Past

"If we dwell on real or imagined sins of the past, we shall never be able to find one another in the present, nor shall we be able to work together on building the future."

"Not to the present is our hour confined, The great and shadowy future is assigned To be the glorious empire of the mind. The past was once the future, and it wrought In the high presence of on-looking thought ; All that we have, was by its efforts brought. To-day creates to-morrow, and the tree Of good or ill grows in past hours, what we Make for the future — certain is to be."

"By ignoring the past, we are encouraged to repeat its mistakes."

"We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our present. We do not have to suffer the waste of an amnesia that robs us of the lessons of the past rather than permit us to read them with pride as well as deep understanding. We know what it is to be lied to, and we know how important it is not to lie to ourselves. We are powerful because we have survived, and that is what it is all about — survival and growth."

"On the day I left Chulak, Master Bra'tac said to me: "Draw from your past, but do not let your past draw from you.""

"There's no need to reminisce about the past; obviously because that shit did not last."

"The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future? [...] Nevertheless the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now."

"If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future."

"The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow's veil; the future, the virgin's."

"The forensic historian . . . searches the past for material applicable to a current issue. The purpose of the advocate . . . is to use the past for the elucidation of the present, to solve some contemporary problem or, most often, to carry an argument. It is the past put in the service of winning the case at bar."

"To bring together the records of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a Nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future."

"Move backward to go forward. Shatter to mend. The past is now."

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience."

"When emotion brings us ghosts from the past, only logic can root us in the present."

"An overflowing pot must be emptied before anything new can be added. If you cling to the sorrows of the past, how can you make space for the happiness and joy of the present?"

"How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?"

"He who keeps fleeing, flees from his own past."

"Is it so bad to pause the future to appreciate the past? [...] Is it so bad to shut the door and just accept we can't go back?"

"For the past was once the future, and the present, but the future is not yet the past, but has the whole of its essence in existing in some after time."

"The heart opens itself to the hope that the misfortunes of the past will be replaced by fruitful dialogue."

"The past is to be respected and acknowledged, but not to be worshipped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness."

"I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present."

"Even if the voice [in your head] is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. p. 17"

"To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it - who are you? p. 19"

"The more you are focused on time - past and future - the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is. p. 36"

"The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions. p. 36"

"Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now. What you think of as the past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace - and you do so now. p. 36"

"Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence. p. 42"

"The past cannot survive in your presence [in the now]. p. 61"

"Enlightenment consciously chosen means to relinquish your attachment to past and future and to make the Now the main focus of your life. p. 141"

"Trust no future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act, act in the living present! Heart within, and God o'erhead!"

"The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is or has been is but the twilight of the dawn."

"Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past."

"The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause."

"No traces left of all the busy scene, But that remembrances says: The things have been."

"But how carve way i' the life that lies before, If bent on groaning ever for the past?"

"Thou unrelenting past."

"The light of other days is faded, And all their glories past."

"The age of chivalry is gone."

"John Anderson, my jo, John, When we were first acquent, Your locks were like the raven, Your bonny brow was brent."

"Gone—glimmering through the dream of things that were."

"The best of prophets of the future is the past."

"The Present is the living sum-total of the whole Past."

"O, to bring back the great Homeric time, The simple manners and the deeds sublime: When the wise Wanderer, often foiled by Fate, Through the long furrow drave the ploughshare straight."

"Listen to the Water-Mill: Through the live-long day How the clicking of its wheel Wears the hours away! Languidly the Autumn wind Stirs the forest leaves, From the field the reapers sing Binding up their sheaves: And a proverb haunts my mind As a spell is cast, "The mill cannot grind With the water that is past.""

"Ils sont passés ces jours de fête."

"Oh le bon temps où étions si malheureux."

"Un jeune homme d'un bien beau passé."

"O Death! O Change! O Time! Without you, O! the insufferable eyes Of these poor Might-Have-Beens, These fatuous, ineffectual yesterdays."

"Praise they that will times past, I joy to see My selfe now live: this age best pleaseth mee."