quotations about the past
Men attach more or less importance to past and future events according as they are more or less engaged in action and the busy scenes of life. Those who have a fortune to make, or are in pursuit of rank and power, think little of the past, for it does not contribute greatly to their views: those who have nothing to do but to think, take nearly the same interest in the past as in the future. The contemplation of the one is as delightful and real as that of the other. The season of hope has an end; but the remembrance of it is left.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
"On the Past and Future", Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners
There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.
EUGENE O'NEILL
A Moon for the Misbegotten
The past is always a rebuke to the present.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
"Fugitive's Reunion"
Sometimes we need a map of the past. It helps us to understand the present, and to plan the future.
JOSEPHINE HART
Damage
The world to come must be composed of what is past. No other material is at hand.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Cities of the Plain
The past scampers like an alley cat through the present, leaving the paw prints of memories scattered helter-skelter.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
The past is a closed door.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
The myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.
ZADIE SMITH
White Teeth
History-writing is a way of getting rid of the past.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Handmaid's Tale
The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future too.
EUGENE O'NEILL
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Ye come and go incessant; we remain
Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past;
Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot,
Of faith so nobly realized as this.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Cathedral
Evidence about the past is always partial, perspectival, and biased.
GEORGE WECKMAN
"Remembering the past", The Athens Messenger, April 1, 2016
We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Atoms of Thought
Inheriting the past is to take part in a story that is still being told today.
LEO WU
"Where the past meets the present: Preserving historic homes in Alhambra", Alhambra Source, March 27, 2016
Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Dance Dance Dance
When we look back on our past there is often an element of fiction that enters the picture. The colours seem brighter or darker, the people more delightful or cruel, events are collapsed, mixed and reconfigured. Nevertheless our visions seem utterly convincing, at least to ourselves.
LAETITIA WILSON
"Questions at the heart of identity", The West Australian, April 1, 2016
It's harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future.
WILLIAM GIBSON
The Paris Review, summer 2011
Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
JANE AUSTEN
Pride and Prejudice
When it comes to the past, EVERYONE writes fiction.
STEPHEN KING
Joyland