PAST QUOTES III
quotations about the past
I don't believe in yesterday, by the way.
JOHN LENNON
interview, Playboy, January 1981
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
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--"
A good knowledge of things past is an armour against events to come.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
A long future requires a long past.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
All the strange, checkered past seems to crowd upon my mind.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech, February 11, 1861
We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.
RICK WARREN
The Purpose Driven Life
Who recollects distinctly his past adventures, knows his destiny to come.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.
JODI PICOULT
The Storyteller
Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
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"
The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.
ÉMILE ZOLA
The Masterpiece
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
Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.
DOUG LARSON
attributed, Quotable Quotes
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
Whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it.
BARACK OBAMA
speech, June 4, 2009
All the past is not worth one today.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"New Year"
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"
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