Past Quotes

Always make sure that the PAST is a Previous Action Successfully Terminated and not a Permanent Application of Stressful Trials.

~ Charbel Tadros

I am a typical example of Western Jew. This means I don't have a moment of peace, that nothing has come easily to me, not just the present and the future, but even the past, that thing that each man receives as his birth-right: even that I have to conquer, and perhaps that is the hardest task.

~ Franz Kafka

Do you know who your grand grand grand grand grand father is? Probably you don’t! If you want to know your very distant past, just look at yourself because you are the accumulated past, you are the ancient river coming from the valleys of the far past!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I realize that I don’t know where to start. Not because I’m unsure of my story, but because I’m not sure why I feel compelled to tell it in the first place. What can be achieved by unearthing the past?

~ Nicholas Sparks

While he spends all of his time trying to remember, I spend all of my time trying to forget.I don’t want to remember how it feels to love him.I want to forget everything in this world that reminds me of him.

~ Colleen Hoover

Because in this way all I did was to accumulate past after past behind me, multiplying the pasts, and if one life was too dense and ramified and embroiled for me to bear it always with me, imagine so many lives, each with its own past and the pasts of the other lives that continue to become entangled one with the others.

~ Italo Calvino

Our pasts haunt us all.” I admitted, in a rare moment of perfect clarity.

~ Ross Turner

You gotta look backwards to go forwards.

~ Fennel Hudson

Maybe the problem with holding onto memories so tightly is that they don’t allow us to make room for the future. Maybe the gentle decay of the past is a blessing that dulls the sharp blade of regret, allowing the possibility of rebirth.

~ Ryan Galloway

I think in some ways it's like that for all of us, living with the ghosts of things that used to be, or never were. We're all of us haunted by yesterday, and we got no choice but to keep marching into our tomorrows.Keep marching, boys and girls. Keep marching.

~ Rodman Philbrick

The past is gone. It went by like dusk to dawn.

~ Steven Tyler

The past informs the present.

~ Fennel Hudson

I find myself becoming increasingly nostalgic for the past, but after all I suppose that is the only thing one can be nostalgic about.

~ James Rozoff

Never back, never back!... People don’t like going back, even if they must. I don’t like going back! And I’m not people! But I look back, sometimes, every so often, just to make sure I’m not leaving anything important behind. Like my tail! I can never be sure when I leave my tail behind me by mistake.

~ Emory R. Frie

Preserve the spirit of a ‘lost’ age, when time moved slower.

~ Fennel Hudson

Your past and your pain will certainly impact you,but they don’t have to define you. You get to write your own definition.

~ Scott Stabile

The problem is not that we forget the past. It is that we recall it too well. Children recall wrongs that enemies did to their grandfathers, and blame the granddaughters of the old enemies. Children are not born with memories of those who insulted their mother or slew their grandfather or stole their land. Those hates are bequeathed to them, taught them, breathed into them. If adults didn't tell their children of their hereditary hates, perhaps we would do better.

~ Robin Hobb

When you are rich, your past disappears. You get everything you want when you want it . . . Everyone wants to know you. Everyone wants to be your friend.

~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

It appears that time has turned that young woman, who imagined herself a romantic heroine, into something of a comic character, but I remain fond of her. We are relatives, after all.

~ Siri Hustvedt

If you think that your partner has been cheating, then take a look at their will. If a past lover is in there, then it is probable that some form of infidelity has occurred.

~ Steven Magee

You know that when your partner deletes their messages to a past lover after being accused of cheating, then it is likely that they were being unfaithful in some way.

~ Steven Magee

I really admire people who don’t need to live surrounded by lots of stuff. My bedroom is piled up with clothes and books, papers and photographs. I like to collect things, anything I can grab from wherever I’m travelling. I think it’s the sign of slight anxiety to always want something around you to represent a good moment you had, to hang on to the leftovers. But then they’re a pleasure to look at too, so it’s not all negative.

~ Isabelle Huppert

Once we get to know where and why the skeletons of the past are buried, we can start wading across our muddled memories into the open plains of a new horizon. (Going back to yesterday)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Going away won't change anything if you're running from yourself.

~ Joyce Rachelle

Your life is like a book you decide what to write on it or erase from it, But you might not be able to erase completely your past mistakes. So the choices you make today will determine how the book (your life)will look like.

~ Topsy Gift

The ego romanticizes the past to avoid the true romance of the present.

~ Alan Cohen

The past looks worse the closer you look at it.

~ Hanif Kureishi

When the hunt for new sources of energy had at one point got particularly frantic, one bright young chap suddenly spotted that one place which had never used up all its available energy was - the past. And with the sudden rush of blood to the head that such insights tend to induce, he invented a way of mining it that very same night, and within a year huge tracts of the past were being drained of all their energy and simply wasting away. Those who claimed that the past should be left unspoilt were accused of indulgingin an extremely expensive form of sentimentality.

~ Douglas Adams

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

~ H.g. Wells

There was no use wondering about the past.

~ Connilyn Cossette

Drugs may know how to numb a brain, but the past never forgets to resurface.

~ Kris Kidd

Leave my past... come in the present (PLEASE).

~ Deyth Banger

But one must do something about the past. It doesn’t just cease to be. It goes on existing and affecting the present, and in new and different ways, as if in some other dimension it too were growing.

~ Iris Murdoch

I am born anew at each green fall of the die, and by die-ing I eliminate my since. The past - paste, pus, piss - is all only illusory events created by a stone mask to justify an illusory stagnant present.

~ Luke Rhinehart

Where does the past go when it changes?

~ Juan Gabriel Vásquez

That is who I was yesterday. Today I walk with God.

~ Shannon L. Alder

To my mind, one does not put oneself in place of the past, one only adds a new link.

~ Paul Cézanne

When we can return to the roads of our past and see nothing but the beautiful view, then we've truly moved on.

~ Nanette Mathews

Telling our personal story constitutes an act of consciousness that defines the ethical lining of a person’s constitution. Recounting personal stories promotes personal growth, spurs the performance of selfless deeds, and in doing so enhances the ability of the equitable eye of humanity to scroll rearward and forward. Every person must become familiar with our communal history of struggle, loss, redemption, and meaningfully contemplate the meaning behind our personal existence in order to draft a proper and prosperous future for succeeding generations. Accordingly, every person is responsible for sharing their story using the language of thought that best expresses their sanguine reminiscences. Without a record of pastimes, we will never know what were, what we now are, or what we might become by steadfastly and honorably struggling with mortal chores.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Isn't it weird that everything that's coming out of my mouth is going directly into the past?

~ Rebekah Crane