You are young ... the past is nothing to you, not even another country as it is to the old, or a nightmare as it is to the guilty.
CASSANDRA CLARE, City of Bones
History-writing is a way of getting rid of the past.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
It is yesterday that makes tomorrow so sad.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
Who recollects distinctly his past adventures, knows his destiny to come.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER, Aphorisms on Man
All the past is not worth one today.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, "New Year"
The past is a towering mansion.
It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, "Show Mr. and Mrs. F. to Number--"
- Over the trackless past, somewhere,
- Lie the lost days of our tropic youth,
- Only regained by faith and prayer,
- Only recalled by prayer and plaint,
- Each lost day has its patron saint!
BRET HARTE, "The Lost Galleon"
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
From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1825
You can't change the past, it just is.
Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning.
T. S. ELIOT, The Cocktail Party
It's no surprise the 'Good Old Days' seem better than the Present ... They've spent more time in Editing!
TOM WILSON, Ziggy, Jan. 24, 2000
- But we look ahead to the far off skies,
- For the years are flying fast,
- And we know that the present that round us lies
- Ere the light of a few more moments dies,
- Will with many loved and severed ties
- Fade into the mist-veiled past.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN, "The Beautiful Past"
You read the past in some old faces.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, The Virginians
- Keep out of the Past! for its highways
- Are damp with malarial gloom;
- Its gardens are sere and its forests are drear,
- And everywhere moulders a tomb.
- Who seeks to regain its lost pleasures,
- Finds only a rose turned to dust;
- And its storehouse of wonderful treasures
- Are covered and coated with rust.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, "Keep Out of the Past"
Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Hyperion
I passionately scrutinize this past, in order to reconstruct from its scattered bits the illusion of a future.
OCTAVE MIRBEAU, The Diary of a Chambermaid
Everyone knows ... that we have fallen far from the brave days of the past.
GENE WOLFE, The Claw of the Conciliator
- The world is weary of the past,
- Oh, might it die or rest at last!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, Hellas
I have put off the past like a worn-out cloak.
ROBERT E. HOWARD, The Hour of the Dragon
The past is a closed door.
MARGARET ATWOOD, The Year of the Flood
You always romanticize the past as soon as the future begins to frighten you.
RICK REMENDER, Uncanny X-Force, No. 16, Dec. 2011
Learn to recognize the future the way a Steersman identifies guiding stars and corrects the course of his vessel. Learn from the past; never use it as an anchor.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON, Dune: House Harkonnen
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
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