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

Clogged with yesterday's excess, the body drags the mind down with it.

Horace

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

Look back, and smile at perils past.

Scott, Sir Walter

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice.

Martial, Marcus Valerius

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

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

10.

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

Welch, John

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

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.

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

Sidney, Sir Philip

16.

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.

17.

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

Auchincloss, Kenneth

18.

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

Berger, John

19.

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

Ball, George W.

20.

The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjects --making it possible... to see a new beauty in what is vanishing.

Sontag, Susan

21.

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.

22.

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

Friel, Brian

23.

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

Shakespeare, William

24.

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

25.

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

Rich, Adrienne

26.

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

King Jr. Martin Luther

27.

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).

28.

Nothing is improbable until it moves into past tense.

Ade, George

29.

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

Givens, Charles J.

30.

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

Einstein, Albert

31.

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

Buffett, Warren

32.

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

Campolo, Tony

33.

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

Fredrich

34.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

35.

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

Douglass, Frederick

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.

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

Barzan, Gerald

38.

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

Raddal, Thomas H.

39.

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

40.

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

41.

The past does not equal the future.

Robbins, Anthony

42.

The next day is never so good as the day before.

Syrus, Publilius

43.

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

44.

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

45.

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

46.

I never look back, I look forward.

Graf, Steffi

47.

They spend their time looking forward to the past.

Osborne, John

48.

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

Guare, John

49.

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