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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"The Raven's house is built with reeds, — Sing woe, and alas is me! And the Raven's couch is spread with weeds, High on the hollow tree; And the Raven himself, telling his beads In penance for his past misdeeds, Upon the top I see."
"Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of memories. If I am going to have a true memory, there are a thousand things that must first be forgotten. Memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. A memory that is not alive to the present does not remember the here and now, does not remember its true identity, is not memory at all. He who remembers nothing but facts and past events, and is never brought back into the present, is a victim of amnesia."
"On the stage it is always now; the personages are standing on that razor-edge, between the past and the future, which is the essential character of conscious being."
"This is not my phrase, but if you're stuck in the past, then you're depressed. If you're stuck in the future, then you're anxious."
"We are runaway slaves from our own past, and only by turning to face the hounds can we find our freedom beyond them."
"I like to relax and lie in the water. It is the way I calm myself down. But every time I walk past my bathroom, I go in and I put on some perfume. I use different perfumes for different moods. If I feel that I need to calm down, I put on certain fragrances that are more sensual. If I feel that I need to energize, I put on something else. Fragrance for me is so important."
"Your imagination is ten times more potent than your willpower. Unleashed, it provides a sense of certainty and tenacious vision that goes far beyond any limitation of the past."
"you cannot let the pain of the past destroy the happiness of the future."
"It had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping laugh. She had forgotten how deep and down it could be. So different from the miscellaneous giggles and smiles she had learned to be content with these past few years."
"Poets say science takes away from the beauty of stars-mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? ...What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it."
"To be sure, the ancient belief that the dream reveals the future is not entirely devoid of truth. By representing to us a wish as fulfilled the dream certainly leads us into the future; but this future, taken by the dreamer as present, has been formed into the likeness of that past by the indestructible wish."
"Those interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear, without having so much as a smile for the young future."
"Pleasure must succeed to pleasure, else past pleasure turns to pain"
"I would like to say that I have software that allows me to model worlds to a high degree of scientific plausibility. I'd also like to be six foot two and fifteen years into my reign as Emperor of Europa. The simple truth is that past the character's name and a long history of making my own body cover distances, I did very little in the way of targeted research."
"If we live out of our memory, we're tied to the past and to that which is finite. When we live out of our imagination, we're tied to that which is infinite."
"Acquired characteristics are inherited in technology and culture. Lamarckian evolution is rapid and accumulative. It explains the cardinal difference between our past, purely biological mode of change, and our current, maddening acceleration toward something new and liberating- or toward the abyss."
"The past is obdurate."
"Your current conditions are echoes of your past choices."
"Although your past has been painful devastating or cruel God has promised to be a Restorer and a Redeemer. He says He will "give us gladness in proportion to our former misery " and "replace the evil years with good"."
"When you choose to focus on today and all the possibilities that lie ahead you automatically release your grip on yesterday. Layers of the past gradually fall away and you are soon set free"
