Motivational Quotes

Past

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

- Reagan, Ronald

Best Quotes about Past

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

Friel, Brian

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

Berger, John

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

Campolo, Tony

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

Douglass, Frederick

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

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

Martial, Marcus Valerius

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.

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Sidney, Sir Philip

13.

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

Ball, George W.

14.

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.

15.

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

Waitley, Denis

16.

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

Einstein, Albert

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.

The past should be a springboard, not a hammock.

Ball, Ivern

19.

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

20.

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

Buffett, Warren

21.

Look back, and smile at perils past.

Scott, Sir Walter

22.

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

Eliot, T. S.

23.

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

Barzan, Gerald

24.

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).

25.

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

Givens, Charles J.

26.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Dickson, Paul

31.

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

Wolfe, Charles

32.

Nothing is improbable until it moves into past tense.

Ade, George

33.

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

Saying

34.

Posterity will pay everyone their due.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

35.

In the maxim of the past you cannot go anywhere.

Gorky, Maxim

36.

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

37.

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

Weil, Simone

38.

We live in a world where amnesia is the most wished-for state. When did history become a bad word?

Guare, John

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

La Farge, John

42.

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

43.

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

Ovid

44.

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

Proverb, German

45.

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

46.

They spend their time looking forward to the past.

Osborne, John

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.

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

49.

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

Schuller, Robert H.

50.

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

Horace