The worst time is always the present.
—Jean de La Fontaine (1621–95) French Poet, Short Story Writer
Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.
—William Penn (1644–1718) American Entrepreneur, Political leader, Philosopher
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The people who get into trouble in our company are those who carry around the anchor of the past.
—Jack Welch (1935–2020) American Businessperson
There is (as I now find) no remorse for time long past, even for what may have mortified us or made us ashamed of ourselves when it was happening: there is a pleasant panoramic sense of what it all was and how it all had to be. Why, if we are not vain or snobbish, need we desire that it should have been different? The better things we missed may yet be enjoyed or attained by someone else somewhere: why isn’t that just as good? And there is no regret, either, in the sense of wishing the past to return, or missing it: it is quite real enough as it is, there at its own date and place
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
—Buddhist Teaching
The past always looks better than it was; it’s only pleasant because it isn’t here.
—Finley Peter Dunne (1867–1936) American Author, Writer, Humorist
Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity.
—John Adams (1735–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
Look back, and smile at perils past.
—Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Lawyer
Only sick music makes money today.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Mr. Meant-to has a friend, his name is Didn’t-Do. Have you met them? They live together in a house called Never-Win. And I am told that it is haunted by the Ghost of Might-have-Been.
—Marva Collins (b.1936) American Educator
A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don’t find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.
—J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) Scottish Novelist, Dramatist
The beauty of the past is that it is the past. The beauty of the now is to know it. The beauty of the future is to see where one is going.
—Indian Proverb
With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look.
—James E. Burke (1925–2012) American Business Executive
Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (c.43 BCE–c.18 CE) Roman Poet
The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjects—making it possible… to see a new beauty in what is vanishing.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
In the maxim of the past you cannot go anywhere.
—Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) Russian Writer, Dramatist, Political Activist, Novelist
The general thrust these days is: Oh, come on, it’s all in the past, nobody’s interested any more, it didn’t work, everyone knows what the Americans are like, but stop being naive, this is the world, there’s nothing to be done about it and anyway fuck it, who cares? But let me put it this way-the dead are still looking at us, waiting for us to acknowledge our part in their murder.
—Harold Pinter (1930–2008) British Playwright
A man’s memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memorized glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow’s past.
—Mary Webb (1881–1927) English Novelist, Poet, Writer
I never look back, I look forward.
—Steffi Graf (b.1969) German Tennis Player, Philanthropist
There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternally new now that builds and creates itself out of the Best as the past withdraws.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
You can never plan the future by the past.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
The “good old times”—all times when old are good.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
The Golden Age was never the present Age.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put the past together again. So let’s remember: Don’t try to saw sawdust.
—Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American Self-Help Author
It is not the literal past, the “facts” of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.
—Brian Friel (1929–2015) Irish Dramatist, Short Story Writer
May you look back on the past with as much pleasure as you look forward to the future.
—Paul Dickson (b.1939) American Writer
If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time.
—Russell Hoban (1925–2011) American Novelist, Children’s Writer
The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, that the mind might perform its functions without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Things without remedy, should be without regard; what is done, is done.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
They spend their time looking forward to the past.
—John Osborne (1929–94) English Playwright, Actor
The past is all holy to us; the dead are all holy; even they that were wicked when alive.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Nostalgia keeps dissolving the ironic narratives in which I have contained my past.
—Mason Cooley (1927–2002) American Aphorist
The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.
—Warren Buffett (b.1930) American Investor
God gave us memory that we might have roses in December.
—J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) Scottish Novelist, Dramatist
The past but lives in written words: a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L. P. Hartley (1895–1972) British Writer, Critic
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
If you want to succeed in your life, remember this phrase: The past does not equal the future. Because you failed yesterday; or all day today; or a moment ago; or for the last six months; the last sixteen years; or the last fifty years of life, doesn’t mean anything…All that matters is: What are you going to do, right now?
—Tony Robbins (b.1960) American Self-Help Author, Entrepreneur
Everyone knows the usefulness of the useful, but n o one knows the usefulness of the useless.
—Zhuang Zhou (c.369–c.286 BCE) Chinese Taoist Philosopher
Nothing is as new as something which as been long forgotten.
—German Proverb
The past should be a springboard, not a hammock.
—Ivern Ball (1926–92) American Writer, Aphorist
Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist