Past quotes
10.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside past — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Every one of course represents the spirit of his age, but there is an eternal aspect of the Spirit of every age which may be caught. To recreate the past from the mutilated fragments of the present is the task of the Historian."
"It is absurd to say that the age of miracles is past. It has not yet begun."
"The one charm about the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen."
"American girls are as clever at concealing their parents as English women are at concealing their past."
"Twice does he live who can enjoy the remembrance of the past."
"Fair Flora! Now attend thy sportful feast, Of which some days I with design have past; A part in April and a part in May Thou claim'st, and both command my tuneful lay; And as the confines of two months are thine To sing of both the double task be mine."
"The present is burdened too much with the past. We have not time, in our earthly existence, to appreciate what is warm with life, and immediately around us."
"The present is burthened too much with the past."
"Swlmmlng After swallowing some water at Changsha I taste a Wuchang fish in the surf and swim across the Yangtze River that winds ten thousand li. I see the entire Chu sky. Wind batters me, waves hit me-I don't care. Better than walking lazily in the patio. Today I have a lot of time. Here on the river the Master said "Dying-dying into the past-is like a river flowing.""
"It's funny, we all really, really got along. I don't know how it was in years past but this year, I was really with a good group of people. No one tried to sabotage each other or steal the other ones moments."
"The past will find a way to squeeze into the present–if you let it."
"The past is a very determined ghost, haunting every chance it gets."
"The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant."
"It's the post-literate generation that is most disturbing to a movie-maker. The explosions and the knifings. People like to go to what's hot and you can't get past a certain gross unless you involve children who go more than once."
"Venice is a place where the past is still hanging around, waiting for an appointment with the future; but the future hasn't shown up. In the meantime it is a kind of no man's land, given up by default and occupied by irregulars and their dogs."
"I'm nothing. Nothing at all without writing. Without truth, my truth, the only truth I know, it's all a gambol in the pasture without rhythm or sense."
"Time is like a river flowing endlessly through the universe. And if you poled your flatboat in that river you might fight your way against the current and travel upstream into the past. Or go with the flow and rush into the future. This was in a less cynical time before toxic waste dumping and pollution filled the waterway of Chronus with the detritus of empty hours wasted minutes years of repetition and time that has been killed."
"I'm really obsessed with the past."
"The harvest-home or supper is a thing of the past. To those who feel the fascination of the past this may appear sad, but it is not so really for, even while it existed, this surface goodwill was often an empty show."
"I do not compare the past with the present without a prejudice for either, but, great as the improvement in country life is in many respects, it seems a pity the old cheap, wholesome dishes have gone to make way for tinned and preserved foods."
