Motivational Quotes

Past

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

- Einstein, Albert

Best Quotes about Past

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

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

Friel, Brian

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

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

Dickson, Paul

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

Barzan, Gerald

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

King Jr. Martin Luther

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

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

Shakespeare, William

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

10.

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

11.

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

Sidney, Sir Philip

12.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

13.

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

Raddal, Thomas H.

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

In the maxim of the past you cannot go anywhere.

Gorky, Maxim

18.

There is nothing new, but what has become antiquated.

Proverb, French

19.

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

Ovid

20.

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

Douglass, Frederick

21.

They spend their time looking forward to the past.

Osborne, John

22.

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.

23.

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

Buffett, Warren

24.

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

25.

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

Givens, Charles J.

26.

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

La Farge, John

27.

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

Ball, George W.

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

31.

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).

32.

What is past is prologue.

Shakespeare, William

33.

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

34.

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

35.

I never look back, I look forward.

Graf, Steffi

36.

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

37.

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

Weil, Simone

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

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

Fredrich

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.

Moon, William Least Heat

45.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

46.

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

Reagan, Ronald

47.

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.

48.

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

Berger, John

49.

Look to the past for guidance into the future.

Goodkin, Robert Jacob

50.

Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past.

Nietzsche, Friedrich