Motivational Quotes

Past

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

- Douglass, Frederick

Best Quotes about Past

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

They spend their time looking forward to the past.

Osborne, John

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

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

If you must cry over spilled milk then please try to condense it

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

Ball, George W.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

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

Rich, Adrienne

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

10.

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.

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Barnard, Charlotte

14.

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

Eliot, T. S.

15.

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

16.

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

Wolfe, Charles

17.

In the maxim of the past you cannot go anywhere.

Gorky, Maxim

18.

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

Ovid

19.

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

Welch, John

20.

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, no just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future.

Sandburg, Carl

21.

We live in a world where amnesia is the most wished-for state. When did history become a bad word?

Guare, John

22.

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

23.

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

24.

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.

25.

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

Reagan, Ronald

26.

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

Douglass, Frederick

27.

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

Raddal, Thomas H.

28.

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

29.

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

Sidney, Sir Philip

30.

A lot of people go through life like they are rowing a boat. They look at where they have been (the PAST) rather than where they are going (the FUTURE).

31.

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

Fredrich

32.

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

Barzan, Gerald

33.

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

Friel, Brian

34.

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

King Jr. Martin Luther

35.

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

Campolo, Tony

36.

That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.

Wordsworth, William

37.

Posterity will pay everyone their due.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

38.

The past, though it cannot be relived, can always be repaired.

La Farge, John

39.

The past should be a springboard, not a hammock.

Ball, Ivern

40.

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

Buffett, Warren

41.

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

Dickson, Paul

42.

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

Einstein, Albert

43.

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

44.

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

Schuller, Robert H.

45.

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.

46.

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.

47.

There is nothing new, but what has become antiquated.

Proverb, French

48.

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

49.

The past does not equal the future.

Robbins, Anthony

50.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.