Past quotes
10.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"I just turned 30 so I got really introspective as you do, questioning my life. And when I stopped and sort of looked back at the past decade, I realized I had done more work than I thought I had done."
"Not to be born is, past all prizing, best."
"The experiences of your past life which are stored within come up to the surface to be rejected. By rejecting all these by and by the inside will have to be cleansed."
"True repentance has a double aspect. It looks upon things past with a weeping eye, and upon the future with a watchful eye."
"To pine for an alternative past is a waste of energy. In the pristine world of your infinite spiritual self, there is no sin or negative energy. There is only compassion, learning, and unconditional love and forgiveness. Remind yourself and those around you of this fact. In the light of God, everything is healed and seen to be perfect."
". . . the mind is desperate to fix the river {of events} in place: Possessed by ideas of the past, preoccupied with images of the future, it overlooks the plain truth of the moment."
"I understood that all the material of a literary work was in my past life, I understood that I had acquired it in the midst of frivolous amusements, in idleness, in tenderness and in pain, stored up by me without my divining its destination or even its survival, as the seed has in reserve all the ingredients which will nourish the plant."
"No thought about the past or future can pull you away from your present peace and joy. The universe exists in this present moment. No desire can pull you away from this present peace, not even the desire to become a Buddha or the desire to save all beings. Know that to become a Buddha and to save all beings can only be realized on the foundation of the pure peace of the present moment."
"If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were."
"Universal peace as a result of cumulative effort through centuries past might come into existence quickly - not unlike a crystal that suddenly forms in a solution which has been slowly prepared. Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity."
"In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically."
"If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable - what then?"
"You know the puritan ethic that started out four centuries ago in this country, needless to say - at least for the moment - a thing of the past - from what I can tell."
"The Ganga to me is the symbol of India's memorable past which has been flowing into the present and continues to flow towards the ocean of the future."
"In America we have the greatest chance for opportunity than anyone else in the past six and a half thousand years. Never in recorded history have so many different gifts from all over the world been deposited in one country."
"Sometime we get so addicted to murmuring about the past and blaming the past for everything that we miss our whole future. You're not going to enjoy your future, and you're not going to enjoy your right now, if all you can do is be guilty and ashamed and afraid of your past."
"[W]e are the heirs of a past of rope, fire, and murder. I for one am not ashamed of this past. My shame is for those who became so inhuman that they could inflict this torture upon us."
"The prosperity and advancement of a nation depend upon its intelligentsia, and Muslim India is looking forward to her young generation and education classes to give a bold lead for our guidance and a brilliant record of histrorical achievements and traditions."
"It’s what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future."
"Thank Heaven! The crisis /The danger is past, and the lingering illness, is over at last /, and the fever called ''Living'' is conquered at last."
