PAST QUOTES V
quotations about the past
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The past is gained, secure, and on record.
ROBERT BROWNING
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letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 1, 1845
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Keep out of the Past! for its highways
Are damp with malarial gloom;
Its gardens are sere and its forests are drear,
And everywhere moulders a tomb.
Who seeks to regain its lost pleasures,
Finds only a rose turned to dust;
And its storehouse of wonderful treasures
Are covered and coated with rust.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Keep Out of the Past"
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"
We sometimes condemn the present, by praising the past; and show our contempt of what is now, by our esteem for what is no more.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
My past has not defined me, destroyed me, deterred me, or defeated me; it has only strengthened me.
STEVE MARABOLI
Unapologetically You
The day before is what we bring to the day we're actually living through, life is a matter of carrying along all those days-before just as someone might carry stones, and when we can no longer cope with the load, the work is done.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
The Cave
The past was bitter and dry and ashes in his mouth, its bone arms clasped him like some old desiccated lover he could not be shut of.
WILLIAM GAY
Provinces of Night
The world is weary of the past,
Oh, might it die or rest at last!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Hellas
What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
JOHN ASHBERY
"37 Haiku"
Nothing's ever done.... No matter what you do, or what you pretend, the past is there. You can't ignore it.
JOHN SAUL
When the Wind Blows
It is not that I have no past. Rather, it continually fragments on the terrible and vivid ephemera of now.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Dhalgren
What is it about the past? I can never understand it. Why is it so powerful? Why does it appeal to us as if it had some extraordinary pearl of meaning that we can't find in our present lives?
JOHN BANVILLE
"Oblique dreamer", The Guardian, September 17, 2000
Is not the pastness of the past the more profound, the more legendary, the more immediately it falls before the present?
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
The past was another country and one which the movement of time's tectonic plates pulled further away every year.
MICHAEL MARSHALL
The Upright Man
The past is as locked in stone as a Jurassic fossil, but by our daily actions, we continuously change the future.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Apocalypse
Learn to recognize the future the way a Steersman identifies guiding stars and corrects the course of his vessel. Learn from the past; never use it as an anchor.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning.
T. S. ELIOT
The Cocktail Party
You read the past in some old faces.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The Virginians
Honeymooning, moonlighting, late for the Proms,
Our echoes die in that corridor and now
I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones
Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons.
SEAMUS HEANEY
The Underground
past moments old dreams back again or fresh like those that pass or things things always and memories I say them as I hear them murmur them in the mud
SAMUEL BECKETT
How It Is