210 Past Quotes

It is also possible within this lifetime to enhance the power of the mind, enabling one to reaccess memories from previous lives. Such recollection tends to be more accessible during meditative experiences in the dream state. Once one has accessed memories of previous lives in the dream state, one gradually recalls them in the waking state.

Tell me not here, it needs not saying, What tune the enchantress plays In aftermaths of soft September Or under blanching mays, For she and I were long acquainted And I knew all her ways.

No matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.

There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.

The past is necessarily inferior to the future. That is how we wish it to be. How could we acknowledge any merit in our most dangerous enemy: the past, gloomy prevaricator, execrable tutor?

One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.

You see, I have no real complaints of how you've left your past behind I guess what gets me worried is you've erased him from your mind.

Remember when the music Came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire And as we sang the words, it would set our minds on fire, For we believed in things, and so we'd sing.

There are moments in history when brooding tragedy and its dark shadows can be lightened by recalling great moments of the past.

Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.

We've uncovered some embarrassing ancestors in the not-too-distant past. Some horse thieves, and some people killed on Saturday nights. One of my relatives, unfortunately, was even in the newspaper business.

Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before?

We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

We need not destroy the past. It is gone.

I really thought that love would save us all.

I don't have any romanticism about any part of my past. I think of it only inasmuch as it gave me pleasure or helped me grow psychologically. That is the only thing that interests me about yesterday. I don't believe in yesterday, by the way. You know I don't believe in yesterday. I am only interested in what I am doing now.

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

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

People are always talking about the old days. They say that the old movies were better, that the old actors were so great. But I don't think so. All I can say about the old days is that they have passed.

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.

As of today, I have absolutely no regrets. I think I am a mature person who can take things in stride. I'm grateful for people in my past. They helped me get to where I am, wherever that is. But now, I am thinking for myself and sitting in on all the business transactions.

We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror.

The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last!

Till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!

Memory is not just the imprint of the past time upon us; it is the keeper of what is meaningful for our deepest hopes and fears.

What I assert, deny, question, in the present, I still can. But mostly I shall use the various tenses of the past. For mostly I do not know, it is perhaps no longer so, it is too soon to know, I simply do not know, perhaps shall never know.

I worked in Harrods as a sales girl and I was so lazy, I just sat on my arse all day. Now I have huge respect for shop girls. It was boring, so I tried to shoplift things, but we'd always get our bags checked.

The past was great no doubt, but I sincerely believe that the future will be more glorious still.

The past is what provides us with the building blocks. Our job today is to create new buildings out of them.

In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.

Ambition will take you And ride you too far and Conservatism bring you to boredom once more Sit down by the river And watch the stream flow Recall all the dreams That you once used to know The things you've forgotten That took you away To pastures not greener but meaner.

'And don't look back - something might be gaining on you'.

We two kept house, the Past and I, The Past and I; I tended while it hovered nigh, Leaving me never alone.

I can work, I can travel, I can sleep anywhere, cross every border with nothing to declare. You can look back babe, but it's best not to stare.

Why did you leave America? Why did you let me down? And now that things seem better off, Why do you come around? You know I just can't see you now In my new world crystal ball. You know I just can't free you now, That's not my job at all.

What chieftain, walking by himself, crying Most miserable, most victorious, Does not see these separate figures one by one, And yet see only one, in his old coat, His slouching pantaloons, beyond the town, Looking for what was, where it used to be?

I was a stricken deer that left the herd Long since.

Thou unrelenting Past! Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain, And fetters, sure and fast, Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.

Thackeray is everybody's past - is everybody's youth. Forgotten friends flit about the passages of dreamy colleges and unremembered clubs; we hear fragments of unfinished conversations, we see faces without names for an instant, fixed forever in some trivial grimace: we smell the strong smell of social cliques now quite incongruous to us; and there stir in all the little rooms at once the hundred ghosts of oneself.

Much converse do I find in thee, Historian of my infancy! Float near me; do not yet depart! Dead times revive in thee: Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art! A solemn image to my heart.

You can't cling to the past. Too many different things are coming into the world.

My lords, the past cannot be cured.

'I used to bang broads like they were going outta style. Back in them days you could bang 'em for about--10 at a time for a dime. We used to even make songs about it. (sings) Ten at a time for a dime, ten at a time for a DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME.' (from 'Kissel Sails')

Forgotten? No, we never do forget: We let the years go; wash them clean with tears, Leave them to bleach out in the open day, Or lock them careful by, like dead friends' clothes, Till we shall dare unfold them without pain, - But we forget not, never can forget.

It's a shame about your future It's a crime about your past.

'It is important that we continue to strengthen our economic and political progress. We can achieve this only if we can make an effort to face our past to allow relief and dignity for those who have experienced violations and to ensure that that pain is acknowledged. The root cause to our experience must also be effectively dealt with. This will involve all of us right across our society.'

And if it tortures you to know that another man was with her in her life, console yourself with this: he only knew her but the once

I hoped for your company. For many conversations' she thought about it, but in the end she shook her head. 'It would be too:hard for me. This is too hard for me. Seeing you brings back another life. A time when I was another person maybe now and then. Every few years

People always believer things were better - before

My strongest memories are yours

now we're busy making all our busy plans on foundations built to last but nothing fades as fast as the future and nothing clings like the past, until we can see more than this

I seems I lost my little homie he's a changed man/Hit the pen and now no sinnin is the game plan

All that you see was and is for your sake. The numerous books, uncanny markings, and beautiful thoughts are the ghosts of souls who preceded you. The speech they weave is a link between you and your human siblings. The consequences that cause sorrow and rapture are the seeds that the past has sown in the field of the soul, and by which the future shall profit.

It is also possible within this lifetime to enhance the power of the mind, enabling one to reaccess memories from previous lives. Such recollection tends to be more accessible during meditative experiences in the dream state. Once one has accessed memories of previous lives in the dream state, one gradually recalls them in the waking state.

There are places I remember All my life though some have changed Some forever not for better Some have gone and some remain

Who is there who has not felt a sudden startled pang at reliving an old experience or feeling an old emotion?

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow's joy is possible only if today's makes way for it; that each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one.

They pass upon their old, tremulous feet, Creeping with little satchels down the street, And they remember, many years ago, Passing that way in silks. They wander, slow And solitary, through the city ways, And they alone remember those old days Men have forgotten.

Oh, I've made love, yeah, I've been fucked, so what? I'm a cartoon, you're a full moon, let's stay up.

I reread? I lied! I don't dare to reread. I cannot reread. What's the point, for me, in rereading?

They used us as an excuse to go mad and then blamed it on us. Gandhi says create and preserve the image of your choice. The image of my choice is not Beatle George - those who want that can go and see Wings. Why live in the past? Be here now.

Friends are all souls that we've known in other lives. We're drawn to each other. That's how I feel about friends. Even if I've only known them for a day, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to wait till I've known them two years, because anyway we have met somewhere before, you know.

Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me?

Not only can no one predict the future, we don't understand the present - and there isn't even any certainty about the past.

We are divided of course between liking to feel the past strange and liking to feel it familiar.

If sentiment doesn't ultimately make fibbers of some people, their natural abominable memories almost certainly will.

Sometimes the little boy who calls me father brings me an invitation from his mother: 'I shall be so pleased if you will come and see me,' and I always reply in some such words as these: 'Dear madam, I decline.' And if David asks why I decline, I explain that it is because I have no desire to meet the woman. 'Come this time, father,' he urged lately, 'for it is her birthday, and she is twenty-six,' which is so great an age to David, that I think he fears she cannot last much longer.

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun, What strenuous singles we played after tea, We in the tournament - you against me!

In looking back, I see nothing to regret and little to correct.

I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born.

That was the dark side of me and a pretty dismal time in my life. It's like someone you used to know and wonder why things looked so ugly from his perspective. (2004)

Pretty much any drug you can name, I've done it. (1988)

I wasn't the best kid in the world, but I wasn't an ax murderer, either. (1988)

We lived in a small house, and nobody argued in a whisper. We were exposed to [my parents'] violent outbursts against each other. That stuff sticks. (2004)

I was married when I was 20. It was a strong bond with someone but I can't necessarily say I was in love. (1995)

It's here on my arm. It was the kind of thing you do on the spur of the moment - Fuck it, lets do it. Then you break up, but it's still there: a girl's name on my arm. (2004)

Jack Reacher stayed alive, because he got cautious. He got cautious because he heard an echo from his past. He had a lot of past, and the echo was from the worst part of it.

Procuremos mas ser padres de nuestro porvenir que hijos de nuestro pasado.

O Memory! thou fond deceiver.

Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is.

Usually quoted as: No man is rich enough to buy back his own past.

The whole day was strange, stunning, and it was a shattering experience. The past was disappearing, as if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere, as if I had dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else's story I have heard and somebody told it to me. I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted from my history, I was losing my autobiography. I was becoming a non-being, what Buddha calls anatta. Boundaries were disappearing, distinctions were disappearing.

I've done a lot worse than jump off piers, son. Like throw a television out the window.

It took a lot of water to down just that fucking bat's head, let me tell you. It's still stuck in my fucking throat, after all these years. People all over the world say, 'You're the guy who kills creatures? You still do it? You do it every night?' It happened fucking once, for Christ's sake.

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'.(quoting John Greenleaf Whittier)

I once got engaged to his daughter Honoria, a ghastly dynamic exhibit who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rockbound coast.

Our politics are our deepest form of expression: they mirror our past experiences and reflect our dreams and aspirations for the future.

One faces the future with one's past.

The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.