Motivational Quotes

Past

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

Best Quotes about Past

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

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

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

La Farge, John

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

Rich, Adrienne

Posterity will pay everyone their due.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

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

Friel, Brian

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

Waitley, Denis

The past does not equal the future.

Robbins, Anthony

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

10.

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

Weil, Simone

11.

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

Barzan, Gerald

12.

What is past is prologue.

Shakespeare, William

13.

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

Raddal, Thomas H.

14.

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

Shakespeare, William

15.

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

16.

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

Martial, Marcus Valerius

17.

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

Guare, John

18.

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

Schuller, Robert H.

19.

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

20.

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

Berger, John

21.

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

Sidney, Sir Philip

22.

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

Proverb, German

23.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

24.

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

25.

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

Givens, Charles J.

26.

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

27.

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

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.

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

Fredrich

30.

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.

31.

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Auchincloss, Kenneth

35.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

36.

Steiner, George

37.

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

38.

I never look back, I look forward.

Graf, Steffi

39.

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

Saying

40.

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

Horace

41.

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

Ovid

42.

There is nothing new, but what has become antiquated.

Proverb, French

43.

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

Dickson, Paul

44.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Look back, and smile at perils past.

Scott, Sir Walter

49.

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

50.

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

Buffett, Warren