Past Quotes
Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.Eric Hoffe
These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.Vernon Coope
Rash indeed is he who reckons on the morrow, or haply on days beyond it; for tomorrow is not, until today is past.Sophocles, Trachiniae
Gratitude is born in hearts that take time to count up past mercies.Charles E. Jefferson
Forget the past and live the present hour.Sarah Knowles Bolton
We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell on them.Lillian Hellman
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.Francis Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Telling the future by looking at the past assumes that conditions remain constant. This is like driving a car by looking in the rearview mirror.Herb Brody
Women with pasts interest men... they hope history will repeat itself.Mae West
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.Carl Sandburg, Cornhuskers (1918) "Prairie".
But the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.Arthur C. Clarke
Most people live ninety percent in the past, seven percent in the present, and that only leaves three percent for the future.John Steinbeck, The Winter of our Discontent
Sick I am of idle words, past all reconciling, Words that weary and perplex and pander and conceal, Wake the sounds that cannot lie, for all their sweet beguiling; The language one need fathom not, but only hear and feel.George Du Maurie
Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional?, 1993
A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954
Leaders are the ones who keep faith with the past, keep step with the present and keep the promise to posterity.Harold J. Seymore
I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.Herb Caen
People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.Albert Einstein
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.John Fitzgerald Kennedy
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.Edward Thomas, Poems (1917) "Early One Morning".
Life is a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind - Killer. Fear is the little - Death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.Frank Herbert, Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, "Dune".
Throwing a fastball to Henry Aaron is like trying to sneak the sun past a rooster.Curt Simmons
Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.Wayne W Dye
Heal the past, Live the present, Dream the future.Unknown
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.Thomas Jefferson
While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.Ronald Reagan
Those who stare at the past have their backs turned to the future.Unknown
This only is denied to God the power to undo the past.Agathon
For the first time in the history of our country the majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.James Earl Jimmy Carter, Jr.
Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present - - which seldom happens to us.La Bruyere
Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville
The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.Stephen Ambrose, in Fast Company
The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.Orson Scott Card, Xenocide
Sick I am of idle words, past all reconciling, Words that weary and perplex and pander and conceal, Wake the sounds that cannot lie, for all their sweet beguiling The language one need fathom not, but only hear and feel.George Du Maurie
I know of no way to judge the future but by the past.Patrick Henry
You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
