Past Quotes

“The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most temporal part of time--for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“I don't want to be caught with my pants down.”
― March Lions, The Last Sunset

“In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

“Don't waste your time trying to provide people with proof of deceit, in order to keep their love, win their love or salvage their respect for you. The truth is this: If they care they will go out of their way to learn the truth. If they don't then they really don't value you as a human being. The moment you have to sell people on who you are is the moment you let yourself believe that every good thing you have ever done or accomplished was invisible to the world. And, it is not!”
― Shannon L. Alder

“After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“The past is to be respected and acknowledged, but not worshipped; it is our future in which we will find our greatness.”
― Pierre Trudeau

“You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it, censor it, tinker with it...fictionalize it, in a word, and put it away on a shelf - your book, your romanced autobiography. We are all in the flight from the real reality. That is the basic definition of Homo sapiens.”
― John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman

“No human can bury their past indefinitely. It’s only a matter of time before you crack.”
― K.A. Tucker, Ten Tiny Breaths

“    The weapon gave a rusty croak. ‘I don’t normally do weather reports anymore,’ the gun informed him politely.
     ‘Why is that?’
     ‘Ever since the demise of the old metropolis, there has been no control of the weather systems. Anyone who would have appreciated a weather forecast perished an awful long time ago. Besides, every time I started to inform my potential victims of the current cloud formations, or wind velocity, or barometric pressure, or potential precipitation, they simply ran away.”
― A.R. Merrydew, Our Blue Orange

“You cannot know where your people are going if you don't know where your people have been.”
― Forrest Carter, The Education of Little Tree

“We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching.

Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.”
― Émile Zola, The Masterpiece

“Man…who lives in three places – in the past, in the present, and in the future – can be unhappy if one of these three is worthless. Religion has even added a fourth – eternity.”
― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“We just philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. It's so clear, you see, that if we're to begin living in the present, we must first of all redeem our past and then be done with it forever. And the only way we can redeem our past is by suffering and by giving ourselves over to exceptional labor, to steadfast and endless labor.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

“The future is foretold from the past and the future is only possible because of the past. Without past and future, the present is partial. All time is eternally present and so all time is ours. There is no sense in forgetting and every sense in dreaming. Thus the present is made rich.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“The time has come to lay that baggage down and leave behind all the struggling and striving. You can be set free as you journey forward into a balanced healthy and rewarding future.”
― Sue Augustine, When Your Past Is Hurting Your Present: Getting Beyond Fears That Hold You Back

“If today is not your day,
then be happy
for this day shall never return.
And if today is your day,
then be happy now
for this day shall never return.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“He believed in himself, believed in his quixotic ambition, letting the failures of the previous day disappear as each new day dawned. Yesterday was not today. The past did not predict the future if he could learn from his mistakes.”
― Daniel Wallace, The Kings and Queens of Roam

“The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man's new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct, Several European countries and a number of states of the American Union sterilize the criminal and the insane. This is not sufficient. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.”
― Nikola Tesla

“Your family's never in your past. You carry it around with you everywhere.”
― M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans

“I’ve got my Sig and I’m in a car I swiped,” Bert raged on.” I thought of that much ahead. I don’t miss! It’s like candy, Sammy. His car is candy red. Like Valentine’s Day for me!” I ain’t gonna let a perfect moment pass, Sammy. I’m my own man now in this stuff. I done enough already to earn the respect I don’t get. I’m not stupid, so go to bed.”
― Tom Baldwin, Macom Farm

“I don’t think so, said the captain. Their ship is clearly outfitted with weapons systems that it did not have when it left Terrene over 600 years ago. And they are pointed directly at us.”
― Steven Decker, The Balance of Time

“Her soft trailing fingers would continue to attempt a connection that I refused to allow; that I couldn’t allow if I wanted to survive.”
― J.D. Stroube, Caged in Darkness

“Emptying the ashtrays was very expressive of myself. I just lump everything in a great heap which I have labeled ‘the past,’ and having thus emptied this deep reservoir that was once myself, I am ready to continue.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald

“Who am I? I am who I say I am and tomorrow someone else entirely. You are too nostalgic, you want memory to secure you, console you. The past is a bore. What matters is only oneself and what one creates from what one has learned. Imagination uses what it needs and discards the rest— where you want to erect a museum. Don't hoard the past, Astrid. Don't cherish anything. Burn it. The artist is the phoenix who burns to emerge.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Nights without beginning that had no end. Talking about a past as if it'd really happened. Telling themselves that this time next year, this time next year, things were going to be different.”
― Raymond Carver

“The past never went away and it was not designed to do so.
It would always be there, and it should be acknowledged.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, The Problem with Forever

“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

“I’ve watched hundreds of deed transfers take place right here on the steps of the Registry,” Michele mused. “At those moments of transfer, I’ve seen in the eyes of desperate sellers an emotional reconciliation of irrevocably relinquishing a homestead, a treasured dominion, willingly or otherwise. Perhaps all these deeds, Mr. Geoffrey…perhaps they, too, have their own soul, a predilection that would tell me more than what they say if only I had the capacity to ask.”
― Tom Baldwin, Macom Farm

“There once was a boy with a future.
Until all he had left was his past.”
― Hafsah Faizal, We Hunt the Flame