Motivational Quotes

Past

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

Best Quotes about Past

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

Berger, John

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

Auchincloss, Kenneth

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

Posterity will pay everyone their due.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

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

Barzan, Gerald

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

Look back, and smile at perils past.

Scott, Sir Walter

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

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

Eliot, T. S.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Sidney, Sir Philip

16.

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

Waitley, Denis

17.

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

18.

I never look back, I look forward.

Graf, Steffi

19.

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

Proverb, German

20.

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

21.

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

22.

Nothing is improbable until it moves into past tense.

Ade, George

23.

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

Ball, George W.

24.

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

Schuller, Robert H.

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Einstein, Albert

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

Douglass, Frederick

32.

They spend their time looking forward to the past.

Osborne, John

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Weil, Simone

37.

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

Shakespeare, William

38.

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

Fredrich

39.

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

Buffett, Warren

40.

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

Syrus, Publilius

41.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

42.

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

43.

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

Raddal, Thomas H.

44.

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

Ovid

45.

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

Saying

46.

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

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

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

Rich, Adrienne

50.

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

Carlyle, Thomas