PAST QUOTES III
quotations about the past
But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
All the strange, checkered past seems to crowd upon my mind.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech, February 11, 1861
The past is a towering mansion.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The past is a mist.
HAROLD PINTER
Moonlight
A long future requires a long past.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.
ÉMILE ZOLA
The Masterpiece
Over the trackless past, somewhere,
Lie the lost days of our tropic youth,
Only regained by faith and prayer,
Only recalled by prayer and plaint,
Each lost day has its patron saint!
BRET HARTE
"The Lost Galleon"
It is yesterday that makes tomorrow so sad.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
A good knowledge of things past is an armour against events to come.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Our yesterdays
Are like a lonely and a ruined land
Wherein a breeze of recollection sighs--
A fading land to which is no return.
HENRY ABBEY
"Invocation to the Sun"
You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.
JODI PICOULT
The Storyteller
Who recollects distinctly his past adventures, knows his destiny to come.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.
KIRAN DESAI
The Inheritance of Loss
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
"Show Mr. and Mrs. F. to Number--"
With each passing moment I'm becoming part of the past. There is no future for me, just the past steadily accumulating.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
You always romanticize the past as soon as the future begins to frighten you.
RICK REMENDER
Uncanny X-Force, No. 16, December 2011
We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.
RICK WARREN
The Purpose Driven Life
Whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it.
BARACK OBAMA
speech, June 4, 2009
See, there's nothing wrong with the past; the past is a good thing, but that's not all there is.
PAT BENATAR
interview, AV Club, August 26, 1997