Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Past

Pound, Ezra

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

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

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.

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

Raddal, Thomas H.

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

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

Berger, John

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.

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

Proverb, German

10.

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

Sidney, Sir Philip

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

16.

There is nothing new, but what has become antiquated.

Proverb, French

17.

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

Einstein, Albert

18.

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

19.

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

20.

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

Barzan, Gerald

21.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

22.

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

23.

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

Buffett, Warren

24.

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

25.

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

Ovid

26.

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

Syrus, Publilius

27.

Posterity will pay everyone their due.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

28.

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

29.

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

Friel, Brian

30.

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

31.

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

Ball, George W.

32.

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

Waitley, Denis

33.

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

Martial, Marcus Valerius

34.

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.

35.

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

36.

Living in the past has one thing going for it; it's cheaper!

Saying

37.

It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.

Steiner, George

38.

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

La Farge, John

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.

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

Welch, John

41.

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

42.

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

Barnard, Charlotte

43.

I never look back, I look forward.

Graf, Steffi

44.

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

Rich, Adrienne

45.

In the maxim of the past you cannot go anywhere.

Gorky, Maxim

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.

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

Wolfe, Charles

48.

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).

49.

The past does not equal the future.

Robbins, Anthony

50.

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

Givens, Charles J.