Past quotes
10.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside past — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Think about it: No matter who you are, the past plays a large part in your life. I am all about living in the present as best as I can. Try as I might, there is only so much I am able to achieve on this front."
"I'm 36 and if I met a woman of my own age and married her, I'd also be marrying her former life, her past. It might be OK for some people - I don't want to judge it or anything - but it's not for me. It would destroy my creativity."
"Where the past is venerated the clean and those who clean things up should be kept out. Piety is never happy without a little dust, dirt, and rubbish."
"I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth the past ones: for he is willing to succumb through the present ones."
"All human life is sunk deep in untruth; the individual cannot pull it out of this well without growing profoundly annoyed with his entire past, without finding his present motives (like honor) senseless, and without opposing scorn and disdain to the passions that urge one on to the future and to the happiness in it."
"History, insofar as it accustoms human beings to comprehend the whole of the past and to hasten forward with its conclusions into the far future, conceals the boundaries of birth and death, which enclose the life of the human being so narrowly and oppressively, and with a kind of optical illusion, expands his short existence into endless space, leading the individual imperceptibly over into humanity."
"Like a dart the present glances, Silent stands the past sublime."
"Occasionally I was so much better that I could go out; but the streets used to put me in such a rage that I would lock myself up for days rather than go out, even if I were well enough to do so! I could not bear to see all those preoccupied, anxious-looking creatures continuously surging along the streets past me! Why are they always anxious? What is the meaning of their eternal care and worry? It is their wickedness, their perpetual detestable malice-that's what it is-they are all full of malice, malice!"
"Thanks to my ridiculous, sometimes tragic, and always unsteady upbringing, I was given the gift of bone-crushing insecurity. One thing you'll notice about people with mental problems is constant self-absorbation. I think that's because it's such a struggle just to be who they are, so they have a hard time getting past it."
"America was different. America was a river, roarng along, unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins."
"the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion"
"And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold."
"You have think tanks like the widely respected Atlantic Council that have published reports in the past year that have called Afghanistan a failing state."
"And let to-day embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing."
"And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless? But if in you thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons, And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing."
"Medicine has made all its progress during the past fifty years. ... How many operations that are now in use were known fifty years ago?-they were not operations, they were executions."
"The human race was always interesting and we know by its past that it will always continue so, monotonously."
"If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the pompous "wisdom" of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error."
"It’s a cat. Boy, you couldn’t slip anything past me tonight."
"My God", he whispered. What have I done to her? He thought, humbled. The spell was broken, but it wasn't sealed, and her soul was bare to him, the scars of her tragic past and her triumphs over pain and her aching need to find her place. He just wanted to hold her to him and tell her it would be okay, that she had survived and was beautiful."
