Quotes on Past

A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present.

To move forward today, you must learn to say good-bye to yesterday's hurts, tragedies and baggage. You can't build a monument to past problems and fail forward.

God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

For poetry, he's past his prime,_x000D_ _x000D_ He takes an hour to find a rhyme;_x000D_ _x000D_ His fire is out, his wit decayed,_x000D_ _x000D_ His fancy sunk, his muse a jade._x000D_ _x000D_ I'd have him throw away his pen,_x000D_ _x000D_ But there's no talking to some men.

It would be naïve to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems ... However, with faith and perseverance, ... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace.

Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have done. I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future.

That man lives happy and in command of himself, who from day to day can say I have lived. Whether clouds obscure, or the sun illumines the following day, that which is past is beyond recall.

There is no such thing as a perfect leader either in the past or present, in China or elsewhere. If there is one, he is only pretending, like a pig inserting scallions into its nose in an effort to look like an elephant.

Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history.

Animals are molded by natural forces they do not comprehend. To their minds there is no past and no future. There is only the everlasting present of a single generation, its trails in the forest, its hidden pathways in the the air and in the sea. There is nothing in the Universe more alone than Man. He has entered into the strange world of history.

Since history has no properly scientific value, its only purpose is educative. And if historians neglect to educate the public, if they fail to interest it intelligently in the past, then all their historical learning is valueless except in so far as it educates themselves.

The consciousness of the past weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.

We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.

Whatever is old corrupts, and the past turns to snakes.

I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is past-can't be restored.

Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.

But I don't think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age.

I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future.

The rule is: we cannot really forgive ourselves unless we look at the failure in our past and call it by its right name.

So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past; and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.

The past is all holy to us; the dead are all holy; even they that were wicked when alive.