Past Quotes

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

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.

William Ralph Inge

The past is but the beginning of a beginning.

H. G. Wells

A garden is evidence of faith. It links us with all the misty figures of the past who also planted and were nourished by the fruits of their planting.

Gladys Tabe

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.

Carl Sandburg, Cornhuskers (1918) "Prairie".

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

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.

Sidney J. Harris

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

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

One problem with gazing too frequently into the past is that we may turn around to find the future has run out on us.

Michael Cibenko

Those who stare at the past have their backs turned to the future.

Unknown

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional?, 1993

Most of the problems a President has to face have their roots in the past.

Harry S Truman

Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows.

Sir William Osle

The future is the past returning through another gate.

Arnold Glasgow

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Sir Winston Churchill

In short, the building becomes a theatrical demonstration of its functional ideal. In this romanticism, High - Tech architecture is, of course, no different in spirit - If totally different in form - From all the romantic architecture of the past.

Dan Cruickshank

It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.

Frank Herbert, Dune

Study the past if you would define the future.

Confucius

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.

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

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

It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.

Elizabeth II

For there is no greater pain, than to remember in present grief, past happinesses.

Dante, The Divine Comedy

Leaders are the ones who keep faith with the past, keep step with the present and keep the promise to posterity.

Harold J. Seymore

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Maya Angelou

I have made good judgements in the Past. I have made good judgements in the Future.

Dan Quayle

We live in the present, we dream of the future, but we learn eternal truths from the past.

Madame Chiang

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".

Look back, and smile on perils past.

Sir Walter Scott

Virtue extends our days: he live two lives who relives his past with pleasure.

Marcus Valerius Martialis, Epigrams

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

We do not live to extenuate the miseries of the past nor to accept as incurable those of the present.

Fairfield Osborne

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

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

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

You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.

Jan Glidewell