PAST QUOTES IV
quotations about the past
But we look ahead to the far off skies,
For the years are flying fast,
And we know that the present that round us lies
Ere the light of a few more moments dies,
Will with many loved and severed ties
Fade into the mist-veiled past.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"The Beautiful Past"
If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other ... for only out of the past can you make the future.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
All the King's Men
It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.
CHARLES DICKENS
David Copperfield
A long future requires a long past.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
You always romanticize the past as soon as the future begins to frighten you.
RICK REMENDER
Uncanny X-Force, No. 16, December 2011
Our most merciless enemy is our past.
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
Whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it.
BARACK OBAMA
speech, June 4, 2009
See, there's nothing wrong with the past; the past is a good thing, but that's not all there is.
PAT BENATAR
interview, AV Club, August 26, 1997
The past is such a curious creature,
To look her in the face
A transport may reward us,
Or a disgrace --
EMILY DICKINSON
"The past is such a curious creature"
The world is weary of the past,
Oh, might it die or rest at last!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Hellas
When I think over the past, I am like a person whose eyes cannot properly measure distances and is liable to think things extremely remote which on examination prove to be quite near.
ANDRE GIDE
If It Die
The past is gained, secure, and on record.
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 1, 1845
Youth, hope, and love:
To build a new life on a ruined life,
To make the future fairer than the past,
And make the past appear a troubled dream.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The Masque of Pandora
Beyond here lies nothin'
But the mountains of the past
BOB DYLAN
"Beyond Here Lies Nothin'"
What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
JOHN ASHBERY
"37 Haiku"
All the past is not worth one today.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"New Year"
Old events have modern meanings; only that survives
Of past history which finds kindred in all hearts and lives.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Mahmood the Image-Breaker"
Creativity and innovation always builds on the past. The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it. Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past. Ours is less and less a free society.
LAWRENCE LESSIG
keynote address at the Open Source Convention, OSCON, July 24, 2002
It is not that I have no past. Rather, it continually fragments on the terrible and vivid ephemera of now.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Dhalgren
How easy it is to destroy the past and how difficult to forget it.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body