fans of this quote   

"Mr. Meant-to has a friend, his name is Didn't-Do. Have you met them? They live together in a house called Never-Win. And I am told that it is haunted by the Ghost of Might-have-Been."

Collins, Marva on past   

"To look back to antiquity is one thing, to go back to it is another."

Colton, Charles Caleb on past   

"Study the past if you would divine the future."

Confucius on past
9 fans of this quote   

"May you look back on the past with as much pleasure as you look forward to the future."

Dickson, Paul on past
6 fans of this quote   

"We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4am of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget."

Didion, Joan on past   

"We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future."

Douglass, Frederick on past   

"The past always looks better than it was because it isn't here."

Dunne, Finley Peter on past
3 fans of this quote   

"The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

Einstein, Albert on past
9 fans of this quote   

"The free world must not prove itself worthy of its own past."

Eisenhower, Dwight D. on past   

"With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame."

Eliot, George on past   

"Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it."

Eliot, T. S. on past
13 fans of this quote   

"The past but lives in written words: a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips."

FeNelon, Francois on past   

"The historian looks backward. In the end he also believes backward."

Fredrich on past   

"It is not the literal past, the facts of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language."

Friel, Brian on past   

"To design the future effectively, you must first let go of your past."

Givens, Charles J. on past
8 fans of this quote   

"There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternally new now that builds and creates itself out of the Best as the past withdraws."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on past   

"Look to the past for guidance into the future."

Goodkin, Robert Jacob on past