Past Quotes

But the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke
Fairfield osborne - we do not live to extenuate the miseries of the...
We ought not to look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dear - Brought experience.
George Washington
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
The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benedictions.
William Wordsworth
Jim bishop - it is difficult to live in the present,...
The present is a rope stretched over the past. The secret to walking it is, you never look down.
Sean Stewart, Perfect Circle, 2004
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
Ralph waldo emerson - no facts are to me sacred none are profane i...
Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.
Robert Benchley
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.
Robertson Davies, "A Voice from the Attic", 1960
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
These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.
Vernon Coope
The difference between God and the historians consists above all in the fact that God cannot alter the past.
Samuel Butler, 1835 - 1902
It would be naive to think that the problems plaguing mankind today can be solved with means and methods which were applied or seemed to work in the past...
Mikhail Gorbachev, (1988)
Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, in complaining of the present, in fearing future.
Antoine Rivarol
My past is my wisdom to use today... my future is my wisdom yet to experience. Be in the present because that is where life resides.
Gene Oliver, Life and the Artistry of Change
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
Edward Thomas, Poems (1917) "Early One Morning".
A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today - - And in fact we have forgotten.
Euripides
The remarkable thing we have is a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.
Charles R. Swindoll
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
Even God cannot change the past.
Agathon
Deem not life a thing of consequence. For look at the yawning void of the future, and at that other limitless space, the past.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere. What he says is executive privilege is nothing but executive poppycock.
Sam Ervin
God cannot alter the past, but historians can.
Samuel Butle
Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom at all, because the mind is never new, fresh, innocent.
Krishnamurti
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
Laurence J. Pete
Look back, and smile on perils past.
Sir Walter Scott
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
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 the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Life is a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.
Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
Carl Sandburg, Cornhuskers (1918) "Prairie".
The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.
Alfred North Whitehead
Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Charles Dickens
You can never plan the future by the past.
Edmund Burke
Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.
Virginia Woolf
As I rejected amnesty, so I reject revenge. I ask all Americans who ever asked for goodness and mercy in their lives, who ever sought forgiveness for their trespasses, to join in rehabilitating all the casualties of the tragic conflict of the past. On Americans who avoided conscription during the Vietnam War, to Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Gerald R. Ford
Those who stare at the past have their backs turned to the future.
Unknown
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Melody Beattie