Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist
Again at Park Corner. We came up to Kensington yesterday evening and drove down here. It was a beautiful evening and our drive was delightful. Besides, for me it had the charm of old scenes revisited. And when we came over the Irishtown hills and saw the beautiful gulf again and heard its low distant murmur, I thought of another evening long ago.
—Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942) Canadian Novelist
Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title, James Spalding, or Charles Budgeon, and the passengers going the opposite way could read nothing at all—save “a man with a red moustache,” “a young man in gray smoking a pipe.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
The world’s history is constant, like the laws of nature, and simple, like the souls of men.
—Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German Poet, Dramatist
Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-born American Philosopher, Poet, Painter, Theologian, Sculptor
When I wanted to understand what is happening today, I try to decide what will happen tomorrow; I look back, a page of history is worth a volume of logic.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935) American Jurist, Author
Nor deem the irrevocable past
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.
—John Wayne (1907–79) American Actor, Director, Producer
Many people dream of success. To me success can only be achieved through repeated failures and introspections. In fact, success represents 1% of your work that results from the 99% that is called failure.
—Soichiro Honda (1906–91) Japanese Inventor
The first recipe for happiness is: Avoid too lengthy meditations on the past.
—Andre Maurois (1885–1967) French Novelist, Biographer
Despite some of the horrors and barbarisms of modern life which appall and grieve us, life in the twentieth century undeniably has-or has the potentiality of-such richness, joy and adventure as were unknown to our ancestors except in their dreams.
—Arthur Compton (1892–1962) American Physicist
This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Say not thou, what is the cause that the former days were better than these, for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
Old times never come back and I suppose it’s just as well. What comes back is a new morning every day in the year, and that’s better.
—George Edward Woodberry (1855–1930) American Literary Critic, Poet
We are told, “Let not the sun go down in your wrath,” but I would add, never act or write till it has done so. This rule has saved me from many an act of folly. It is wonderful what a different view we take of the same event four-and-twenty hours after it has happened.
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English Clergyman, Essayist, Wit
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.
—H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English Novelist, Historian, Social Thinker
It is the greatest good for an individual to discuss virtue (aka Kindness, Virtue, Goodness) every day…for the unexamined life is not worth living.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
Everything changes but change itself. Everything flows and nothing remains the same…You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go flowing ever on.
—Heraclitus (535BCE–475BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
Two things fill the mind with ever increasing wonder and awe. The more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
—Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) Prussian German Philosopher, Logician
The past is never dead, it is not even past.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
The ages of seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.
—Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Novelist
Retire into yourself as much as possible. Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one. People learn as they teach.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
Becoming rich isn’t as much about getting rich financially as about whom you become, in character and mind, to get rich. I want to share a secret with you that few people know: the fastest way to get rich and stay rich is to work on developing you! The idea is to grow yourself into a successful person. Again, your outer world is merely a reflection of your inner world. You are the root; your results are the fruits.
—T. Harv Eker (b.1954) American Motivational Speaker, Lecturer, Author
The biggest thing in today’s sorrow is the memory of yesterday’s joy.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-born American Philosopher, Poet, Painter, Theologian, Sculptor
The past is the best prophet of the future.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
There is one art of which every man should be a master—the art of reflection.—If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
How blessings brighten as they take their flight!
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
One must be thrust out of a finished cycle in life, and that leap is the most difficult to make—to part with one’s faith, one’s love, when one would prefer to renew the faith and recreate the passion.
—Anais Nin (1903–77) French-American Essayist
But evil is wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart.
—Thomas Hood (1799–1845) English Poet, Humorist
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
The individual (no matter how well-meaning he might be, no matter how much strength he might have, if only he would use it) does not have the passion to rip himself away from either the coils of Reflection or the seductive ambiguities of Reflection; nor do the surroundings and times have any events or passions, but rather provide a negative setting of a habit of reflection, which plays with some illusory project only to betray him in the end with a way out: it shows him that the most clever thing to do is nothing at all.
—Soren Kierkegaard (1813–55) Danish Philosopher, Theologian
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
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
Let the past drift away with the water.
—Japanese Proverb
Here lies my past, Goodbye I have kissed it; Thank you kids, I wouldn’t have missed it.
—Ogden Nash (1902–71) American Writer of Sophisticated Light Verse
A soul without reflection, like a pile without inhabitant, to ruin runs.
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
Never look for the birds of this year in the nests of the last.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
How the past perishes is how the future becomes.
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English Mathematician, Philosopher
O, happy the soul that saw its own faults.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–73) Persian Muslim Mystic
No past is dead for us, but only sleeping, love.
—Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–85) American Novelist, Civil Rights Activist
The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English Mathematician, Philosopher
People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.
—Augustine of Hippo (354–430) Roman-African Christian Philosopher
Deliberation. The act of examining one’s bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist
We believe at once in evil, we only believe in good upon reflection.—Is not this sad?
—Dorothee Luzy Dotinville (1747–1830) French Dancer, Actress
When you do The Work, you see who you are by seeing who you think other people are. Eventually you come to see that everything outside you is a reflection of your own thinking. You are the storyteller, the projector of all stories, and the world is the projected image of your thoughts.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
The past is our very being.
—David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Russian-born Israeli Head of State
Then is then. Now is now. We must grow to learn the difference.
—Unknown
The past will not tell us what we ought to do, but it will what we ought to avoid.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish Critic, Journalist, Philosopher
I look back on my life like a good day’s work; it is done and I am satisfied with it.
—Grandma Moses (1860–1961) American Painter, Artist