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Past quotes

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“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” Nelson Mandela, “Long Walk to Freedom” - 1995

“The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“You have to know the past to understand the present.” Carl Sagan, “Cosmos” - 1980

“What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time?” William Shakespeare, “The Tempest” - 1623

“The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.” William Shakespeare, “All's Well That Ends Well” - 1623

“Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.” Jane Austen, “Pride and Prejudice” - 28 January 1813

“The past is consumed in the present and the present is living only because it brings forth the future.” James Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” - 1916

“Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.” Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness” - 1899

“Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future.” Blaise Pascal, “Pensées” - 1670

“The laws of science do not distinguish between the past and the future.” Stephen Hawking, “A Brief History of Time” - 1988

“Identity isn’t a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow.” Jay-Z, “Decoded” - 2010

“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” Oscar Wilde, “A Woman of No Importance” - 1893

“You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Survivor” - 1999

“Who controls the past . . . controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“I like men who have a future and women who have a past” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“And by that destiny to perform an act Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come In yours and my discharge.” William Shakespeare, “The Tempest” - 1623

“For you and I are past our dancing days.” William Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet” - 1597

“Things without all remedy should be without regard: what's done is done.” William Shakespeare, “Macbeth” - 1623

“To mourn a mischief that is past and gone is the next way to draw new mischief on.” William Shakespeare, “Othello” - 1623

“What's gone and what's past help should be past grief.” William Shakespeare, “The Winter's Tale” - 1623

“Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?” William Makepeace Thackeray, “Vanity Fair” - 1847

“He didn’t know what he was going to — but it had to be better than what he was leaving behind.” J. K. Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” - 1997

“Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.” John Green, “The Fault in Our Stars” - 2012

“Gradually, he fell into that deep tranquil sleep which ease from recent suffering alone imparts; that calm and peaceful rest which it is pain to wake from. Who, if this were death, would be roused again to all the struggles and turmoils of life;...” Charles Dickens, “Oliver Twist” - 1838

“And the upshot of this modern attitude is really this: that men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.” G. K. Chesterton, “What's Wrong with the World” - 1910

“I say decisively that nothing is so marked in modern writing as the prediction of such ideals in the future combined with the ignoring of them in the past.” G. K. Chesterton, “What's Wrong with the World” - 1910

“Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.” George Eliot, “Middlemarch” - 1872

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we...” Abraham Lincoln, “State of the Union Address” - 1 December 1862

“Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” - 1841

“The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer.” Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Hound of the Baskervilles” - 1902

“A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future, but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.” Honoré de Balzac, “Letters of Two Brides” - 1841

“He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.” Kurt Vonnegut, “Slaughterhouse-Five” - 1969

“The more the world speeds up the more it seems necessary that we should learn to pick out of the past the things that we feel were important and beautiful then. One of these things was a quality of tranquillity in people, which you rarely meet today.” Eleanor Roosevelt, “The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt” - 1961

“The past was like a bad dream; the future was all happy holiday as I moved southwards week by week, easily, lazily, lingering as long as I dared, but always heeding the call!” Kenneth Grahame, “The Wind in the Willows” - 1908

“Animals arrived, liked the look of the place, took up their quarters, settled down, spread, and flourished. They didn't bother themselves about the past—they never do; they're too busy.” Kenneth Grahame, “The Wind in the Willows” - 1908

“The increase of disorder or entropy with time is one example of what is called an arrow of time, something that distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.” Stephen Hawking, “A Brief History of Time” - 1988

“What's done can't be undone, but at least you can keep it from happening again.” Anne Frank, “The Diary of a Young Girl” - 1947

“Past glories are poor feeding.” Isaac Asimov, “Foundation” - 1951

“You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don’t plan for it!” Tennessee Williams, “The Glass Menagerie” - 1944

“I stole their future from them; I can only begin to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past.” Orson Scott Card, “Ender's Game” - 1985

“The letters I had just inscribed on it were not even dry yet and already they belonged to the past.” Jean-Paul Sartre, “Nausea” - 1938

“The one charm of the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“I don't live in either my past or my future. I'm interested only in the present.” Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist” - 1988

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Great Gatsby” - 1925

“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.” Haruki Murakami, “Dance Dance Dance” - 1994

“People are all over the world telling their one dramatic story and how their life has turned into getting over this one event. Now their lives are more about the past than their future.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Invisible Monsters” - 1999

“Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title” Virginia Woolf, “Jacob's Room” - 1922

Related topics

future present time memory death regret women life happiness moving on control history ideals living responsibility men trust mind truth knowledge

Related authors

William Shakespeare (7)
Oscar Wilde (4)
George Orwell (4)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (2)
G. K. Chesterton (2)
Haruki Murakami (2)
Chuck Palahniuk (2)
Kenneth Grahame (2)
Stephen Hawking (2)
Jane Austen (1)
William Makepeace Thackeray (1)
James Joyce (1)
J. K. Rowling (1)
John Green (1)
Charles Dickens (1)
George Eliot (1)
Nelson Mandela (1)
Abraham Lincoln (1)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1)

Related sources

1984 (4)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (3)
The Tempest (2)
What's Wrong with the World (2)
The Wind in the Willows (2)
A Brief History of Time (2)
The Great Gatsby (2)
Romeo and Juliet (1)
All's Well That Ends Well (1)
Macbeth (1)
Othello (1)
Pride and Prejudice (1)
Vanity Fair (1)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1)
The Winter's Tale (1)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1)
The Fault in Our Stars (1)
Oliver Twist (1)
Middlemarch (1)
Long Walk to Freedom (1)