best quotations about
Past |
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Quotations
 | To be ignorant of the past is to be forever a child. — Cicero, 106-43 BC, Roman orator & statesman 25 likes |
 | If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present. — Lao-Tzu, 6th cent. BC, Chinese philosopher 20 likes |
 | Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana, 1863-1952, Spanish-American philosopher 15 likes |
 | But life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future. — Seneca, 5 AD-65 AD, Roman philosopher 13 likes |
 | We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born. — Robert Benchley, 1889-1945, American columnist 9 likes |
 | One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present. — Golda Meir, 1898-1978, Israeli Prime Minister 8 likes |
 | We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed. — Wolfgang Goethe, 1749-1832, German poet & philosopher 8 likes |
 | It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. — Will Durant, 1885-1981, American historian & philosopher 8 likes |
 | There is no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said things or done things that are so unpleasant to recall in later life that he would expunge them entirely from his memory if that were possible. — Marcel Proust, 1871-1922, French writer 8 likes |
 | I like men who have a future and women who have a past. — Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer 6 likes |
| The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. — Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer 6 likes |
 | Take the fire from the altars of the past, not the ashes. — Jean Jaures, 1859-1914, French Socialist leader 5 likes |
 | God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past. — Ambrose Bierce, 1842–1914, American writer 5 likes |
 | My past is everything I failed to be. — Fernando Pessoa, 1888-1935, Portuguese poet & writer 5 likes |
 | The past is never dead. It's not even past. — William Faulkner, 1897-1962, American writer, Nobel 1949 5 likes |
 | The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet. — Thomas Edwards, 1878-1914, British poet & essayist 4 likes |
 | The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. — Winston Churchill, 1874-1965, British Prime Minister, Nobel 1953 4 likes |
 | If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven't done anything today. — Lou Holtz, 1937-, American football coach 4 likes |
 | When people talk about the good old days, I say to people, “It's not the days that are old, it's you that's old.” I hate the good old days. What is important is that today is good. — Karl Lagerfeld, 1933-2019, German fashion designer 4 likes |
 | The total history of almost anyone would shock almost everyone. — Mignon McLaughlin, 1913-1983, American magazine editor 3 likes |
 | If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future. — Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662, French thinker 3 likes |
| No man is rich enough to buy back his own past. — Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer 3 likes |
| The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past. — Will Durant, 1885-1981, American historian & philosopher 3 likes |
 | We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it. — Lyndon Johnson, 1908-1973, American President [1963-1969] 3 likes |
 | The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future, too. We all try to lie out of that but life won't let us. — Eugene O’Neill, 1888-1953, American playwright, Nobel 1936 3 likes |
 | It isn’t a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past. — Aldοus Huxley, 1894-1963, English writer 3 likes |
 | Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today. — John Wooden, 1910-2010, American basketball coach 2 likes |
 | If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past. — Baruch Spinoza, 1632-1677, Dutch philosopher 2 likes |
 | The past is the luxury of proprietors. — Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, French philosopher 2 likes |
 | True is it that we have seen better days. — William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, English poet & playwright ‐ As You Like It 2 likes |
| There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again -now. — Eugene O’Neill, 1888-1953, American playwright, Nobel 1936 2 likes |
 | So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. — Francis Scott Fitzgerald, 1896-1940, American writer 2 likes |
 | The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand. |
 | The past is always attractive because it is drained of fear. |
 | It’s but little good you’ll do a-watering the last year’s crop. |
 | I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done. |
 | In talking about the past, we lie with every breath we draw. |
 | It is not often that nations learn from the past, even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it. |
 | Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to. — Ashleigh Brilliant, 1933-, British cartoonist & epigrammatist |
 | The past lives through us. We are its legacy. — Marty Rubin, 1930-1994, Canadian gay activist, author & journalist |
 | It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future. |
 | In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it. — Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist |
Quotes in Verse
 | Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof. — Wallace Stevens, 1879-1955, American poet 4 likes |
 | For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice. — T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965, British poet, Nobel 1948 3 likes |
Funny Quotes
 | When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick. — George Burns, 1896-1996, American comedian 5 likes |
 | We had a choice between Democrats who couldn't learn from the past and Republicans who couldn't stop living in it. — P.J. O’ Rourke, 1947-2022, American columnist & writer 3 likes |
| Not only don't I know what tomorrow will bring, I'm still not entirely certain what yesterday brought. — Ashleigh Brilliant, 1933-, British cartoonist & epigrammatist |
Ancient Greek
 | Waste no fresh tears over old griefs. Παλαιά καινοίς δακρύοις ου χρη στένειν. — Euripides, 480-406 BC, Ancient Greek tragedian (Alexandros) 30 likes |
| Sweet is the memory of the sorrows past. Αλλ’ ηδύ τι σωθέντα μεμνήσθαι πόνων. — Euripides, 480-406 BC, Ancient Greek tragedian ‐ Andromeda 21 likes |
 | Of this alone, even god is deprived, the power of making things that are past never to have been. Μόνου γαρ αυτού και θεός στερίσκεται, αγένητα ποιείν άσσ᾽ αν ᾖ πεπραγμένα. — Agathon, 450-400 BC, Ancient Greek tragic poet 4 likes |
Proverbs
 | Let bygones be bygones. 3 likes |
Movie Quotes
 | It’s times like this my buddy Timon here says: you got to put your behind in your past. — from the film The Lion King 7 likes |
| Oh yes, the past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it. — from the film The Lion King 2 likes |
