quotations about the past
The past is just such a retreat for me, I go there eagerly, rubbing my hands and shaking off the cold present and the colder future. And yet, what existence, really, does it have, the past? After all, it is only what the present was, once, the present that is gone, no more than that.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Sea
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
The past is always a rebuke to the present.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
"Fugitive's Reunion"
We are afraid to dwell upon the past, lest it should retard our future progress; the indulgence of ease is fatal to excellence; and to succeed in life, we lose the ends of being!
WILLIAM HAZLITT
"On the Past and Future", Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners
History-writing is a way of getting rid of the past.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
I think we all agree, the past is over.
GEORGE W. BUSH
Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000
The past is a closed door.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
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
We live in such constant nearness to the abyss of past time that the moment is endlessly sucked into.
JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN
Pulphead
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 the present, isn't it? It's the future too.
EUGENE O'NEILL
Long Day's Journey Into Night
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
The myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.
ZADIE SMITH
White Teeth
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
Evidence about the past is always partial, perspectival, and biased.
GEORGE WECKMAN
"Remembering the past", The Athens Messenger, April 1, 2016
To remember is to re-member, almost as if by re-membering we give something body again. It is no longer so much in the past, but being called to mind and brought into the present. To re-member is to re-present. And so we are saying that something in the past is not gone, it is here and now, in effect, if nothing else.
PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA
"Past Painfully Present", America Magazine, March 28, 2016
Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
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
I cannot see, then, any rational or logical ground for that mighty difference in the value which mankind generally set upon the past and future, as if the one was everything, and the other nothing--of no consequence whatever. On the other hand, I conceive that the past is as real and substantial a part of our being, that it is as much a bona fide, undeniable consideration in the estimate of human life, as the future can possibly be. To say that the past is of no importance, unworthy of a moment's regard, because it has gone by, and is no longer anything, is an argument that cannot be held to any purpose; for if the past has ceased to be, and is therefore to be accounted nothing in the scale of good or evil, the future is yet to come, and has never been anything. Should any one choose to assert that the present only is of any value in a strict and positive sense, because that alone has a real existence, that we should seize the instant good, and give all else to the winds, I can understand what he means (though perhaps he does not himself); but I cannot comprehend how this distinction between that which has a downright and sensible, and that which has only a remote and airy existence, can be applied to establish the preference of the future over the past; for both are in this point of view equally ideal, absolutely nothing, except as they are conceived of by the mind's eye, and are thus rendered present to the thoughts and feelings. Nay, the one is even more imaginary, a more fantastic creature of the brain than the other, and the interest we take in it more shadowy and gratuitous; for the future, on which we lay so much stress, may never come to pass at all, that is, may never be embodied into actual existence in the whole course of events, whereas the past has certainly existed once, has received the stamp of truth, and left an image of itself behind.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
"On the Past and Future", Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners
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