Past Quotes
So different are the colours of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.Victor Hugo
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.Arthur C. Clarke
The past is a guide post, not a hitching post.L. Thomas Holdcroft
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.L. P. Hartley, The Go - Between
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, cattle, barns, and farming tools, for these are more easily acquired than gotten rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labour in.Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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
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
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.Jan Glidewell
People spend too much time finding other people to blame, too much energy finding excuses for not being what they are capable of being, and not enough energy putting themselves on the line, growing out of the past, and getting on with their lives.J. Michael Straczynski
Even God cannot change the past.Agathon
We must never allow the future to be weighed down by memory. For children have no past, and that is the whole secret of the magical innocence of their smiles.Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
You must learn from your past mistakes, but not lean on your past successes.Denis Watley
God cannot alter the past, but historians can.Samuel Butle
A strange thing is memory, and hope one looks backward, and the other forward one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.Anna Mary Robertson Moses
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
Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.Lewis Mumford
Rash indeed is he who reckons on the morrow, or haply on days beyond it; for tomorrow is not, until today is past.Sophocles, Trachiniae
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
The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.Robert Green Ingersoll
Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.William Ralph Inge
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
This ONLY is denied God The power to undo the past.Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
Penicillin was indeed the product of accidental discovery, but the discovery was made, and the knowledge developed, because certain scientists had definite goals in mind. Chance, Pastuer wrote, favors only the prepared mind. The mind must be prepared not only by scientific training and technological know - How, but also by the awareness of social needs.Saturday Review
Whoso neglects learning in his youth, Loses the past and is dead for the future.Euripides, Phrixus
We can pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.John Buchan
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
Four things come not back - - The spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.Arabian Prove
You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
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
I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.Herb Caen
Forgiveness means letting go of the past.Gerald Jampolsky
Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows.Sir William Osle
The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.Orson Scott Card, Xenocide
The superior man acquaints himself with many sayings of antiquity and many deeds of the past, in order to strengthen his character thereby.I Ching
Be positive in addressing the envelope to your future, For enclosed are your efforts from the past. Be certain of the postage and double check what class.Unknown
Heal the past, Live the present, Dream the future.Unknown
Trust no future, however pleasant Let the dead past bury its dead Act, - Act in the living Present Heart within and God overhead.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
