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Quotations about the Past
I still feel good at having thrown out that whole little bag of past. I hope it stays wherever it went. ~Barry Fox Stevens (1902–1985), Don't Push the River (it flows by itself), 1970
Life being as alarming as it is, I prefer the past. ~Evan S. Connell, Jr., Points for a Compass Rose, 1973
Don't shut out the joy from your life because you can't win back the past. ~Henrietta Vaughan Palmer Stannard, The Magic Wheel, 1901
Ere over all our past the present streams... ~May Gillington Byron (1861–1936), "Reincarnation," The Wind on the Heath: Ballads and Lyrics, 1911
...how many wild thoughts of the awful past have kept you restless? ~Frederick William Robinson, Under the Spell, 1870
There is comfort to me in the thought that we may be deceived in our present and absurdly wrong in all our speculations about the future, but our past belongs to us, completely, wholly, and we always have everything we have put into it. ~Dorothy Thompson, letter to Rose Wilder Lane, 1928, edited by William V. Holtz
The past is a closed book. ~Frederick W. Robinson, True to Herself, 1870
The Past's a Book wherein some Truths are found,
But not a Chain by which Men's Feet are bound.
~Arthur Guiterman, "Of Progress," A Poet's Proverbs, 1924
And yet, if we are not bound by the past, neither are we to discard it.... We are to learn how, out of the past, to evolve an instrumentation useful for to‑day. ~Lyman Abbott, "Out of the Past," sermon preached in Appleton Chapel, Harvard College, Sunday evening, March 26, 1899
The hardest thing about reliving the past
Is reassembling the original cast.
~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
The past is not a package one can lay away. ~Emily Dickinson
If you have made great achievements, if you have done splendid work, if you stand high in other people's esteem, and especially in your own, do not stop to write bulletins of victory to yourself or others. The only reward worth the having for having done good work yesterday is a chance to do a better work to‑morrow. ~Lyman Abbott, "Out of the Past," sermon preached in Appleton Chapel, Harvard College, Sunday evening, March 26, 1899
There is nowhere to go back and begin again with this… there is no place to go. The past is never where you think you left it: you are not the same person you were yesterday... The place you are going towards doesn't exist yet, you must build it when you come to the right spot. ~Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools, 1962
The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1963
Handful of dust, you stagger me…
I did not dream the world was so full of the dead:
And the air I breathe so rich with the bewildering past...
~James Oppenheim, "A Handful of Dust," Songs for the New Age, 1914
And why should I rekindle these smoking embers? Why call up from their casements the ghosts of the dead? ~Thomas Jefferson, 1820
Peace to the ashes of his sin. ~Octave Mirbeau, "The Mission," The Torture Garden, 1899, translated from the French by Alvah C. Bessie, 1931
Yesterday's weaving is as irrevocable as yesterday. I may not draw out the threads, but I may change my shuttle. ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), My Little Book of Life, 1912
The one charm of the past is that it is the past. ~Oscar Wilde
The past is the long tail of time, which often coils about our memories and strangles hope. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897
The divine gift is ever the instant life, which receives and uses and creates, and can well bury the old in the omnipotency with which Nature decomposes all her harvest for recomposition. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Quotation and Originality," Letters and Social Aims, 1876
Let us fly from the Past on the wings of Faith. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897
Thou unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.
Far in thy realm withdrawn
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.
Childhood, with all its mirth,
Youth, Manhood, Age, that draws us to the ground,
And last, Man's Life on earth,
Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.
Thou hast my better years,
Thou hast my earlier friends—the good—the kind,
Yielded to thee with tears—
The venerable form—the exalted mind...
~William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), "To the Past"
Here's to the past,
Too happy to last...
~James Clarence Harvey, "To the Past," Over the Nuts & Wine, 1906
Let us have done with vain regrets and longings for the days that never will be ours again. Our work lies in front, not behind us; and "Forward!" is our motto. Let us not sit with folded hands, gazing upon the past as if it were the building: it is but the foundation. Let us not waste heart and life, thinking of what might have been, and forgetting the
So it is and so may it ever be; that the past shall always be like a golden sunset, and the future like a crimson dawn. ~Edward Payson Powell (1833–1915), "An Old-Time Thanksgiving," 1904
Yesterday exists, as surely as today: the only difference being a little matter of flesh and blood, and an almanac. ~“A Hundred Thoughts,”
My soul is not a palace of the past... ~James Russell Lowell, "A Glance Behind the Curtain"
Treasure your memories and keep them bright. Memory must not be made the scavenger of the past. It must not be prostituted to the foolish purpose of resurrecting the sadness of other days. Do not make of memory a vile ghoul that disinters the bones of error or grief from the grave of years. ~Ellsworth R. Bathrick (1863–1917), "Don't Worry Book," 1909, as quoted by Youngstown Vindicator, 1915
In the past, which now had all the remoteness of another country, buried in history... ~Pearl S. Buck, The Three Daughters of Madame Liang, 1969
He stood in the garden and saw it, detached.
Saw that a curtain had dropped on promises;
that there would be no lifting on the morrow...
~Cave Outlaw (1900–1996), "The Return," Wind in the Bell Tower, 1980
But a queer thing is — this is personal — however painful a thing has been when I look back it is no longer painful, or no more painful than music is. In fact it is just that. ~Katherine Mansfield
The past was not yet the past... ~George Moore, The Brook Kerith: A Syrian Story, 1916
I find in old age that it's possible to revisit the past, the one requirement being that you come as you are. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
What is the past? — A picture in the mind! ~Charles Searle, Look Here!, 1885
Bring the past only if you are going to build from it. ~Doménico Cieri Estrada
Words of snow, which fell last year. ~German saying
It is hell to dwell. ~The Great, "The Beard," 2020, written by Tony McNamara, Vanessa Alexander, and Gretel Vella, based on the 2008 play written by Tony McNamara
The dream has come again;
My heart beats loud and fast;
The nightmare of the Past,
Springing from torture's den
On unresisting me
Twists with too great disdain
Each nerve in agony...
How impotent mind's powers
When dreams bring back the ghosts of buried hours...
And the black nightmare doth enfold
My senses in the mystery
Of my heart's history...
Feast on my vitals then, ye vampire thoughts of old!
Your dreaming prey behold!...
~Opal, "Memory a Nightmare and Vampire," 1856
In a new love, it's easy to live for the moment because there is no past. The more past you accumulate, the harder it is not to live there — and that's true whether it's good or bad. ~Terri Guillemets, "Stories of the future," 1995
Consider the past in total,
and the future it has begot...
~Cave Outlaw (1900–1996), "White Clouds," Wind in the Bell Tower, 1980
Shall I regret having had a dream that never came true? No, no more than I would regret having had a lifelong friend who died. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. ~Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931), The Prophet
The past cannot return.
If I have wounded you, forgive.
If no more your breast will yearn
To warm this straying heart, oh live
The dreams that warm it yet,
The memories it would not forget.
There is no strife, all that has gone.
There is no pain, the will is set.
There are hours for thought to feed on,
But none to keep alive regret.
However sadly a heart may yearn,
The past cannot, cannot return.
~Cave Outlaw (1900–1996), Each Day, 1942
The flowers of the past are dead — but their wilted beauty and potpourri aroma enrich the present with memories. ~Terri Guillemets
I read the old poems over,
That told of the buried years;
Their joys, and loves, and longings,
And my eyes were filled with tears.
I read the old poems over,
And my heart was wrung with pain,
As I thought of the hopes that lured me
Toward goals I could never gain.
And I cried, "Oh! life, forever
Thou'st made me the sport of fate,
Thou'st promised me aye successes,
And left me but desolate."
Then I thought of my little daughters,
Lisping their father's name;
Of the gentle wife who loves me,
And my cheeks burned red for shame.
And deep in my heart the tempest
Of vain regret was spent,
While over the clouds came stealing
The sunshine of content.
A calm content that ever,
Within my soul shall dwell,
And I thanked the great All-Father,
"Who doeth all things well."
~Howell Stroud England, "I Read the Old Poems Over," Shots at Random, 1899
holding on to the years
i couldn't let them go —
and it's only fair because
they wouldn't let go of me
~Terri Guillemets
I know you will be true as steel to your conscience and principles of right, but don't marry any man with the quixotic idea of reforming him; remember, what a man is before marriage he will, in all likelihood, be after; if he has sown wild oats he—and others, too, unfortunately—must reap them. No man that has a past to bury can keep it below ground; the revenant will be constantly obtruding itself; he cannot lay it. ~M. Amelia Fytche, Kerchiefs to Hunt Souls, 1895
Hindsight —
a.k.a.
I was a fool,
such a fool!
~Terri Guillemets
Out, damned spot! ~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, c.1605 [V, 1, Lady Macbeth]
The past falls away in wilted petals,
New things will come, probably nettles.
~Terri Guillemets
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