Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
God cannot alter the past, that is why he is obliged to connive at the existence of historians.
—Samuel Butler
The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, knowing that once it was all that was humanly possible.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.
—Colette (1873–1954) French Novelist, Performer
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L. P. Hartley (1895–1972) British Writer, Critic
Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former flow and pageant.
—Washington Irving (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.
—Cicero (106BCE–43BCE) Roman Philosopher, Orator, Politician, Lawyer
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
The historian looks backward. In the end he also believes backward.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Regretting the past is like chasing after the wind.
—Russian Proverb
If you are carrying strong feelings about something that happened in your past, they may hinder your ability to live in the present.
—Les Brown
The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.
—Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) British Essayist, Caricaturist, Novelist
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
The moments of the past do not remain still; they retain in our memory the motion which drew them towards the future, towards a future which has itself become the past, and draw us on in their train.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
What’s gone and past help, should be past grief.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
That past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on some past that went before it.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael (1766–1817) French Woman of Letters
What you need to know about the past is that no matter what has happened, it has all worked together to bring you to this very moment. And this is the moment you can choose to make everything new. Right now.
—Unknown
All the past died yesterday; the future is born today.
—Chinese Proverb
The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.
—Walter Benjamin
Better by far you should forget and smile, than that you should remember and be sad.
—Christina Rossetti (1830–94) English Poet, Hymn Writer
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
The past, though it cannot be relived, can always be repaired.
—John La Farge (1835–1910) American Artist, Writer
The illusion that times that were are better than those that are has probably pervaded all ages.
—Horace Greeley (1811–72) American Elected Rep, Politician, Reformer, Editor
Bring the past only if you are going to build from it.
—Domenico Cieri (b.1954) Mexican Author, Aphorist
When you’re used to getting just a piece of bread for a meal, you don’t realize that you can ask for a plate of pasta. You have never seen a plate of pasta. You don’t even know it exists. So, to ask for it is totally out of your reality. Hopefully, at some point, either someone shows you a plate of pasta, you read about it, or you hear about it enough so that it becomes real, and it’s not just a fantasy anymore, and then you start thinking “Hey, I want that pasta”.
—Barbara De Angelis (b.1951) American Self-Help Author
The past is for us, but the sole terms on which it can become ours are its subordination to the present.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
Human life may be regarded as a succession of frontispieces. The way to be satisfied is never to look back.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist