Past Quotes

We always build on the past; the past always tries to stop us.

I write a lot about the past because I really see things clearly in hindsight.

Past scholars studied to improve themselves; Today's scholars study to impress others.

I let my [past] life in peripherally, because I'm interested in what's over there; I want to keep going forward.

When I started I knew it was a matter of when, not if, I would get fired. That's because that was just the past history of the previous coaches that had been there.

I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started.

In years past, to keep their men close, women would wear a ring and bear children. It doesn't work like that today. Nowadays, how do we hold on to those we love? I've no idea.

In a world where lifelong employment in the same job is a thing of the past, creativity is not a luxury. It is essential for personal security and fulfillment.

One usually understands the art of the past by applying the conventions of the present thus misunderstanding the art of the past.

We must delve deep into history the better to engage a true dialogue of civilisations. Fear of the present can impose upon the past its own biased vision.

Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.

May your happiest days of the past be your saddest days of your future.

When we see the secret beauty of anyone, including ourselves, we see past our judgment and fear into the core of who we truly are - not an entrapped self but the radiance of goodness.

My employer was never at any time aware of anything in my past beyond the writing I did, because, frankly, it isn't relevant to the job I was asked to do, which was to be a reporter.

People have a whole lot more choices than they've had in the past, and I have only earned the right to be considered - every day I have to earn the right to be chosen.

Literary influences are harder for me to point to, because mostly it's a mulch of all of my past reading.

The person I loved...was the 'past' you. If I couldn't accept that 'past' you, then there won't be time in the future to do so.

I'm not sitting somewhere dwelling on the past. I'm not fretting or obsessing about something in the future.

No one can achieve Serenity until the glare of passion is past the meridian.

Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be discovered.

Over the past three years, we'd become each other's habit. And though he'd broken his habit of me when he walked away, I'd not broken my habit of him.

I'm rather pleased with the new manuals. I see Inform now as a gauche young adult, having got past the stage of growing out of his shoes every few months.

Repentance clothes in grass and flowers the grave in which the past is laid.

I guess sometimes the past just catches up to you, whether you want it to or not.

It's satisfying to put out new music. And I think that's the context in which I'm comfortable revisiting things from the past.

There’s no need for us to be held back by the past or how things have been so far. The important thing is what seeds we are sowing now for the future.

We are not merely passive pawns of historical forces; nor are we victims of the past. We can shape and direct history.

I think that an artist is a bit like a computer. He receives information from the world around him and from his past and from his own experiences. And it all goes into the brain.

A novel is a static thing that one moves through; a play is a dynamic thing that moves past one.

I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past.

...your memories will be muddled and uncataloged - past, present, and imagination all mixed together. The same thing happens in dreams.

Everybody has some responsibility. The point is, how are we going to fix it? And you don't fix it simply by blaming the other guy, or blaming the past.

Most of the stats say that 90% of people who buy a book or check one out of a library would never get past the first chapter. To me, the title better say everything there is to say about the book.

We don't know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know, or who knows?

Pursuing employment or climatic relief, we live in voluntary exile from our extended families and our longer past, but in an involuntary exile from ourselves and our own past.

A city whose living immediacy is so urgent that when I am in it I lose all sense of the past.

What men have thought about life in the past is less important than what you feel about it to-day.

The past is not what it was.

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.

...when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.

Artistic development is a thing of the past, sadly.

Forgiveness means that problems of the past no longer dictate our destinies, and we can focus on the future with God's love in our hearts.

We must also suffer the consequences of our past decisions. And for that, we must open our hearts to those in need.

If there is anything that is important to America, it is that you are not a prisoner of the past.

The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.

I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.

I wouldn't put it past God to arrange a virgin birth if He wanted, but I very much doubt if He would.

Christmas is a bridge. We need bridges as the river of time flows past.

The people who get into trouble in our company are those who carry around the anchor of the past.

Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.