PAST QUOTES III
quotations about the past
A good knowledge of things past is an armour against events to come.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
All the strange, checkered past seems to crowd upon my mind.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech, February 11, 1861
You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.
JODI PICOULT
The Storyteller
A long future requires a long past.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
"Show Mr. and Mrs. F. to Number--"
Over the trackless past, somewhere,
Lie the lost days of our tropic youth,
Only regained by faith and prayer,
Only recalled by prayer and plaint,
Each lost day has its patron saint!
BRET HARTE
"The Lost Galleon"
But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.
ÉMILE ZOLA
The Masterpiece
We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.
RICK WARREN
The Purpose Driven Life
With each passing moment I'm becoming part of the past. There is no future for me, just the past steadily accumulating.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
The world is weary of the past,
Oh, might it die or rest at last!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Hellas
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
The Great Gatsby
Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.
DOUG LARSON
attributed, Quotable Quotes
Whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it.
BARACK OBAMA
speech, June 4, 2009
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
Who recollects distinctly his past adventures, knows his destiny to come.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
The past is a towering mansion.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
And that past is ever present,
Ever present in my heart,
Filling it with sweetest love-thoughts,
As I tread the world's wide mart.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
Thoughts
The past is a mist.
HAROLD PINTER
Moonlight