Best 10290 quotes in «past quotes» category

The idea of the past is as useless as the idea of the future. Both could be invoked by anybody about anything. There is never any more beauty than there is now. There is no more joy or sorrow or wonder than there is now, nor perfection, nor any more evil nor any more good than there is now.

The influence of the future on the past," said Morel enthusiastically, almost inaudibly.

Their message will never be decoded… because people have no patience to listen to it in an age when the accumulation of messages old and new is such that their voices cancel one another out. Today history is no more than a thin thread of the remembered stretching over an ocean of the forgotten, but time moves on, and an epoch of millennia will come which the inextensible memory of the individual will be unable to encompass; whole centuries and millennia will therefore fall away, centuries of painting and music, centuries of discoveries, of battles, of books, and this will be dire, because man will lose the notion of his self, and his history, unfathomable, unencompassable, will shrivel into a few schematic signs destitute of all sense.

Their message will never be decoded, not only because there is no key to it, but also because people have no patience to listen to it in an age when the accumulation of messages old and new is such that their voices cancel one another out. Today history is no more than a thin thread of the remembered stretching over an ocean of the forgotten, but time moves on, and an epoch of millennia will come which the inextensible memory of the individual will be unable to encompass; whole centuries and millennia will therefore fall away, centuries of painting and music, centuries of discoveries, of battles, of books, and this will be dire, because man will lose the notion of his self, and his history, unfathomable, unencompassable, will shrivel into a few schematic signs destitute of all sense.

Their past is littered with the unburied bodies of the people they chose never to become.

The key is not to drop or erase our past or our consciousness but to observe and understand it.

The lessons of past is critical for teachings in present. And experience in the future.

The lyrics will soothe the soul, The heart will pound with each love song. Soon in him, I will find a friend! His charm will prolong. A new phase, Happiness shall finally last, One day, the rays of the sun; I say, Will erase the shadows of the past.

The me I am is not the me I was.

The mind would rather fret about the future or pine over the past — so the mind can cling to its own illusion of control. But the current moment? It cannot be controlled. And what a mind can’t control, it tends to discount. Brush past ... over. It’s the battle plan of the enemy of the soul — to keep us blind to this current moment, the one we can’t control, to keep us blind to Him, the One who controls everything.

The modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror, with which it regards the past. It is propelled towards the coming time; it is, in the exact words of the popular phrase, knocked into the middle of next week. And the goad which drives it on thus eagerly is not an affectation for futurity Futurity does not exist, because it is still future. Rather it is a fear of the past; a fear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past also. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind. There have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold; so many harsh heroisms that we cannot imitate; so many great efforts of monumental building or of military glory which seem to us at once sublime and pathetic. The future is a refuge from the fierce competition of our forefathers. The older generation, not the younger, is knocking at our door. It is agreeable to escape, as Henley said, into the Street of By-and-Bye, where stands the Hostelry of Never. It is pleasant to play with children, especially unborn children. The future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past I find already covered with illegible scribbles, such as Plato, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Napoleon. I can make the future as narrow as myself; the past is obliged to be as broad and turbulent as humanity. And the upshot of this modern attitude is really this: that men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.

The mirror sighed and spoke in a tone tinged with melancholy. Its language was old and not of any of the worlds known or unknown. What you dream, what you darkly desire, Find it by trial or by fire. Seek it high and seek it low, Search the skies or the realms below. Look everywhere but beware, The deepest magic, the strongest spell Will not change what the stars foretell.

The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of living in the present!

The more she tried to forget, the more she remembered.

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

The only way to predict the future is to create it. You don't let it happen. You make it happen. How? Stop regretting the past and start learning from it. Let go of guilt by leaning into God's grace. Quit beating yourself up and let the Spirit of God heal your heart. You cannot divorce yourself from the past. You are married to it forever. But God wants to reconcile your past by redeeming it. God is in the recycling business; He makes recycled goods out of wasted lives.

The old world is dropping and receding away. I am not bothered about the future. All that we have is this moment, this moment of now.

The opposite of a correct statement is an incorrect statement. The opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth (Niels Bohr)." By this, he means that we require a larger reading of the human past, of our relations with each other, the universe and God, a retelling of our older tales to encompass many truths and to let us grow with change.

The Old Days, the Lost Days -- in the half-closed eyes of memory (and in fact) they never marched across a calendar; they huddled round a burning log, leaned on a certain table, or listened to those certain songs.

The only reason time seems to be moving rather fast is that sometimes we’re too busy living in the past.

...the passage of time, which transformed the volatile present into that finished, unalterable painting called the past, a canvas man always executed blindly, with erratic brushstrokes that only made sense when one stepped far enough away from it to be able to admire it as a whole. -pg. 19

The past, has been erased; the present, forgiven; and the future, redeemed.

The past informs our present and our future.

The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future. It's depressing if you spend too much time reliving old joys. You think you'll never have anything as good again.

The past became a long, razor-sharp skewer that stabbed right through his heart. Silent silver pain shot through him, transforming his spine to a pillar of ice. The pain remained, unabated. He held his breath, shut his eyes tight, enduring the agony.

The past cannot hurt you. It’s all in your head.

The past has a way of catching up with you.

The past is a hotel. You can visit any time; enjoy the view. But you can't live there. The cost is to high.

The past is always beautiful. So, for that matter, is the future. Only the present hurts, and we carry it around like an abscess of suffering, our compassion between two infinities of happiness and peace.

The past is as easy to travel into as turning the pages of a book...

The past is bound to be fragmentary, bound to be reconstructed, bound to be reinvented. It serves only to collect the truths of today. If our present is the child of the past, our past is the child of the present. And the future will be the harvester of our bastard offspring.

The past is dust. It disappears behind us. There is no way back.

The past embraces the future The future embraces the past They are both intertwined Linked in all eternity

The past/future can't be changed! The things which are written to happen, they can't be skipped.

The past has great treasure. The present has extraordinary riches. The future has exponential wealth.

The past is a novel, written by Fate, weaving the same themes: love and its glory, hate and its prisoners, the soul and its price. Our decisions become narratives: fated choices that unknowably change the course of the living river. In the present, where decisions and connections are made, Fate waits on the riverbank of Story, leaving us to our mistakes and miracles, because it’s our will alone that leads us to one or the other.

The past is behind us," said Boudicca,"but the difficulty there is we keep looking over our shoulders.

The past is dangerous, not least because it cannot go away. It is simply there, never to change, and in its constancy it reflects the eternity of God. It presents to the young mind a vast field of fascination, of war and peace, loyalty and treason, invention and folly, bitter twists of fate and sweet poetic justice. When that past is the past of one's people or country or church, then the danger is terrible indeed, because then the past makes claims upon our honor and allegiance. Then it knocks at the door, saying softly, "I am still here." And then our plans for social control—for inducing the kind of amnesia that has people always hankering after what is supposed to be new, without asking inconvenient questions about where the desirable thing has come from and where it will take us—must fail. For a man with a past may be free; but a man without a past, never.

The past is far behind. If you still want to look at it, you will painfully stretch your neck muscles. Don't live in the past, leave the past, but learn from it.

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.

The past is already documented and the present is taking shape with every moment, but the future is always in-view.

The past is but an untraceable footfall It appears in intervals and pushes us back in time, In those moments of grief and then suddenly vanishes. It’s often dark and ruthless. It baffles our thoughts and seizes our peace of mind. By making us recollect our failures, our buried expectations And our shattered dreams It only gives way to fleeting tears, leaving us with fruitless guilt. It wrecks our present and ruins our future And thus should be left where it is meant to be It should be left behind …

The past is called the past for a reason. If you are constantly looking behind you, your eyes aren't on the road ahead. You don't drive the car that way, so why should you live your life that way?

The past is gold. The present is diamonds. The future is rubies. Eternity is a priceless treasure.

The past is no illusion. The universe is additive. / Die Vergangenheit ist keine Illusion. Das Universum ist additiv.

The past is rich history. The present is sacred inscription. The future is yet to be written.

The past is the past. It’s the present we should worry about.

The past wasn’t a guest you could ask to leave when you tired of its company. No, the past put up its feet and meant to stay.

The past is never past and the present was seeming increasingly absent. --Here Tomorrow

The past is the occupational realm of historians—their daily work—and scholars have debated what their stance toward these social issues should be. As citizens and professionals, historians may naturally form a desire, as Carl Becker puts it, “to do work in the world.” That is, they might aspire to write history that is not only of scholarly value but also has a salutary impact in society. Becker defines the appropriate impact and the historian’s proper role as “correcting and rationalizing for common use Mr. Everyman’s mythological adaption of what actually happened.” That process is never simple, however, when the subject involves divisions so deep that they led to civil wars. One issue that inevitably leads to controversy is the extent to which history involves moral judgment. Another is the power of myths, exerting their influence on society and acting in opposition to the findings of historical research [190—91].