Quotes about paste
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“When the past has passed from you at last, let go. Then climb down and begin the rest of your life. With great joy.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Life, Past, Joy

“There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition.”

Siri Hustvedt book The Summer Without Men

Source: The Summer Without Men

Imagination, Past, Future

“When the past dies, there is mourning, but when the future dies our imaginations are compelled to carry it on.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: Marilyn

Imagination, Past, Future

“The past is obdurate.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Past

“We need the courage to learn from our past and not live in it.”

Sharon Salzberg (1952) American writer

Source: The Force of Kindness: Change Your Life with Love & Compassion

Courage, Learning, Past

“if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive.”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

Source: The Collected Stories

Life, Truth, Past

“We have a talent for disguising greed under the cloak of freedom. As for past acts of depravity, we prefer to ignore those. Progress, after all, means to look ever forward, and whatever we have trampled in our wake is best forgotten.”

Steven Erikson book Midnight Tides

Source: Midnight Tides

Freedom, Past

“Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.”

Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children

Source: Midnight's Children

Question, Reality, Past

“I won’t apologize for my past. A man is supposed to have experience.”
“From all indications, you’ve acquired enough for ten men.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

Men, Past

“Because in the end nothing is worse than seeing the fall of one you loved. It was somehow worse than losing a love. It made everything seem questionable. It made the past bitter and confused.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Fall of the Hotel Dumort

Love, Question, Past

“Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.”

Mario Vargas Llosa (1936) Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, and essayist

Memory, Past

“To remain in the past means to be dead.”

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

Past, Dead

“I learned that what happened to me did not have to define who I was. My past could not control my future unless I allowed it to.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Source: Living Beyond Your Feelings: Controlling Emotions So They Don't Control You

Learning, Past, Future

“My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Volume II [Tauchnitz, 1860] ( p. 226 https://books.google.com/books?id=xAm2X8YfpJIC&pg=PA226) <br class="br">Also in The Secret Ingredient by Laura Schaefer [Simon & Schuster, 2012, ISBN 1-442-41960-1] ( p. 169 https://books.google.com/books?id=o1ctj37QuikC&pg=PA169) <br class="br">Source: The Woman in White (1859)

Waiting, Past, Tea

“There is no greater grief than to find no happiness, but happiness in what is past.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: The Powerbook

Past, Happiness

“To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

World, Fear, Sense, Change

“The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative. A large amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the drowning man; and it is not past belief that one may review an entire courtship while removing one's gloves.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

Time, Past

“They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.”

Isaac Asimov book Pebble in the Sky

Source: Pebble in the Sky

Truth, Change, Past

“Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Past, Future

“I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.”

Margaret Atwood book Lady Oracle

Source: Lady Oracle

Sleep, Waiting, Past, Forgetting

“Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Dreams, Past, Future

“Like most of the educated, I do harbor a fondness for the sins of my ignorant past.”

Jane Smiley (1949) American novelist

Education, Past

“The older we get the more we seem to think that everything was better in the past.”

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1886–1965) Japanese author

Thinking, Past

“There is no past. Past is present when you carry it with you.”

Flora Rheta Schreiber (1918–1988) American journalist

Source: Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

Past

“Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Beauty, Past, Sea

“Still, looking through the old volumes was soothing, because thinking of the past made the present seem a little less real.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Thinking, Past

“Even bipolar vampires needed sleep from time to time, and he was well past his recommended safe dosage of stress.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Black Dawn

Sleep, Time, Past

“Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Past, Future

“What is past is past. never go back. Not for excuses. Not for justification, not for happiness. You are what you are, the world is what it is.”

Mario Puzo book The Last Don

Source: The Last Don

World, Past, Happiness

“And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way we reread a book or resee a film.”

Milan Kundera book Ignorance

Source: Ignorance

Love, Books, Way, Time

“Appeals to the past are among the commonest of strategies in interpretations of the present.”

Edward Said (1935–2003) Professor of English and literature

Past

“It was never too late to learn something. The past is unalterable in any event. The future is the only thing we can change. Learning the lessons of the past is the only way to shape the present and the future.”

Jim Butcher book Ghost Story

Source: Ghost Story

Way, Learning, Change, Past

“That's the past for you. Not only does it come back at the most unexpected, and inconvenient, times but it's set in stone.”

Jeffery Deaver book Edge

Source: Edge

Time, Past

“Spiritual growth involves giving up the stories of your past so the universe can write a new one.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: The Law of Divine Compensation: Mastering the Metaphysics of Abundance

Universe, Past

“Don't beat yourself up over what you could have or should have done. The past is gone. Move on to the future.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Past, Future, Motivational

“The two most important phrases in the human language are "If only" and "Maybe someday". Our past mistakes and our unrequited longings. The things we regret and the things we yearn for. That's what makes us who we are.”

Will Ferguson (1964) Canadian writer, especially humor about Canada

Source: Happiness

Past

“To quote the Tsalagi, you should never allow your yesterday to use up too much of today. The past is gone and tomorrow is at best a maybe. Live for this moment because it may be all you'll ever have.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Retribution

Quotes, Past

“It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

"Imaginary Homelands (1992)
Source: Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991
Context: It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity. Which seems to be self-evidently true; but I suggest that the writer who is out-of-country and even out-of-language may experience this loss in an intensified form. It is made more concrete for him by the physical fact of discontinuity, of his present being in a different place from his past, of his being "elsewhere"… human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capably only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase. Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because of our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to the death.

Loss, Past, Parting, Country

“I am your brother. I was supposed to be your brother before either of us was born. Karmic debt. It appears I was Vlad the Impaler or Genghis Khan in a past life.”

Rob Thurman (1950) American writer

Source: Blackout

Life, Appearance, Past

“In circumstances of real tragedy you see things straight away… past, present, and future together.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

Past, Future

“Everything that happened in the past "It was all necessary to bring us to where we are.”

Anita Stansfield (1961) American writer

Past

“It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.”

Alan Lightman book Einstein's Dreams

Source: Einstein's Dreams

World, Kiss, Past, Future

“Out of the nursery into the college and back into the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Past

“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Study, Past

“Never regret your past. Rather,
embrace it as the teacher that it is.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny

Teachers, Past

“If you leave, we lose and our pasts win.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Past

“The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is to
release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the
clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our
spirit.”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

Fear, Disappointment, Knowledge, Past

“It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Sad, Depressing, Memory, Past

“I think we agree, the past is over.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

In March 2000 http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/piehigher.asp. <br class="br">2000s, 2000

Thinking, Past

“The decisions of our past are the architects of our present.”

Dan Brown book Inferno

Source: Inferno

Decision, Past

“If she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed. Strangers and lovers would never get past the locked door.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Cats, Lovers, Past

“One of the most dynamic and significant changes you can make in your life is to make the commitment to drop all negative references to your past, to begin living now.”

Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker

Source: Don't Worry, Make Money: Spiritual and Practical Ways to Create Abundance and More Fun in Your Life

Life, Change, Past

“When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things - not the great occasions - give off the greatest glow of happiness.”

Bob Hope (1903–2003) American comedian, actor, singer and dancer

Christmas, Past, Christmas, Happiness

“God surpasses our dreams when we reach past our personal plans and agenda to grab the hand of Christ and walk the path he chose for us. He is obligated to keep us dissatisfied until we come to him and his plan for complete satisfaction.”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

Source: Breaking Free: Discover the Victory of Total Surrender

God, Dreams, Past, Christ

“What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

Source: Dreamtigers

Past

“Haven't you ever wished that you could steal back just a few hours of your past?" she asked softly. "That's all I want… just a little taste of what might have been.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Again the Magic

Past

“These are all I have. I do not have the wide, bright beacon of some solid old lighthouse, guiding ships safely home, past the jaggedrocks. I only have these little glimmers that flicker and then go out.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Home, Past

“… She'd gone past interest, swung into attraction, burst through lust, tripped over affection, and was now skidding out of control into love.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Happy Ever After

Love, Past

“The future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

Past, Future

“Still, we will let all this be a thing of the past, though it hurts us, and beat down by constraint the anger that rises inside us.
Now I am making an end of my anger. It does not become me, unrelentingly to rage on”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

Rage, Past, Hurt, Anger

“Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Phrixus, Frag. 927

Youth, Learning, Past, Future

“I have learned that the consequences of our past actions are always interesting; I have learned to view the present with a forward-looking eye.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

Learning, Past

“The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Men, Books, Study, Reading

“In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Time, Past, Future, Weather

“Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

Feeling, Past, Future

“I just don't see why the past has to matter.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Past

“The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct”

Joyce Carol Oates book Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

Source: Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

Star, Light, Distant, Past

“You have ordinary moments and ordinary moments and more ordinary moments, and then, suddenly, there is something monumental right there. You have past and future colliding in the present, your own personal Big Bang, and nothing will ever be the same.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Stay

Past, Future, Personality

“time past and time future
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Source: Four Quartets

Time, Past, Future

“I can’t undo the past. But in the future, I will gladly lay my life down for you, brother. (Styxx)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Second Chances

Life, Past, Future

“What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Past

“I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Post-war years (1945–1955)
Source: On his appointment as Prime Minister, May 10, 1940; The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948).

Life, Past

“So you decided to help us by killing the guy we were talking to?" Clary demanded "Because you thought he had a shady past? Who- who does that? It doesnt make any sense.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Guy, Sense, Past, Help

“History is a Rorschach test, people. What you see when you look at it tells you as much about yourself as it does about the past.”

Jennifer Donnelly book Revolution

Source: Revolution

People, History, Past

“You can't run from feelings, Charity. You have to face them. Otherwise your future will look just like your past.”

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923–2014) writer

Source: Mr. Wrong

Feeling, Past, Future

“You can’t go back, Ever. You can’t change the past. It just is…. This is our destiny. Not yours.”

Alyson Nöel book Blue Moon

Source: Blue Moon

Change, Past

“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 (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Time, Past, Night

“God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

God, Past, Future

“You can’t change the past, it just is”

Alyson Nöel book Blue Moon

Source: Blue Moon

Change, Past

“A person who doesn't learn from the past is an idiot, in my estimation.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Learning, Past, Personality

“Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. Over time, some have determined that the only way to live is to die. In death, a man or a woman is free of the weight of the past [and the future].”

Alan Lightman book Einstein's Dreams

Source: Einstein's Dreams

Death, Way, Time, Past

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Life, Food, Soul, Water

“And I mouth into the phone,, in case some of her cells pick up on the vibrations and it serves me well in the next life. If there is one. If there is a next life, I hope it's in the past; I don't think the future will be any more handleable.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Life, Hope, Thinking, Past

“They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

People, World, Way, Suffering

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Social Deterioration
1980s–1990s, Is Reality Optional? (1993)

World, Education, History, Failure

“In the past, I had particularly loved her smell. She always smelled freshed, freshly washed or of freshed laundry or fresh sweat or freshly loved”

Bernhard Schlink book The Reader

Source: The Reader

Love, Past

“It is an example of what films can do, how they can slip past your defenses and really break your heart.”

David Gilmour (1946) guitarist, singer, best known as a member of Pink Floyd

Past, Heart

“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Happy, Motivational, Back To Work, Health

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Source: Four Quartets

Time, Past, Future

“Our children may learn about the heroes of the past. Our task is to make ourselves the architects of the future.”

Jomo Kenyatta (1893–1978) First prime minister and first president of Kenya

Children, Learning, Past, Future

“Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment

People, Jealousy, Past, Future

“There is nothing you can do about the past except keep it there.”

Michael Connelly The Brass Verdict

Source: The Brass Verdict

Past

“I won’t lie. I want to beat the hell out of any man who’s had you—you’d be smart to keep them the hell away from me—but nothing in your past can change how I feel about you.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Reflected in You

Lie, Feeling, Hell, Change

“I’d planned to kill them, too.” When Néomi glared up at him, he raised his chained hands.
“Past tense. See? Already I’m improving.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dark Needs at Night's Edge

Past

“The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Source: Four Quartets
Context: The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.

Sense, Past