Motivational Quotes

Past

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

- Proverb, German

Best Quotes about Past

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

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

Look back, and smile at perils past.

Scott, Sir Walter

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

Eliot, T. S.

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

Campolo, Tony

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

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

Syrus, Publilius

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

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

Weil, Simone

10.

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.

11.

The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memorized glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past.

Webb, Mary

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Sidney, Sir Philip

17.

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

Wolfe, Charles

18.

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

Ball, George W.

19.

I never look back, I look forward.

Graf, Steffi

20.

There is nothing new, but what has become antiquated.

Proverb, French

21.

Look to the past for guidance into the future.

Goodkin, Robert Jacob

22.

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

Rich, Adrienne

23.

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

24.

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

Dickson, Paul

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.

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

Welch, John

27.

They spend their time looking forward to the past.

Osborne, John

28.

The past should be a springboard, not a hammock.

Ball, Ivern

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.

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

King Jr. Martin Luther

31.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

32.

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

33.

Nothing is improbable until it moves into past tense.

Ade, George

34.

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

Auchincloss, Kenneth

35.

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

Raddal, Thomas H.

36.

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

Givens, Charles J.

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Proverb, German

40.

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

Martial, Marcus Valerius

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Reagan, Ronald

44.

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

45.

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

Shakespeare, William

46.

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

47.

What is past is prologue.

Shakespeare, William

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.

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

50.

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

Douglass, Frederick