Top 100 Quotes About Pasts
#1. A baby is a wishing well. Everyone puts their hopes, their fears, their pasts, their two cents in.
Elizabeth Bard
#2. If you leave, we lose and our pasts win.
Sylvia Day
#3. 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
#4. Chevy Stevens is in top form. ALWAYS WATCHING is a tense and twisty exploration of dark memories, hidden pasts, and a place that seems like heaven but might be hell. This is a deep and exciting novel, as unsettling as it is gripping.
Lisa Unger
#5. Being in love, she concluded, is simply a presentation of our pasts to another individual, mostly packages so unwieldy that we can no longer manage the loosened strings alone.
Zelda Fitzgerald
#6. What a strange joy it was to talk, to fish gleefully into the past and fling its fragments about us, with the unfailing aroma of pleasantness that pasts always seem to possess!
Anne Bosworth Greene
#7. I don't think it's our pasts that define us, and it's not even our life's final destination. It's everything we do in between, the actual living, that creates who we are.
Jay McLean
#8. Some of my best friends here in New York have pasts I have a hard time reconciling with the people I'm close to now. But I wouldn't change them - or their pasts - for anything in the world. Their experiences are what made them the people they are today.
Derek Blasberg
#9. People don't get to our ages without having pasts. I'm more interested in the future.
Robyn Donald
#10. Americans have no past, so they buy the pasts of others.
Jean-Luc Godard
#11. We are all what our pasts have made us," Catarina said. "The accumulation of thousands of daily choices. We can change ourselves, but never erase what we've been.
Cassandra Clare
#12. We all have our pasts and baggage, Mimi. It's our decision whether they fuck with our future.
Katie Ashley
#13. For anyone to understand a regime like the GDR, the stories of ordinary people must be told. Not just the activists or the famous writers. You have to look at how normal people manage with such things in their pasts.
Anna Funder
#14. Too many people have been analyzing their pasts, their childhoods, their memories, their parents, and realizing that it doesn't do anything-or that it doesn't do enough.
James Hillman
#15. We all have pasts and we all have futures. All we can do is choose to live in one or the other. It doesn't seem to me that there's much point living in the past.
Jayne Ann Krentz
#16. The faculty of memory cannot be separated from the imagination. They go hand in hand. To one degree or another, we all invent our personal pasts. And for most of us those pasts are built from emotionally colored memories.
Siri Hustvedt
#17. I want people to consider the idea that the only way of moving forward with their lives is to revisit and confront their issues and their pasts.
Sara Blecher
#18. I'm supposed to learn something. A lesson, like in some teenybopper show. I stare at the door and wait for Miley Cyrus to come barreling in, singing tunelessly about our pasts being the key to our futures.
Rachel Harris
#19. Damien is my anchor to this world, and I am his. But if we are going to keep each other, we have to fight the shadows of
our pasts to move forward into our future.
J. Kenner
#20. People have all sorts of pasts, sometimes dark or dreary, but perhaps the actions they choose in the present are the ones that carry the most weight.
Erin Bowman
#21. We can't change out pasts. All we can change is the future.
Sylvain Reynard
#22. The fact that we all have broken pasts is something that I'm very attracted to, along with being able to turn your life around and do good with it.
Minka Kelly
#23. I think their pasts are treated with a voice that sees their role as those of innocents. That's reflected in the past time sequences. They're less "written."
Chang-rae Lee
#24. The books of our childhood offer a vivid door to our own pasts, and not necessarily for the stories we read there, but for the memories of where we were and who we were when we were reading them; to remember a book is to remember the child who read that book.
Lewis Buzbee
#25. The uncreated and the dead exist solely in our actual and virtual pasts.
David Mitchell
#26. Irish fiction is full of secrets, guilty pasts, divided identities. It is no wonder that there is such a rich tradition of Gothic writing in a nation so haunted by history.
Terry Eagleton
#27. We are simply two good people with equally flawed pasts, looking for perfect futures.
And I think we've found it, in each other.
K.A. Tucker
#28. If we were all perfect in our pasts, then we'd have nothing to hope for in our futures
Jenny Oliver
#29. we're not human any more. We've slipped out of our skins like lizards, shedding not just our pasts, but our futures.
Irvine Welsh
#30. Do you do this because you live such short lives? Tell yourselves wild tales of what might happen tomorrow, and feel all the feelings of events that will never happen? Perhaps to make up for the pasts you cannot recall, you invent futures that will not exist.
Robin Hobb
#31. Only when people got back to when the timequake hit did they stop being robots of their pasts. Only when free will kicked in could they stop running obstacle courses of their own construction.
Kurt Vonnegut
#32. What monstrous things, our pasts, especially when they have been lovely.
Colum McCann
#33. Our pasts so many times determine the value of what is happening today. Everybody is midway in their story.
Ron Carlson
#35. Women with pasts interest men because they hope history will repeat itself.
Mae West
#36. Those people who think the same thoughts every day, most of them negative, have fallen into bad mental habits. Rather than focusing on all the good in their lives and thinking of ways to make things even better, they are captives of their pasts.
Robin S. Sharma
#37. And those with dark pasts didn't always yearn for dark futures.
Morgan Rhodes
#38. Keep your life in a positive perspective. We are not defined by our pasts
Ray J
#39. For better or worse, our pasts and experiences are what define us. But they don't have to rule us. In time, all hurts can be forgiven. It's only when you add to them that they can't. - Nero
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#40. It occurred to me that there was a story behind the scar
maybe not as dramatic as the story of my wrists, but a story nonetheless
and the fact that everyone had a story behind some mark on their inside or outside suddenly exhausted me, the gravity of all those untold pasts.
Maggie Stiefvater
#41. Dorcas belonged, as I now realize, to that vast group of women (which may, indeed, include all women) who betray us - and to that special type who betray us not for some present rival but for their own pasts.
Gene Wolfe
#42. It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.
Julian Barnes
#43. Acheron always says that our scars are there to remind us of out pasts, of where we've been and what we've gone through. But that pain doesn't have to drive or determine our future. We can rise about it if we let ourselves. It's not easy, but nothing in life ever is. -Sundown
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#44. am a collection of the obsolete, a relic of the damned, of the lost and strayed. I am the waylaid pieces of history which sank out of sight in all of our pasts.
Frank Herbert
#45. Family is very important; it reminds you what your pasts were and not what you've become.
Abdulazeez Henry Musa
#46. I try to get people thinking, to consider their pasts and presents, ultimately encouraging them and giving them the tools to embrace the work of reshaping their lives.
John Bradshaw
#47. The world tells us that our pasts define us, trapping us, isolating us and giving us little hope for change or betterment. I say our pasts design us for what's to come and gives us a platform to be heroes in the lives of others.
Shawn M Mcnamara
#48. Our pasts always haunt us. But sometimes the ghosts are friendly, and the memories they bring with them sweet as well as bitter.
Kat Howard
#49. Because to ignore what had happened in the recent and distant pasts, to turn away and look elsewhere because it was easier to do so, was to be an accomplice to the crimes that were committed. To refuse to delve deeper would be to collude with the offenders.
John Connolly
#50. Advanced cultures are usually sophisticated enough, or have been sophisticated enough at some point in their pasts, to realize that foxes shouldn't be relied on to guard henhouses.
Jane Jacobs
#51. You should not look at what the person used to do, rather you should
look at what kind of person they are today. The one who gets bogged
down about people's pasts, is just like Iblees who said to Allaah,
"You created me from fire and you created him from clay".
Ibn Taymiyyah
#52. If we're distracted from the continual flow of perfect mind that we're in, suddenly everything configures, everything solidifies. Suddenly a shape appears out of flux, a world appears, karmas appear, pasts, futures, presents, time structures, ying and yang appear.
Frederick Lenz
#53. Not in imagined futures, Or in remembered pasts, But only here and only now Will you find a peace that lasts.
Devdas Menon
#54. To change the limitations of our personal pasts, our minds need a reason to change what we believe-and a good one at that.
Gregg Braden
#55. Even the good things from our pasts still only belonged in the past
Cora Carmack
#56. So many lives are in bitterness today not just because of how their pasts were abused, but how they think they were innocent.
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#57. My mom used to say that's why we have memory. And the opposite of memory - hope. So things that are gone can still matter. So we can build off our pasts and make futures.
Isaac Marion
#58. Life just is and the gods have their plans for us. We're powerless against them. In the end, we are what our pasts have made us and we live the lives the gods have chosen for us.
-Syn
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#59. Our pasts shape us,Sam.None of us the person he or she used to be,it's true, but what we are still contains a great proportion of what we once were.Nothing,not even suffering the worst kind of tragedy,alters us completely.At core,we are set in stone.
James Lovegrove
#60. Some people are haunted by their pasts, but not my family. I mean, how can you be haunted by something that never really dies?
Brian K. Vaughan
#61. For me, the most interesting people seem to have the bumpiest pasts. I prefer to connect with someone who has experienced the struggles, battles, and casualties of life's journey. There is beauty, wisdom, and truth to be found in the scars.
Steve Maraboli
#62. Our pasts haunt us all.
I regaled my beautiful audience of one with the tale of my life, not so much for entertainment, but for bold, barefaced, honest truth.
Ross Turner
#63. One with true creativity can erase their one past, and replace it with an infinite number of pasts, creating new possibilities for the future.
Lionel Suggs
#66. It also reminds me that true power comes not from submission or gain, but from controlling my inner demons. Because our true enemies live within ourselves and feed from the lessons we failed to learn from our pasts.
J.C. Reed
#67. Despite their poverty, their tragic pasts, their own sorrows, they stood before her in strength and spoke with a wisdom that defied their circumstances.
Janette Oke
#68. We are all affected by our pasts, but it is within our power not to let what we have done to dictate what we will do.
Kristin Cast
#69. Full of intrigue, tangled pasts, and raw emotions, [Gambling On A Secret by Sara Walter Ellwood] is guaranteed to keep you turning pages from start to finish and then wishing for one more chapter!
Carolyn Brown
#70. Old places fire the internal weather of our pasts. The mild winds, aching calms, and hard storms of forgotten emotions return to us when we return to the spots where they happened.
Siri Hustvedt
#71. Right now each of us is a private oral culture. We rewrite our pasts to suit our needs and support the story we tell about ourselves. With our memories we are all guilty of a Whig interpretation of our personal histories, seeing our former selves as steps toward our glorious present selves.
Ted Chiang
#73. Was it really better for human beings to discover more of their pasts? And then more and more ... ? Or was it simply better to know as little of the past as possible and even to forget what small amount was remembered?
Elif Shafak
#74. All pasts are like poems; one can derive a thousand things, but not live in them.
John Fowles
#76. I don't think that trauma is an illusion; there is no question in my mind that circumstances beyond our control can shape and define us. But ultimately, we make choices about letting ourselves be defined by our pasts.
Christina Baker Kline
#77. That's why we have memory. And the opposite of memory - hope. So things that are gone can still matter. So we can built off our pasts and make future.
Isaac Marion
#78. Of our pasts we seemed to know all we needed to know. Nothing was concealed, and though nothing was overtly revealed, all was known. In guilt and in forgiveness we counted ourselves equals, and always had. The sun himself envied us.
Sena Jeter Naslund
#79. We don't escape our pasts, you know," Madd said. He sounded defeated. "Never. We can never escape what we are."
"Maybe not. But I think we can escape what other people try to make of us. We can decide our fate for ourselves.
Tali Spencer
#80. Our pasts might shape us, but they weren't the end sum of us.
Jeaniene Frost
#81. Somewhere in the distance, the synchronic circles of our pasts had tripped a domino, and the steady whirr had grown till it now drowned with the roar of contingency
Craig Johnson
#82. Many in the creative professions were nerds in their pasts because they spent so long reading comics and using their imaginations when they were growing up.
Jim Lee
#83. I'd prefer to think that we aren't all so mercilessly bound to our pasts.
Brittany Cavallaro
#84. According to the strange mathematics of the god of mutual affinity, the shadows that clouded their pasts when united became only half as dense instead of darker.
- The World And The Door
O. Henry
#85. He was indulgent toward the open spaces of other men's futures, but he was impatient with the shuttered quarters of their pasts.
Eleanor Catton
#86. It's the pressing on toward the goal that is important, not simply trying to look perfect or be perfect. And it's also important to forget what is behind us, because we cannot change our pasts. We can, however, look forward and fix our eyes on Jesus as we listen to His direction.
Michelle Anthony
#87. The images of his infinite pasts and infinite futures washed over him as he waited, paralyzed, in the present.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#88. We aren't who our pasts say we are. Damage doesn't define us. WE DEFINE OURSELVES.
Cynthia Eden
#89. We're all guilty of hiding things - it's the nature of the world today. We hide our feelings, we hide our pasts, we hide our true intentions. There's no way to know what's real anymore.
Suzanne Young
#90. In the end, we are what our pasts have made us and we live the lives the gods have chosen for us.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#91. Why is it that so few "pretty people" without checkered pasts are used mightily in the Scriptures? Because the Bible is primarily about God's grace, not about human cleanliness.
Matt Chandler
#92. No matter what storms come our way, we'll endure them. Together. Because our love is strong and unflappable. Love destroys demons and obliterates broken pasts. Love is ours - finally - and we fucking earned it.
K. Webster
#93. Look around at the countries of Europe, and you'll find that practically all of them have pasts that are just as tragic as Ireland's, yet the people seem able to find some creative way at moving into the future.
Jennifer Johnston
#94. I've been a friend to people who may not have had perfect pasts.
Jeff Greene
#95. I am waiting to write the poem that is something like a dance movie, the ones populated by fair haired ballerinas with just a little bit of singe to their tulle, not quite as dark as the Natalie Portman one, but girls woefully misunderstood by their parents or harboring dead mothers and sad pasts.
Kristy Bowen
#96. There are no inconsistencies in the Discworld books; ocassionally, however, there are alternate pasts.
Terry Pratchett
#97. Societies are not trapped by their pasts and freely borrow ideas and institutions from each other.
Francis Fukuyama
#98. For some reason the past - any of our pasts - was solidly off-limits. They were like the creepy rabbits in Watership Down who won't answer any questions beginning with "Where.
Tana French
#99. We colour the world,
Not with the darkness of our pasts,
But with the rainbow of our hope.
Jenim Dibie
#100. When you get into the series, the progression is much different. You actually have breathing room and the chance to sit down with each actor, which was a part of our process, to talk to them about their pasts.
Josh Gad
