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Past quotes

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once...” James Joyce, “Ulysses” - 1922

“He doesn’t know which is worse, a past he can’t regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there’s the future. Sheer vertigo.” Margaret Atwood, “Oryx and Crake” - 2003

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

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

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

“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

“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

“most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages—a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers.” Haruki Murakami, “Kafka on the Shore” - 2002

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

“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

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

“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

“A person who doesn’t learn from the past is an idiot, in my estimation.” Stephen King, “11/22/63” - 2011

“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

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

“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

“It's in vain . . . to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.” Charles Dickens, “David Copperfield” - 1850

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

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

“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

“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?” John Steinbeck, “The Grapes of Wrath” - 1939

“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

“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

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

“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

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

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

“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

“In Books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.” Thomas Carlyle, “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History” - 1841

“Most of the laugh tracks on television were recorded in the early 1950s. These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Lullaby” - 2002

“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 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

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

“Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.” James Joyce, “Ulysses” - 1922

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

“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

“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

“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

“what necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer—the Future so much brighter?” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

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

Related topics

future present time memory death regret women life happiness sadness moving on books control learning history ideals living responsibility strength men

Related authors

William Shakespeare (7)
Oscar Wilde (4)
James Joyce (4)
George Orwell (4)
Chuck Palahniuk (3)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (2)
Charlotte Brontë (2)
Charles Dickens (2)
G. K. Chesterton (2)
George Eliot (2)
Haruki Murakami (2)
Kenneth Grahame (2)
Stephen Hawking (2)
Jane Austen (1)
William Makepeace Thackeray (1)
J. K. Rowling (1)
John Green (1)
Nelson Mandela (1)
Abraham Lincoln (1)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1)

Related sources

1984 (4)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (3)
Ulysses (3)
The Tempest (2)
Jane Eyre (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)

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