Motivational Quotes

Past

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

Best Quotes about Past

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

Ball, George W.

The moments of the past do not remain still; they retain in our memory the motion which drew them towards the future, towards a future which has itself become the past, and draw us on in their train.

Proust, Marcel

What is past is prologue.

Shakespeare, William

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.

Every man is his own ancestor, and every man his own heir. He devises his own fortune, and he inherits his own past.

Hedge, Francis Herbert

Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.

Rich, Adrienne

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

It's linkage I'm talking about, and harmonies and structures, And all the various things that lock our wrists to the past.

Wright, Charles

The people who get into trouble in our company are those who carry around the anchor of the past.

Welch, John

10.

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

11.

Man... cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

12.

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

13.

The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.

Weil, Simone

14.

The Past -- the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf --the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?

Whitman, Walt

15.

The rewards in life go to those who are willing to give up the past

16.

Things without remedy, should be without regard; what is done, is done.

Shakespeare, William

17.

If you look back too much, you will soon be headed that way

18.

Losers live in the past. Winners learn from the past and enjoy working in the present toward the future.

Waitley, Denis

19.

The beauty of the past is that it is the past. The beauty of the now is to know it. The beauty of the future is to see where one is going.

20.

I never look back, I look forward.

Graf, Steffi

21.

Who so desireth to know what will be hereafter, let him think of what is past, for the world hath ever been in a circular revolution; whatsoever is now, was heretofore; and things past or present, are no other than such as shall be again: Redit orbis in orbem.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

22.

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

Barnard, Charlotte

23.

Don't brood on the past, but don't forget it either.

Raddal, Thomas H.

24.

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

Barzan, Gerald

25.

Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.

Schuller, Robert H.

26.

It's very expressive of myself. I just lump everything in a great heap which I have labeled the past, and, having thus emptied this deep reservoir that was once myself, I am ready to continue.

27.

The good of other times let people state; I think it lucky I was born so late.

Ovid

28.

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

Friel, Brian

29.

While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.

Reagan, Ronald

30.

Nothing is as new as something which as been long forgotten.

Proverb, German

31.

We do NOT know the past in chronological sequence. It may be convenient to lay it out anesthetized on the table with dates pasted on here and there, but what we know we know by ripples and spirals eddying out from us and from our own time.

Pound, Ezra

32.

Nothing is improbable until it moves into past tense.

Ade, George

33.

In the maxim of the past you cannot go anywhere.

Gorky, Maxim

34.

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

35.

The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

King Jr. Martin Luther

36.

The past does not equal the future.

Robbins, Anthony

37.

Those who do remember it will find new ways to screw it up.

Wolfe, Charles

38.

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

Eliot, T. S.

39.

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

40.

If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time.

Hoban, Russell

41.

You must never regret what might have been. The past that did not happen is as hidden from us as the future we cannot see.

Stern, Richard Martin

42.

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

Einstein, Albert

43.

If the only new thing we have to offer is an improved version of the past, then today can only be inferior to yesterday. Hypnotized by images of the past, we risk losing all capacity for creative change.

Hewison, Robert

44.

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

Auchincloss, Kenneth

45.

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

46.

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

47.

The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memorized glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past.

Webb, Mary

48.

Fearfulness, contrary to all other vices, maketh a man think the better of another, the worse of himself.

Sidney, Sir Philip

49.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

50.

Look back, and smile at perils past.

Scott, Sir Walter