Past Quotes

Learn from your past and shut the door behind to live in present.Our past is just like a dry rose which was once a rose with all colors of life, with sweet fragrance, with soft petal, with thorns but now it is left with only thorns which could still hurt.

~ Ideaswar

Our past may shape us, but it doesn't define who we become.

~ Ellen Hopkins

History isn't all fact--it's just the story the victors tell to keep themselves in power. And it's been a slow revision. The more time passes, the easier it becomes to reinvent the past.

~ Heather Anastasiu

People like him, who buried their past so determinedly, should not help it from the grave so easily.

~ Steve Berry

To regret your soul is to regret your past.

~ Claire North

I was astonished by his complete lack of self-pity. Morrie, who could no longer dance, swim, bathe, or walk; Morrie, who could no longer answer his own door, dry himself after a shower, or even roll over in bed. How could he be so accepting? I watched him struggle with a fork, picking at a piece of tomato, missing it the first two times - a pathetic scene, and yet I could not deny that sitting in his presence was almost magically serene, the same calm breeze that soothed me back in college.

~ Mitch Albom

Look to the past only to find ways to improve your present and future, never to find regrets. Don’t let what has happened in the past limit your life now. Let your past expand your life.

~ Avina Celeste

For the past 32 years, I've done nothing outside the entertainment business. I've had some real highs and some real lows, but I love the work so much that I never once thought of quitting.

~ Meat Loaf

Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way.

~ Edna Ferber

Madly, futilely, I wrote novel after novel, eight in all, that failed to find a publisher. I persisted because for me the novel was the supreme literary form - not just one among many, not a relic of the past, but the way we communicate to one another the subtlest truths about this business of living.

~ William Nicholson

We are at a crossroads in the music business: with the rise of the internet, the world we live in has changed, and the past is not coming back. But I see the glass as half-full: the internet and social networking are new avenues for the next Bob Dylan to be born on.

~ Jon Bon Jovi

We cannot change our past. We can not change the fact that people act in a certain way. We can not change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.

~ Charles R. Swindoll

Happiness is in our own hearts. I have no regrets of anything in the past. I'm totally cheerful and happy, and I think that a lot of your attitude is not in the circumstances you find yourself in, but in the circumstances you make for yourself.

~ Maeve Binchy

Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future.

~ Saul Alinsky

What was past was past. I suppose that was the general attitude.

~ V. S. Naipaul

A society is defined as much by how it comes to terms with its past as by its attitude toward the future: its memories are no less revealing than its aims.

~ Octavio Paz

I feel like I have as good a shot as anybody out there and I have gotten close in the past, so why not have the attitude that I can come out and play great tennis and maybe even win this tournament.

~ Michael Chang

Even with, or perhaps, because of, this background, I have over the past few years sensed a very dramatic change in attitude on the part of Prince Edward Islanders towards the on-going rush for so-called modernization.

~ Alex Campbell

I don't want to take the escalators. Give me the stairs that have the dips and the two old ladies that are blocking it and they've got an attitude, and they don't want you to go past them.

~ Rj Cyler

Faith is not simply a patience that passively suffers until the storm is past. Rather, it is a spirit that bears things - with resignations, yes, but above all, with blazing, serene hope.

~ Corazon Aquino

Over the past few years, the road to confrontation has shown its consequences: loss of innocent lives, destruction and fear. Most costly, however, was the loss of hope. The most precious gift that you can present to your peoples over the coming weeks is renewed hope born out of tangible progress on the ground.

~ Abdullah Ii Of Jordan

The way you remember the past depends upon your hope for the future. And if what you see in your future has no hope, it has no potential, then you view the past that brought you to here as not very good.

~ Story Musgrave

Because they're my stories, they're my version of events of the past three years. But I really hope people can hear their own stories within the songs and they can become our version of events.

~ Emeli Sande

I'm involved in quite a few ministries as a bridge builder, trying to match generous givers and donors to other ministries. Based on my past, I'm also involved in mainly the prison ministry. I go to jails and prisons and share my story, trying to give them some hope.

~ Lex Luger

Some leaders think time will solve the problem. Their hope is that Assad's regime will ultimately fall from the heavy toll of the horrors it has spawned. From past experience with such regimes, this scenario is unlikely to happen.

~ Ahmed Zewail

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

~ Gore Vidal

I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going. I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment. I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place.

~ Maya Angelou

We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.

~ George Santayana

You can't allow tradition to get in the way of innovation. There's a need to respect the past, but it's a mistake to revere your past.

~ Bob Iger

What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared.

~ Doris Lessing

I will not speak with disrespect of the Republican Party. I always speak with respect of the past.

~ Woodrow Wilson

Although I think of myself as the greatest heavyweight, I do respect the legends of the past for what they did. But they are not my heroes.

~ Tyson Fury

We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.

~ Joseph Joubert

Assuredly, Loving Souls, you should go to God with all humility and respect, humbling yourselves in His presence, especially when you remember your past ingratitude and sins.

~ Alphonsus Liguori

You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

~ Richard Bach

The leaders who we admire who have been able to bring great change in the past - Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela - they're all inspirational religious leaders and smart tacticians. It would be nice to find the Muslim Gandhi, wouldn't it?

~ Dennis C. Blair

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

~ Thomas Jefferson

I think there are a number of things that you can do to encourage your kids' dreams, but I do believe in speaking by experience of having a lot of help along the way, stumbling in the past. We've all stumbled, and we certainly all deserve to get up and walk again.

~ Dwayne Johnson

Hold on to your dream. Don't let past failures or dire economic forecasts make you a pessimist. Keep your youthful dreams alive and create your own opportunities.

~ Paul Zane Pilzer

Everybody past a certain age, regardless of how they look on the outside, pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.

~ Douglas Coupland