Past Quotes

Israel zangwill - the past: our cradle, not our prison; there is...
A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.
Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazurus Long
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Buddha
Arthur wing pinero - i believe the future is only the past again,...
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
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Buddha
The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.
Rene Descartes
I know of no way to judge the future but by the past.
Patrick Henry
Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the superstitions of the past.
Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
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
This only is denied to God the power to undo the past.
Agathon
This ONLY is denied God The power to undo the past.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
The past is certain, the future obscure.
Thales
Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what happened, but of what men believe happened.
Gerald W. Johnston
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley, The Go - Between
William wordsworth - the thought of our past years in me doth breed...
Show us a man who never makes a mistake and we will show you a man who never makes anything. The capacity for occasional blundering is inseparable from the capacity to bring things to pass. The only men who are past the danger of making mistakes are the men who sleep at Greenwood.
H. L. Wayland
Sick I am of idle words, past all reconciling, Words that weary and perplex and pander and conceal, Wake the sounds that cannot lie, for all their sweet beguiling; The language one need fathom not, but only hear and feel.
George Du Maurie
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
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
George Bernard Shaw
The future is the past returning through another gate.
Arnold Glasgow
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.
Jan Glidewell
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.
Russell Hoban
Telling the future by looking at the past assumes that conditions remain constant. This is like driving a car by looking in the rearview mirror.
Herb Brody
Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.
Kahlil Gibran, Essay on Robert Frost, quoted in N. Y.. Times: Obit - Editorial, April 1982
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
It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.
George Steine
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
Thomas Jefferson
Geschichte ist... ein Dialog zwischen Gegenwart und Vergangenheit. re - Transl.: History is... a dialogue between the present and the past.
Edward Hallet Carr, Was ist Geschichte?, S. 54
Gratitude is born in hearts that take time to count up past mercies.
Charles E. Jefferson
It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather than the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.
Bertrand Russell
The past is but the beginning of a beginning.
H. G. Wells
He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past.
George Orwell
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
Learn from the past, Hope for the future, Live in the present.
Ken Lancaste
The present is a rope stretched over the past. The secret to walking it is, you never look down.
Sean Stewart, Perfect Circle, 2004
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
You must learn from your past mistakes, but not lean on your past successes.
Denis Watley
It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.
Elizabeth II
Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Charles Dickens