Motivational Quotes

Past

If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time.

- Hoban, Russell

Best Quotes about Past

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

King Jr. Martin Luther

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

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

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

Einstein, Albert

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

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

Raddal, Thomas H.

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

Martial, Marcus Valerius

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

Douglass, Frederick

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

Ovid

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Sidney, Sir Philip

13.

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

Horace

14.

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

Saying

15.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

16.

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

Shakespeare, William

17.

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

18.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

19.

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

Welch, John

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Fredrich

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

26.

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

Barzan, Gerald

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.

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

29.

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

30.

Nothing is improbable until it moves into past tense.

Ade, George

31.

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

32.

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).

33.

Posterity will pay everyone their due.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

34.

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

Campolo, Tony

35.

The past does not equal the future.

Robbins, Anthony

36.

There is nothing new, but what has become antiquated.

Proverb, French

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Look back, and smile at perils past.

Scott, Sir Walter

40.

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

Proverb, German

41.

In the maxim of the past you cannot go anywhere.

Gorky, Maxim

42.

I never look back, I look forward.

Graf, Steffi

43.

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

Reagan, Ronald

44.

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

45.

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

Rich, Adrienne

46.

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

47.

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.

48.

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

La Farge, John

49.

Look to the past for guidance into the future.

Goodkin, Robert Jacob

50.

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