On The Past Quotes

#1. And only the enlightened can recall their former lives; for the rest of us, the memories of past existences are but glints of light, twinges of longing, passing shadows, disturbingly familiar, that are gone before they can be grasped, like the passage of that silver bird on Dhaulagiri.

Peter Matthiessen

#2. U.S. Speedskating has been riddled with problems since when I started my career, and we were always able to look past that. When it came down to performing on the ice, regardless of funding issues, we were always able to make it happen. And that's what it's all about.

Apolo Ohno

#3. Misfortune comes to people who live only on the memory of their past grandeur.

Louise Colet

#4. In order to live the life we desire, and set the intention for greater happiness and more meaningful connections with others, we have to release the hold that our past has on us.

Deepak Chopra

#5. The minute we put aside our self-righteousness and move away from being the aggrieved, then we are on a healing process.

Stephen Richards

#6. Once there was a moose, a very poor, thin, lonely moose who lived on a rocky hill where only bitter leaves grew and bushes with spiky branches. One day a red motor car drove past. In the backseat was
a grey gypsy dog wearing a gold earring.

Annie Proulx

#7. We should try to achieve things for ourselves and not rely on former or past family glories with which we have no connection but the arbitrary nature of our birth.

Shirley Franklin

#8. I think a lot of bands go on way past the point where they're relevant. Some of them keep doing it because they're making millions of dollars. Or people are afraid - they don't know what else to do. It's scary to get out of a relationship of any kind.

Dean Wareham

#9. Those who fail to learn from the brutal stompings visited on them in the past are doomed to be brutally stomped in the future.

Hunter S. Thompson

#10. What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.

Victor Hugo

#11. There's something backward about living in a place so obsessed with the past; it's like everyone's given up on the idea of a future.

Lauren Oliver

#12. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future.

Van Jones

#13. I think the first word of caution is; It's not the kind of market where you need to jump in immediately on these downs. We've trained investors so much over the past decade and a half: Buy the dip, buy the dip.

Liz Miller

#14. Wanderlove is about forgetting the bad things and focusing on the good. Out with the old and in with the new ... The only way to escape the past is to keep moving forward.

Kirsten Hubbard

#15. The script's always important, but there are some things that have come out in the past year that, when we read them, everyone was like, "Oh my god, this is going to be the next best thing!" Then the movie falls completely flat on its face.

Douglas Booth

#16. Careful the spell you cast, not just on children. Sometimes the spell may last Past what you can see And turn against you ... Careful the tale you tell. That is the spell.

Stephen Sondheim

#17. You can't go feeding your hate on the past, it's not natural.

Bryce Courtenay

#18. Nobody had forgotten anything here. In Berlin, you had to wrestle with the past, you had to build on the ruins, inside them. It wasn't like America where we scraped the earth clean, thinking we could start again every time.

Janet Fitch

#19. Some of the greatest spiritual revivals in the past occurred just when the situation seemed to be the darkest. In the history of our own nation, for example, countless thousands turned to Christ during the darkest days of the Civil War, setting the stage for national reconciliation later on.

Billy Graham

#20. It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.

Ally Condie

#21. Therapy could be of tremendous benefit to "getting over" one's past if the therapy is focused on specific ways to stop submitting to the temptation to obsess. Many people with difficult histories carry these histories with them, burnishing the past with each retelling.

Augusten Burroughs

#22. If we go on as we are, we will destroy in the next century everything that the poets have been singing about for the past two thousand years.

Fred Bodsworth

#23. A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method.

Robert A. Heinlein

#24. The relationship with WWE obviously has gotten better because after my name has been shoved down their throats from 2K [Games] for the past years, they finally passed off on it. They finally okayed it.

Bill Goldberg

#25. Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past.

Adam Johnson

#26. When autumn gusts blew in from the Rideau Lakes, parched brown leaves swirled and scattered around the sides of the neglected building, forming mounds like grave-markers, for ghosts of the past, who lingered on the dust-covered dance floor.

Arlene Stafford-Wilson

#27. You can't change the past. But with God's help you can change the future. No matter what your life has been like so far, God wants to put your feet on a new path ... a better path ... His path.

Billy Graham

#28. The logical mind creates fears based on past experiences and predicts a negative future, but the Universe is unpredictable. Therefore, your future can be hundred times better than your past. Either have faith or listen to your fears. Both cannot exist together!

Maddy Malhotra

#29. If you're lost and alone
Or you're sinking like a stone
Carry on ...
May your past be the sound
Of your feet upon the ground
Carry on

Fun

#30. In the past, work was defined primarily by putting in time, and secondarily on getting results. "We need to flip that model," Ressler told me. "No matter what kind of business you're in, it's time to throw away the tardy slips, time clocks and outdated, industrial-age thinking.

Daniel H. Pink

#31. But how carve way i' the life that lies before, If bent on groaning ever for the past?

Robert Browning

#32. TV on the internet can now be freed from the need to fill a clock. It can expand past video.

Jeff Jarvis

#33. Learn from the past, but don't live there. Build on what you know so that you don't repeat mistakes. Resolve to learn something new every day. Because every 24 hours, you have the opportunity to have the best day of your company's life.

Harvey MacKay

#34. The fouling of the nest which has been typical of man's activity in the past on a local scale now seems to be extending to the whole world society.

Kenneth E. Boulding

#35. I have done so many love scenes in the past that I have learned how to pull off a sexy smoulder on the dance floor.

Cherie Lunghi

#36. I wonder how often in the past I may have missed the good in people because I pre-judged, based on the differences?

Anne Perry

#37. You can't hang on to the past and you certainly can't throw a wobbly every time something happens that you don't like.

Shelly Crane

#38. I push him from my mind. This is no act of easy omission on my part; I do not consign him casually to a forgotten past. It is rather an act of will
a kind of self-performed surgery on my soul ... the bloodiest of mutilations.

Jim Fergus

#39. God's call on our lives is often surprising and usually is based on God's ability to see how our various elements in the past might fit together to accomplish God's purposes in the present.

Adam Hamilton

#40. I'm not particularly fond of the past, but I do ramble on about it quite a bit.

Kevin Whately

#41. The moment of realization is: When what you thought you couldn't be without, becomes a part of the past, rather than the start of the future.

Melody Carstairs

#42. As Indians, we must of course learn from the past; but we must remain focused on the future. In my view, education is the true alchemy that can bring India its next golden age.

Pranab Mukherjee

#43. There's a convention that one doesn't speak ill of the dead. That's stupid, I think. The truth's always the truth. On the whole it's better to keep your mouth shut about living people. You might conceivably injure them. The dead are past that. But the harm they've done lives after them sometimes.

Agatha Christie

#44. When you make the schedule, you're not planning on playing deep into every single week, or at least I haven't in the past. I'm not physically or mentally ready to pick up my bags and go to Monte Carlo. I definitely have to look at what's best for my chances at (at the French Open).

Andy Roddick

#45. Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination.

Paul Fussell

#46. The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field.

Henry David Thoreau

#47. I have a horror of the blank page. I simply cannot write on a blank page or screen. Because once I do, I start to fix it, and I never get past the first sentence.

Charles Krauthammer

#48. You and I move through time like a flame on a string. The ashes behind are the past, consumed, unreachable. The string ahead is the future. But the only moment we inhabit, the only moment where we can act, is the present, the point where the flame burns, the point where time touches eternity.

Brandon Mull

#49. Earlier theories ... were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past. [Coining the "big bang" expression.]

Fred Hoyle

#50. It's wonderful to be appreciated for being quirky, and to see Zooey Deschanel and the quirky, indie film types get mainstream play is amazing for women, because women are much more complicated than what we've see on TV in the past.

Mayim Bialik

#51. On some level, every story draws something from life experiences. Most of the time, it's just a matter of me pulling bits and pieces of my own past to help give characters or settings a little more life.

Cullen Bunn

#52. At school, I never had a hold on English history, and cheder was a place run by sadistic incompetents, so I felt alienated from the Jewish part of my past.

Clive Sinclair

#53. It is only by such extreme measures that the average man can remember something long ago; truly, not that he remembers, but that crime itself is the door to an accumulation, a way to lay hands on the shudder of a past that is still vibrating.

Djuna Barnes

#54. Remembering what you want about the past, even if it's not entirely true, keeps you from giving up on the present.

Susan Meissner

#55. This book is about fighting back. The dominant culture -civilization- is killing the planet, and it is long past time for those of us who care about life on earth to begin taking the actions necessary to stop this culture from destroying every living thing.

Derrick Jensen

#56. The people setting out on these walks weren't seeking to conquer peaks or test themselves against maps and miles. They were looking for a mystical communion with the land; they walked backwards in time to an imagined past suffused with magical, native glamour:

Helen Macdonald

#57. Holding on to some part of your past even if it means also holding on to the pain of never again having it. That pain is less horrible than the pain of forgetting.

Sara Raasch

#58. New York has never learnt the art of growing old by playing on all its pasts. Its present invents itself, from hour to hour, in the act of throwing away its previous accomplishments and challenging the future. A city composed of paroxysmal places in monumental reliefs.

Michel De Certeau

#59. The Raven's house is built with reeds, - Sing woe, and alas is me! And the Raven's couch is spread with weeds, High on the hollow tree; And the Raven himself, telling his beads In penance for his past misdeeds, Upon the top I see.

Thomas D

#60. And as far as wishing goes, I save my wishes for things that can still come true. There's no point in wasting them on the past.

G.A. McKevett

#61. I've lived my life like a serial killer; finish with one part, strangle it and move on to the next. Life in neat little boxes is life in neat little coffins, the dead bodies of the past laid out side by side. I am discovering, now, in the late afternoon of the day, that the dead still speak.

Jeanette Winterson

#62. Don't hold on too long;to which does not belong,
Don't shed a tear; for all the pain that's gone,
Create a new;from the wisdom of the past,
Open your heart wider, as storms do not last.

Nikki Rowe

#63. Oh, shit!" was his first clue that something wasn't quite right at the Fire & Brimstone this morning. The sound of several people running past his door and someone screaming, "She's going to kill him!" told him that he might want to see what was going on.

R.L. Mathewson

#64. Because freedom, it turned out, wasn't like a new shoe: you didn't need to break it in. It felt comfortable the first time you tried it on. It wasn't the present that pinched, it was the past.

Dale Peck

#65. It's not about being upset about the things you might have said or done yesterday, which is quite appropriate at the moment. It's about looking forward rather than looking back. I hate people who look back on the past or talk about what might have been.

Noel Gallagher

#66. Man's time is short on the earth, but we trees watch the years march past like days. The stars are motionless to you, but we watch and study the heavens as a dance, the dryad said,

G. Norman Lippert

#67. One gains a double benefit in writing about the past, conjuring up how things might have been, and at the same time acquiring a different perspective on the present.

Robert Harris

#68. Death was hard, I got that, but it was only hard for those you left behind. Life was what was really difficult. Everyone here no longer had to suffer, be in pain, relive past mistakes. They were sleeping on, unaware of the problems around them. Death seemed like the easy way out. Life was harder.

Bailey Ardisone

#69. People spend thousands in therapy digging and digging in the past. When you dig and dig, you find relics. Try to forgive yourself and get back on that ride.

Richard Simmons

#70. The past is the past, but if you're overanalyzing or trying to repeat it, you're gonna get stuck. I just had a wonderful youth, and I loved everything about it, so I really try and hang on to it.

Chris Evans

#71. Let us not be bitter about the past, but let us keep our eyes firmly on the future.

Sukarno

#72. I didn't think about anything past tomorrow because anything past tomorrow was just like cloud busting - it depended soley on the person looking at the clouds and it could rain any minute.

A.S. King

#73. The question I am most often asked is how do I find my ideas? The answer is I don't. Ideas find me. A character in history will suddenly step right out of the past and demand a book. Generally, people don't bother to speak to me unless there's a good chance that I'll take them on.

Jean Fritz

#74. This time, I felt like I was on the other side of that, looking past duty and worry and rank, seeing the true heart of a person.
And his was so beautiful.

Kiera Cass

#75. We can gain experience from the past, but we cant relive it. But we can hope for the future, Its always along side us, on the inside of us looking out. The past should not be allowed to evaporate but should exist only in memories.

Sean Sullivan

#76. The log on the fire: is it dreaming of the forest?

Marty Rubin

#77. Goal setting has traditionally been based on past performance. This practice has tended to perpetuate the sins of the past.

Joseph M. Juran

#78. even in death, his last breath was poetry
existing in the wind
and on the breeze of
"it used to be likes"
forever remembering,
yet never reliving
his life
will never be what it used to be like.

N'Zuri Za Austin

#79. After voluntary exertions on the part of our people to which the history of the world furnishes no parallel, is the old root of bitterness still to remain in the ground, to sprout and bear fruit in the future as it has borne fruit in the past?

Robert Dale Owen

#80. For the past several years, the Meth Caucus has worked to engage the Office of National Drug Control Policy on this issue. We have tried to get their attention that meth requires a strong, comprehensive Federal policy.

Rick Larsen

#81. Do you have things in your past you're not proud of? Things that make you feel ashamed?'
'That's what makes Christ's death on the cross so personal.

Katie Ganshert

#82. Never worry about anything that is past. Charge it up to experience and forget the trouble. There are always plenty of troubles ahead, so don't turn and look back on any behind you.

Herbert Hoover

#83. Sometimes a musical phrase would perfectly sum up
The mood of a moment. One of those lovelorn sonatas
For wind instruments was riding past on a solemn white horse.
Everybody wondered who the new arrival was.

John Ashbery

#84. A garden is a result of an arrangement of natural materials according to aesthetic laws; interwoven throughout are the artist's outlook on life, his past experiences, his affections, his attempts, his mistakes and his successes.

Roberto Burle Marx

#85. Then why have you been talking about her for the past half hour straight?" His friend glanced over at him, a cheeky grin on his face, and the rockstar glared exaggeratedly.
"I have not."
"You definitely have. I missed an entire episode of Cupcake Wars because you've got a crush.

Andrea D. Smith

#86. In the past generation, the American educational system has decided not to seek the very best teachers, give them lots of kids to teach, and pay them more - which would help children the most. It has decided to hire every teacher it can get its hands on and pay them less.

Malcolm Gladwell

#87. Isaac had spent so much of the past year with his head down, focused on the filth around him, that he'd forgotten the beauty of his world.

Susan Fanetti

#88. Cynicism leads to despair, while fixating on the efforts that seemed to work in the past makes an idol out of spiritual states.

Monks Of New Skete

#89. Many a time in the past, when an active operator on Wall Street, he had done things ... which would have caused raised eyebrows on the fo'c'sle of a pirate sloop - and done them without a blush.

P.G. Wodehouse

#90. We are at a crossroads in the music business: with the rise of the internet, the world we live in has changed, and the past is not coming back. But I see the glass as half-full: the internet and social networking are new avenues for the next Bob Dylan to be born on.

Jon Bon Jovi

#91. Do you believe, she went on, that the past dies?
Yes, said Margaret. Yes, if the present cuts its throat.

Leonora Carrington

#92. I think it's the end of progress if you stand still and think of what you've done in the past. I keep on.

Leslie Caron

#93. If we studied the issue of forgiveness with a wider perspective, we are bound to opt for it after all.

Stephen Richards

#94. When you define yourself based on things you have done, in order to maintain that self-image you must constantly look away from the present moment, as you search for a means of self-understanding through past experiences.

Chris Matakas

#95. Don't put your life on hold so that you can dwell on the unfairness of past hurts.

Nick Vujicic

#96. Legitimacy, when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, while justification relates to an end that lies in the future. Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate.

Hannah Arendt

#97. When I'm doing my best is when I'm completely focused ... You completely wipe off any thoughts of the future, there's nothing going on in the past, you're just completely locked in on the moment, and there's no thinking, you're zoned in on this moment in time.

Frank Mir

#98. All we really want is to get to the point where the past can explain nothing about us and we can get on with life.

Richard Ford

#99. It would be a ridiculous and unwarranted presumption on our part if we imagined that we were more energetic or more intelligent than the men of the past - our material knowledge has increased, but not our intelligence.

C. G. Jung

#100. Dare to be vulnerable, walk outside without your armor on and say YES to your heart.

Alaric Hutchinson