Past Quotes
It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.George Steine
Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.Charles Dickens
Past and to come seem best things present worst.Mary Bertone
Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.Jeseph Joubert
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.John Fitzgerald Kennedy
The past is but the past of a beginning.H. G. Wells
Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future.Kathleen Norris, O Magazine, January 2004
The greatest lesson we can learn from the past... is that freedom is at the core of every successful nation in the world.Frederick Chiluba
This only is denied to God: the power to undo the past.Agathon, from Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.Francis Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
History repeats itself and history never repeats itself are about equally trueWe never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.George Macaulay Trevelyan
It would be naive to think that the problems plaguing mankind today can be solved with means and methods which were applied or seemed to work in the past...Mikhail Gorbachev, (1988)
We do not live to extenuate the miseries of the past nor to accept as incurable those of the present.Fairfield Osborne
As I rejected amnesty, so I reject revenge. I ask all Americans who ever asked for goodness and mercy in their lives, who ever sought forgiveness for their trespasses, to join in rehabilitating all the casualties of the tragic conflict of the past. On Americans who avoided conscription during the Vietnam War, to Veterans of Foreign Wars.Gerald R. Ford
The Past Our cradle, not our prison there is danger as well as appeal in its glamor. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repitition.Israel Zangwill
The mind of man is capable of anything - - Because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.Joseph Conrad
Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Trust no future, however pleasant Let the dead past bury its dead Act, - Act in the living Present Heart within and God overhead.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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
There has never been an age that did not applaud the past and lament the present.Lillian Eichler Watson
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.Edward Thomas, Poems (1917) "Early One Morning".
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, cattle, barns, and farming tools, for these are more easily acquired than gotten rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labour in.Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Virtue extends our days he live two lives who relives his past with pleasure.Marcus Valerius Martialis
The rest of the world is sweeping past us. The oil and gas of the Texas future is the well - Educated mind. But we are still worried about whether Midland can beat Odessa at football.Mark White
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.Thomas Jefferson
Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.Maya Angelou
The farther behind I leave the past, the closer I am to forging my own character.Isabelle Eberhardt
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.George Santayana
The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benedictions.William Wordsworth
Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. In is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and a manly heart.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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
Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.Thich Nhat Hanh
The superior man acquaints himself with many sayings of antiquity and many deeds of the past, in order to strengthen his character thereby.I Ching
One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past or in complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the essence of life.Anatole France
I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.Herb Caen
Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.William Ralph Inge
