353 Quotes About The-past

The race of man haunted by the thought of what it used to be, ashamed of what they are, afraid of what they were.

When Christophe at last made up his mind to go to bed, chilled in body and soul, he heard the window below him shut. And, as he lay, he thought sadly that it is cruel for the poor to dwell on the past, for they have no right to have a past, like the rich: they have no home, no corner of the earth wherein to house their memories: their joys, their sorrows, all their days, are scattered in the wind.

If one didn't let oneself swallow some few lies, I don't know how one would ever carry the past.

The past is just a story we tell.

The past is rarely ever truly behind us. It lives on because we refuse to live unmoored from the world we know and the trusted (or reviled) voices of our forbearers. The prerogatives and passions of our predecessors has left us with a landscape changed and molded to what they perceived to be important and worthy of commemoration. This is as it should be. The tragedy of forgetting is that when our memories fade, we lose our connections to that which we love and value.

I told her I was not sure I could bear living with memories, she said, Look up at the stars, look, they are not there, what you see is the memory of what once was, once upon a time.

The past and present are after all so close, almost one, as if time were an artificial teasing out of a material which longs to join, to interpenetrate, and to become heavy and very small like some of those heavenly bodies scientists tell us of.

When you live in the present, the past is forgotten & the future takes care of itself.

I have seen the poor suffer when nobles seek the purity of ideals. I have seen the powerless die when princes believe in the nostalgia of their dreams. I have seen the common people torn from peace and thrown into war when kings yearn to test the clarity of their vision.