Past quotes
10.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"When we reflect on our past sentiments and affections, our thought is a faithful mirror, and copies its objects truly; but the colours which it employs are faint and dull, in comparison of those in which our original perceptions were clothed."
"The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit."
"Everything that is past is either a learning experience to grow on, a beautiful memory to reflect on, or a motivating factor to act upon."
"In the process of letting go you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself. It will be a permanent Self, rooted in awareness and creativity. Once you have captured this, you have captured the world."
"In the past few decades, there has been a revolution in how we perceive the body. What appears to be an object, a three-dimensional anatomical structure, is actually a process, a constant flow of energy and information."
"Because of the attitude of a few mental dinosaurs intent on exploiting our initial success, Brian's huge talent has never been fully appreciated in America and the potential of the group has been stifled.... If the Beatles had suffered this kind of misrepresentation, they would have never got past singing 'Please Please Me' and 'I WannaHold Your Hand' and leaping around in Beatle suits."
"As human beings, even if we were to have tried to forget the past, if you dealt with it in a cavalier fashion, it would return to haunt you."
"But even after the first week, when Hart got out of the presidential race because of the Washington Post's threat to reveal a long-term relationship Hart had apparently been having with a prominent Washington woman, the media continued to embellish my past."
"Time affords us the ability to blame past errors on others while whole heartedly pronouncing our futures successes."
"How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?"
"My past is not pleasant; I grew up in a very tough town, Waterbury, Connecticut. I grew up in New York, too, but Waterbury was tougher."
"The free world must not prove itself worthy of its own past."
"Laughter allows us to get past the fear of death."
"There's an old African proverb that says "If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." We have to go far - quickly. And that means we have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing, and why we have to work to solve it."
"It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present."
"For who can wonder that man should feel a vague belief in tales of disembodied spirits wandering through those places which they once dearly affected, when he himself, scarcely less separated from his old world than they, is for ever lingering upon past emotions and bygone times, and hovering, the ghost of his former self, about the places and people that warmed his heart of old?"
"In view of our public pledges, we public officials can never again go before the public merely promising election reform. The time for promises is past."
"The subject-matter of Archaeology is threefold-the Oral, the Written and the Monumental."
"I took my AlDS test. You start reflecting... You start thinking about every nasty, skank-ass... It's like the movie Scrooge, and the Ghost of Pussy Past comes."
"Past scholars studied to improve themselves; Today's scholars study to impress others."
