Past Quotes

“You couldn't erase the past. You couldn't even change it. But sometimes life offered you the opportunity to put it right.”
― Ann Brashares, Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

“I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever.”
― Horace Mann

“Mead.
O sweet elixir,
Ye bless the lips and steal the wits.
 ”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.”
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

“You go on. You set one foot in front of the other, and if a thin voice cries out, somewhere behind you, you pretend not to hear, and keep going.”
― Geraldine Brooks, March

“because the past was always around her and might return at any time. It prowled the world searching for her, and she knew it was growing angrier at every passing day.”
― Nicholas Sparks, Safe Haven

“Maybe love at first sight isn’t what we think it is. Maybe it’s recognising a soul we loved in a past life and falling in love with them again.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“Some people read palms to tell your future, but I read hands to tell your past. Each scar makes a story worth telling. Each callused palm, each cracked knuckle is a missed punch or years in a factory.”
― Sarah Kay

“There was only present, and it was infinite. The past and the future were just blinders we wore so that infinity wouldn't drive us mad.”
― Laini Taylor, Dreams of Gods & Monsters

“When people have not learned to interpret the past, to read the present; and to imagine and empower the future, they are living a life without a punchline, clueless about the story they are embarked upon. ("Not on the shortlist" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“I changed it. I had to. Do you know why?" She studied him, her eyes grave. "Because that was then and this is now. Because the past is gone, even though it defines the present.”
― Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

“It is not until you change your identity to match your life blueprint that you will understand why everything in the past never worked.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Our spirit is mightier than the filth of our memories.”
― Melina Marchetta, Quintana of Charyn

“Used in combination with genomics, AI could help pharma companies to develop new drugs for rare diseases. The rarer a disease is, the smaller the market is and so the less likely it is to have been addressed. Big pharma is hesitant to take on the high development costs for new drugs if there’s no sign of a return on investment. Biological processes are complex, and that means that they lead to multidimensional data that human beings struggle to wrap their heads around. The good news is that AI is the perfect tool to spot patterns in this kind of data.”
― Ronald M. Razmi, AI Doctor: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare - A Guide for Users, Buyers, Builders, and Investors

“Fuck the past. This was the present.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Your unhappiness cannot be blamed on your past or your environment. And it isn’t that you lack competence. You just lack courage. One might say you are lacking in the courage to be happy.”
― Ichiro Kishimi, The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness

“What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory--meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion--is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“Sometimes in order to be happy in the present moment you have to be willing to give up all hope for a better past.”
― Robert Holden

“To survive,
Let the past
Teach you--
Past customs,
Struggles,
Leaders and thinkers.
Let
These
Help you.
Let them inspire you,
Warn you,
Give you strength.
But beware:
God is Change.
Past is past.
What was
Cannot
Come again.

To survive,
know the past.
Let it touch you.
Then let
The past
Go.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

“The good news is that you may have created my past and screwed up my present, but you have no control over my future. You don't know me at all.”
― David Klass, You Don't Know Me

“What comes, when it comes, will be what it is.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“Nobody had forgotten anything here. In Berlin, you had to wrestle with the past, you had to build on the ruins, inside them. It wasn't like America where we scraped the earth clean, thinking we could start again every time. ”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“He remembered how nice the kids at Camp Half-Blood had been to him after the war with Kronos. Great job, Nico! Thanks for bringing the armies of the Underworld to save us! Everybody smiled. They all invited him to sit at their table. After about a week, his welcome wore thin. Campers would jump when he walked up behind them. He would emerge from the shadows at the campfire, startle somebody and see the discomfort in their eyes: Are you still here? Why are you here? It didn’t help that immediately after the war with Kronos, Annabeth and Percy had started dating … Nico set down his fartura. Suddenly it didn’t taste so good.”
― Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus

“We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.”
― Lyndon B. Johnson

“Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“     ‘The onboard computer just wants to say a few words before we leave.’
     The speakers in the cabin crackled into life. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome you on-board the presidential shuttle for tonight’s illicit flight, Alfa Bravo Charlie. I would just like to say it’s a pleasure to meet you all and thank you so much for coming here tonight to steal me. To be honest I don’t get out much these days so this is something of a special occasion.’
     ‘It will be for us too if we get caught,’ Semilla said sardonically.”
― A.R. Merrydew, Our Blue Orange

“These things...they are who you are. They brought you here. To this day. You didn't give me a chance to understand that ever the unattractive parts of you, the messy parts, were something I could accept.”
― Laura Dave, The Divorce Party

“If I look at my old lyrics, they seem to be full of rage, but empty. There was an emptiness in my life.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong

“You can't do anything about the past, it's done and can't be mended. But the future is different, if you just think what you really want and reach out and take it.”
― Lesley Pearse, Trust Me