Past Quotes

We all have to live with our past, but it doesn’t have to define us.

~ Nalini Singh

One thing I learned in here is the past is for learning. It's not for punishing others or yourself. It's not for dwelling on and getting angry about things you can't change. It's for learning how to do better in the rest of your life. And being grateful you get another chance to try and do better.

~ Nicole Green

It is far kinder and smarter to show someone a better path in life than to darkly follow down their's with the self-righteous belief that you do so with the purer intentions of justly punishing them for their previous actions, making you hypocritically the same and thus influencing further negative repercussions.

~ Isabella Poretsis

But why would anyone on a joyous occasion rake over past unpleasantness and dwell on painful events horrible to experience and repellent to recall? Silence is mightier than words. It clothes the wreckage that befalls us in the deep folds of forgetfulness unless someone stirs up the painful memories for the sole purpose of edifying us by example and, as with illnesses, of helping us avoid the causes that led us to them.

~ Gregory Of Nazianzus

It's happened. It's in the past. You can't change it. You are not broken. Learn from the past, then build from it.

~ Tony Curl

Sometimes your belief system is really your fears attached to rules.

~ Shannon L. Alder

The past might hurt but don't run from it, repeat it, or punish others for it. Learn from it and be glad that you survived it.

~ Rob Liano

One's past can't be erased, it can only be learned from, the child taught her.

~ H. L. Balcomb

We’re so used to just glancing at the environment through the eyes of the past that we’re frequently not certain if we are in fact paying attention or if we merely think that we’re paying attention. Dynamic meditation in everyday existence involves the act of truthfully seeing.Many of us have changed some aspect of our appearance only to have this go unnoticed by friends. Perhaps you’ve shaved off a mustache, added a tattoo, or altered your hairstyle, but your acquaintances failed to initially notice. In such a case, your friends were looking at their environment through the eyes of the past instead of actually seeing what was taking place in the present.

~ H.e. Davey

The day you forgive your past and close your eyes. You will hear a river flowing inside you again. You will hear that waves of the ocean hitting the seashores of your soul once again. And again the sun will shine, lighting up your darkest nights.

~ Akshay Vasu

We may call Eurydice forth from the world of the dead, but we cannot make her answer; and when we turn to look at her we glimpse her only for a moment, before she slips from our grasp and flees. As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.

~ Margaret Atwood

It seems to me that when you look back at a life - yours or another's - what you see is a path that weaves into and out of deep shadow. So much is lost. What we use to construct the past is what has remained in the open, a hodgepodge of fleeting glimpses. Our histories, like my father's current body, are structures built of toothpicks. So what I recall of that last summer in New Bremen is a construct of both what stands in the light and what I imagine in the dark where I cannot see.

~ William Kent Krueger

the star that I was wishingthe light that I was kissingsitting back and reminiscing that night, it was missing.

~ Lokesh Fouzdar

For a billion years the patient earth amassed documents and inscribed them with signs and pictures which lay unnoticed and unused. Today, at last, they are waking up, because man has come to rouse them. Stones have begun to speak, because an ear is there to hear them. Layers become history and, released from the enchanted sleep of eternity, life's motley, never-ending dance rises out of the black depths of the past into the light of the present.

~ Hans Cloos

The past is a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door.

~ Kate Atkinson

The past is never a mistake if you have learnt from it. I have learnt never to trust someone so much that it hurts your expectations.

~ Sudeep Nagarkar

To Graduate from the School of Life you need to have met the following criteria: Found your life purpose, know how the egoic mind operates, detached yourself from the egoic mind, lived in essence, been in essence in relationships, overcame duality, trusted life, became awake, reprogrammed beliefs, handled anger, forgiven everyone, loved yourself, dealt with fears, overcome anger you had with God/you, cleared your emotional complexes & negativity, let go of the past, dealt with difficult relationships and mastered loving all creations of the universe.

~ Marina G. Roussou

The more shared past there is in a relationship, the more present you need to be...

~ Eckhart Tolle

Every relationship must have a starting point so that past errors may remain in the past.

~ Mary Lydon Simonsen

Once again standing on past route.

~ Remembrance

You want to know what I loved about him? Everything. From a freckle on his ass down to his undying selfish need to always be right.

~ Dominic Riccitello

I touched him. From brain to body, in ways I couldn’t quite understand. But he did and for him, that was all that mattered.

~ Dominic Riccitello

I smell him in intervals, in varieties, in ways I don’t quite understand.

~ Dominic Riccitello

She’s all the blood I’ve ever shed. She’s every time I’ve ever thought of death. She’s every time I’ve ever looked at happiness and thought, ‘That’s not meant for me.

~ Elijah Noble El

When ready to settle down: women are more interested in where the man is going, men are more interested in where the woman has been.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The past doesn't exist. There is nothing to be sorry for. Today is when we start to live. Look... look at the sea. The sea has no past. It is just there. It will never ask us to explain. The stars, the moon are there to light our way, to shine for us. What do they care what might have happened in the past? They are accompanying us, and are happy with that; can you see them shine? The stars are twinkling in the sky; would they do that if the past mattered? Wouldn't there be a huge storm if God wanted to punish us? We are alone, you and I, with no past, no memories, no guilt, nothing that can stand in the way of... our love.

~ Ildefonso Falcones

It is a fight to let go of a past that refuses to withdraw its sticky tentacles from your present.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

There had been a time in Godfrey's life when, had she stood before him in all her splendor, he would have turned from her, because of her history, with a sad disgust. Was he less pure now? He was more pure, for he was humbler.

~ George Macdonald

To forgive is to refuse to contaminate the future with the errors of the past.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Dipping into the pitcher of the past, his father often said, can only sour the cup of the present.

~ Gerald N. Lund

Remembering to live by forgetting all the places where I died.

~ Jenim Dibie

Still the dream persists, suppressed but always there, that somehow by some miraculous effort of the heart what was done could be undone. What form would such atonement take that would turn back time and bring the dead to life? None. None possible, not in the real world. And yet in my imaginings I can clearly see this cleansed new creature steaming up out of myself like a proselyte rising drenched from the baptismal river amid glad cries.

~ John Banville

If I let the past and my goals be the only thing that drives me in life, I will never know the meaning of being happy.

~ Unarine Ramaru

There is no need returning anger to those who made your past horrible, do not think of making them feel bitter, maybe a help from you can just make them ashame and miserable, and can probably change their attitude.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Never give a person a piece of your mind when all you really wanted to do was give them a piece of your heart.

~ Shannon L. Alder

At some point, you have to set down the past. At some point, you have to accept that everyone was doing their best. At some point, you have to gather yourself up, and go onward into your life.

~ Olivia Laing

Forgiveness empties the past of its power to empty the present of its peace.

~ L.r. Knost

Forgiveness is a choice. You control how you respond to something or someone. You can't change things that happened in the past, but you can decide how you let them affect you.

~ Amalie Howard

Dogs, for a reason that can only be described as divine, have the ability to forgive, let go of the past, and live each day joyously. It’s something the rest of us strive for.

~ Jennifer Skiff

Because I have forgiven my past, and God has forgiven my past, no person on earth can make me denounce my past. It's what made me who I am today.

~ Julie-Anne