Past Quotes

We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.
Blaise Pascal
The ability to think straight, some knowledge of the past, some vision of the future, some skill to do useful service, some urge to fit that service into the well - Being of the community - These are the most vital things education must try to produce.
Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve
Agathon - even god cannot change the past....
To break a promise is to deny the reality of the past Therefore it is to deny the hope of a real future....
Ursala Lequin
Memory is a giggling sprite and will not be tamed. She takes flight the moment the present becomes the past.
Real Live Preacher, weblog, 04 - 29 - 04
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley
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
H. g. wells - the past is but the past of a beginning....
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.
Jan Glidewell
The past is but the beginning of a beginning.
H. G. Wells
Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.
Robert Benchley
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
Frederick chiluba - the greatest lesson we can learn from the past......
History repeats itself and history never repeats itself are about equally trueWe never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.
George Macaulay Trevelyan
Virtue extends our days: he live two lives who relives his past with pleasure.
Marcus Valerius Martialis, Epigrams
One day at a time - This is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.
Ida Scott Taylor.
Whoso neglects learning in his youth, Loses the past and is dead for the future.
Euripides
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
When God wants to speak and deal with us, he does not avail himself of an angel but of parents, or the pastor, or of our neighbor.
Martin Luthe
This ONLY is denied God The power to undo the past.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.
Ronald Reagan
Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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
Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Charles Dickens
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
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
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
To live in the past or in the future may be less satisfying than to live in the present, but it can never be as disillusioning.
R. D. Laing
The rest of the world is sweeping past us. The oil and gas of the Texas future is the well - Educated mind. But we are still worried about whether Midland can beat Odessa at football.
Mark White
The difference between God and the historians consists above all in the fact that God cannot alter the past.
Samuel Butler, 1835 - 1902
It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.
Jim Bishop
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
Forgiveness is letting go of the hope that the past can be changed.
Oprah Winfrey
To mature means to take responsibility for your life, to be on your own. Psychoanalysis fosters the infantile state by considering that the past is responsible for the illness.
Fritz Perls
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell
Every man is his own ancestor, and every man is his own heir. He devises his own future, and he inherits his own past.
Frederick Henry Hedge
Throwing a fastball to Henry Aaron is like trying to sneak the sun past a rooster.
Curt Simmons
If we think we regulate printing, thereby to rectfy manners, we must regulate all regulations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man.
John Milton