quotations about the past

My past is everything I failed to be.
FERNANDO PESSOA
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The Book of Disquiet
Our most merciless enemy is our past.
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.
CHARLES DICKENS
David Copperfield
We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.
RICK WARREN
The Purpose Driven Life
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--"
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"
Beyond here lies nothin'
But the mountains of the past
BOB DYLAN
"Beyond Here Lies Nothin'"
It is yesterday that makes tomorrow so sad.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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"
If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other ... for only out of the past can you make the future.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
All the King's Men
The past is referred to as being dead; but it is terribly alive.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
The only past which endures lies wordlessly within you.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
I have put off the past like a worn-out cloak.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
The Hour of the Dragon
When I think over the past, I am like a person whose eyes cannot properly measure distances and is liable to think things extremely remote which on examination prove to be quite near.
ANDRE GIDE
If It Die
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
How easy it is to destroy the past and how difficult to forget it.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
All the past is not worth one today.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"New Year"
See, there's nothing wrong with the past; the past is a good thing, but that's not all there is.
PAT BENATAR
interview, AV Club, August 26, 1997
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"