Quotes on Past

There is a way to look at the past. Don't hide from it. It will not catch you if you don't repeat it.

The river is everywhere at the same time . . . everywhere and the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.

There is no future, there is no past. I live this moment as my last. There's only us, there's only this. Forget regret, or life is yours to miss. No other road, no other way, no day but today.

All the things and events we usually consider as irreconcilable, such as cause and effect, past and future, subject and object, are actually just like the crest and trough of a single wave, a single vibration. For a wave, although itself a single event, only expresses itself through the opposites of crest and trough, high point and low point. For that very reason, the reality is not found in the crest nor the trough alone, but in their unity.

Every scene, even the commonest, is wonderful, if only one can detach oneself, casting off all memory of use and custom, and behold it (as it were) for the first time; in its right, authentic colors; without making comparisons. Cherish and burnish this faculty of seeing crudely, simply, artlessly, ignorantly; of seeing like a baby or a lunatic, who lives each moment by itself and tarnishes by the present no remembrance of the past.

Experiences with friends or family members coming out have helped millions of Americans to see past stereotypes and better understand what being gay is - and is not.

Your current conditions are echoes of your past choices.

Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.

Maybe I don't take myself so seriously any more. And I don't care how I'm judged. I'm past all that.

The passion for the past is clearly about more than market forces or government policies. History responds to a variety of needs, from greater understanding of ourselves and our world to answers about what to do.

Everyone has a story; everyone hides his past as a means of self-preservation. Some just do it better, and more thoroughly, than others.

You shouldn't expect people in the past to do things they couldn't have done.

Don't think about the past. Just be here now.

The past is behind, learn from it. The future is ahead, prepare for it. The present is here, live it.

Let go. Why do you cling to pain? There is nothing you can do about the wrongs of yesterday. It is not yours to judge. Why hold on to the very thing which keeps you from hope and love?

The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. . . . They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; - cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame.

How can you make sense of the future when you only have data about the past?

In my work as a historian and in my relationships as a friend, teacher, wife, and mother, I have come to think that the most useful way to understand the past and make it work for you is to look at the trade-offs and contradictions that, however deeply buried, can be uncovered in every memory, good or bad.

When you realize the value of all life, you dwell on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future.

You don't have to specialize - do everything that you love and then, at some time, the future will come together for you in some form.

A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.