Oscar Wilde
Writer
"Everyone may not be good, but there's always something good in everyone. Never judge anyone shortly because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."
Past quotes
Past
10.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Nelson Mandela
Political Leader
"Freedom can never be taken for granted. Each generation must safeguard it and extend it. Your parents and elders sacrificed much so that you should have freedom without suffering what they did. Use this precious right to ensure that the darkness of the past never returns."
Henry David Thoreau
Writer, Philosopher
"Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!"
Ramana Maharshi
Spiritual Teacher
"There is neither past nor future. There is only the present. Yesterday was the present to you when you experienced it, and tomorrow will be also the present when you experience it. Therefore, experience takes place only in the present, and beyond experience nothing exists."
Drake
Rapper, singer, songwriter
"No matter how dirty your past is, your future is still spotless."
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Past quotes (page 1 of 526)
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"When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul-then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness."
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"A nation that forgets its past has no future."
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"The past is never dead. It's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always."
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"Suddenly she realized that what she was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be."
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"The only person with whom you have to compare ourselves, is that you in the past. And the only per-son better you should be, this is who you are now."
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"Do not look back, No one knows how the world ever began. Do not fear the future, Nothing lasts forever. If you dwell on the past or future, You will miss the moment."
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"Love is within us. It cannot be destroyed. It can be ignored. To the extent that we abandon love we will feel it has abandoned us. Denying love is our only problem, and embracing it is the only answer. Through the power of love, we can let go of past history and begin again. Love heals, forgives, and makes whole."
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"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly. . . Live each moment completely and the future will take care of itself. Fully enjoy the wonder and beauty of each moment."
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"Perfecting the past blurs your focus of the future."
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"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."
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"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth."
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"Place your burden at the feet of the Lord of the universe who is ever victorious and accomplishes everything. Remain all the time steadfast in the heart, in the Transcendental Absolute. God knows the past, present and future. He will determine the future for you and accomplish the work. What is to be done will be done at the proper time. Don't worry. Abide in the heart and surrender your acts to the Divine."
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"The leader of the past was a person who knew how to tell. The leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask."
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"We must abandon completely the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation we're in and reverse our thinking and see that the past always flows back from the present. That now is the creative point of life. So you see it's like the idea of forgiving somebody, you change the meaning of the past by doing that...Also, watch the flow of music. The melody as its expressed is changed by notes that come later. Just as the meaning of a sentence...you wait till later to find out what the sentence means...The present is always changing the past."
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"The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds."
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"From your past emerges the present, and from the present is born your future."
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"There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future."
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"I'm more interested in the future than in the past, because the future is where I intend to live."
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"It isn't the past which holds us back, it's the future; and how we undermine it, today."
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"A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past."
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