PAST QUOTES V
quotations about the past
The only past which endures lies wordlessly within you.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
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
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
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
The past is referred to as being dead; but it is terribly alive.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
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"
What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
JOHN ASHBERY
"37 Haiku"
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 is never where you think you left it.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
Ship of Fools
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"
You always romanticize the past as soon as the future begins to frighten you.
RICK REMENDER
Uncanny X-Force, No. 16, December 2011
My past has not defined me, destroyed me, deterred me, or defeated me; it has only strengthened me.
STEVE MARABOLI
Unapologetically You
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
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
My past is everything I failed to be.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
I have put off the past like a worn-out cloak.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
The Hour of the Dragon
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
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
What's past is prologue.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest