PAST QUOTES II

quotations about the past

Past quote

If the past is not to bind us ... we should have no law but the inclination of the moment.

GEORGE ELIOT

The Mill on the Floss

Tags: George Eliot


Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging up your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do--the only thing--is run.

LAUREN OLIVER

Delirium


That which is past is gone and irrevocable, and wise men have enough to do with things present and to come.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: Francis Bacon


From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

Inaugural Address, March 4, 1825

Tags: John Quincy Adams


The great times were never as great as they seem in the rearview mirror.

PAT BENATAR

Between a Heart and a Rock Place: A Memoir

Tags: Pat Benatar


The past is always judged by the present.

NEITH BOYCE

Enemies

Tags: Neith Boyce


Time wasn't a thing you could divide easily; there was no defined middle or beginning or end. I could pretend to leave the past behind, but it would not leave me.

SARAH DESSEN

Just Listen

Tags: Sarah Dessen


The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

CASSANDRA CLARE

City of Lost Souls

Tags: Cassandra Clare


The past is funny ... it never seems to let things lie, finished. It never seems to stay in place as it should.

KEN KESEY

Sometimes a Great Notion

Tags: Ken Kesey


The past is not a peaceful landscape lying there behind me, a country in which I can stroll wherever I please, and will gradually show me all its secret hills and dales. As I was moving forward, so it was crumbling. Most of the wreckage that can be seen is colourless, distorted, frozen: its meaning escapes me ... all that's left is a skeleton. I shall never find my plans again, my hopes and fears - I shall not find myself.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

Old Age

Tags: Simone de Beauvoir


There is no PAST anybody can get to, to alter things or even to know what those things were but there is definitely a future, we are already in it.

JOYCE CAROL OATES

Zombie

Tags: Joyce Carol Oates


All is now secure and fast;
Not the gods can shake the Past;
Flies-to the adamantine door
Bolted down forevermore.
None can reënter there,--
No thief so politic,
No Satan with a royal trick
Steal in by window, chink, or hole,
To bind or unbind, add what lacked,
Insert a leaf, or forge a name,
New-face or finish what is packed,
Alter or mend eternal Fact.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

The Past

Tags: Ralph Waldo Emerson


And that past is ever present,
Ever present in my heart,
Filling it with sweetest love-thoughts,
As I tread the world's wide mart.

ARDELIA COTTON BARTON

Thoughts

Tags: Ardelia Cotton Barton


You can never plan the future by the past.

EDMUND BURKE

letter to a Member of the National Assembly in answer to some objections to his book on French affairs, 1791

Tags: Edmund Burke


All the strange, checkered past seems to crowd upon my mind.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech, February 11, 1861

Tags: Abraham Lincoln


All tradition is merely the past.

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI

Krishnamurti to Himself

Tags: Jiddu Krishnamurti


But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?

ALAN LIGHTMAN

Einstein's Dreams

Tags: Alan Lightman


I don't believe in yesterday, by the way.

JOHN LENNON

interview, Playboy, January 1981

Tags: John Lennon


The past is a towering mansion.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims

Tags: Edward Counsel


The reverberation often exceeds through silence the sound that sets it off; the reaction occasionally outdoes by way of repose the event that stimulated it; and the past not uncommonly takes a while to happen, and some long time to figure out.

KEN KESEY

Sometimes a Great Notion

Tags: Ken Kesey