Motivational Quotes

Past

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

Best Quotes about Past

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

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

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

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

Friel, Brian

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

Barzan, Gerald

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

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

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

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

Weil, Simone

10.

What is past is prologue.

Shakespeare, William

11.

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

Wolfe, Charles

12.

Look back, and smile at perils past.

Scott, Sir Walter

13.

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

Einstein, Albert

14.

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

Raddal, Thomas H.

15.

Nothing is improbable until it moves into past tense.

Ade, George

16.

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.

17.

The past does not equal the future.

Robbins, Anthony

18.

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

19.

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

Campolo, Tony

20.

In the maxim of the past you cannot go anywhere.

Gorky, Maxim

21.

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

22.

There is nothing new, but what has become antiquated.

Proverb, French

23.

Look to the past for guidance into the future.

Goodkin, Robert Jacob

24.

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

25.

I never look back, I look forward.

Graf, Steffi

26.

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

Horace

27.

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

28.

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

Eliot, T. S.

29.

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

Syrus, Publilius

30.

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

Shakespeare, William

31.

The past should be a springboard, not a hammock.

Ball, Ivern

32.

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

Ball, George W.

33.

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

Waitley, Denis

34.

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

Proverb, German

35.

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

La Farge, John

36.

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

37.

Posterity will pay everyone their due.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

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

Schuller, Robert H.

41.

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.

42.

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

43.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

44.

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

45.

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

Berger, John

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Ovid

50.

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

Rich, Adrienne