Past Quotes

There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided 1. That dear old soul2. That old woman3. That old witch.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I must not fear. Fear is the mind - Killer. Fear is the little - Death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Frank Herbert, Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, "Dune".

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

I have made good judgements in the Past. I have made good judgements in the Future.

Dan Quayle

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.

Cicero

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

Ronald Reagan

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Rash indeed is he who reckons on the morrow, or haply on days beyond it for tomorrow is not, until today is past.

Sophocles

The past is but the past of a beginning.

H. G. Wells

Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.

Dr. Dale E. Turne

I have had enough experience in all my years, and have read enough of the past, to know that advice to grandchildren is usually wasted.

Harry S Truman

For the first time in the history of our country the majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.

James Earl Jimmy Carter, Jr.

Things that are done, it is needless to speak about... things that are past, it is needless to blame.

Confucius, The Confucian Analects

As I have discovered by examining my past, I started out as a child. Coincidentally, so did my brother. My mother did not put all her eggs in one basket, so to speak she gave me a younger brother named Russel, who taught me what was meant by survival of the fittest.

Bill Cosby

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging the future but by the past.

Unknown

Over the past ten years, for the first time, intelligence had become socially correct for girls.

Tom Wolfe, "Bonfire of the Vanities".

Most of the problems a President has to face have their roots in the past.

Harry S Truman

You must learn from your past mistakes, but not lean on your past successes.

Denis Watley

Women with pasts interest men... they hope history will repeat itself.

Mae West

The Past Our cradle, not our prison there is danger as well as appeal in its glamor. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repitition.

Israel Zangwill

Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.

A. Bartlett Giamatti, President of Yale University

We do not live to extenuate the miseries of the past nor to accept as incurable those of the present.

Fairfield Osborne

The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.

Robert Green Ingersoll

I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.

Herb Caen

Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and archive 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.

George Steine

All of us, whether guilty or not, whether old or young, must accept the past. ... It is not a case of coming to terms with the past. That is not possible. It cannot be subsequently modified or undone.

Richard von Weizscke

Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Charles Dickens

The difference between God and the historians consists above all in the fact that God cannot alter the past.

Samuel Butler, 1835 - 1902

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

George Eliot

One problem with gazing too frequently into the past is that we may turn around to find the future has run out on us.

Michael Cibenko

Four things come not back - - The spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

Arabian Prove

We live in the present, we dream of the future, but we learn eternal truths from the past.

Madame Chiang

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

Thomas Carlyle

In short, the building becomes a theatrical demonstration of its functional ideal. In this romanticism, High - Tech architecture is, of course, no different in spirit - If totally different in form - From all the romantic architecture of the past.

Dan Cruickshank

For there is no greater pain, than to remember in present grief, past happinesses.

Dante, The Divine Comedy

The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are for loving in the present.

Barbara de Angelis