Quotes about the past
Prepared by: Dmitry Sirotkin
I present to you a selection of quotes about the past .
The past is left behind, but for some reason it often worries us more than the future .
Quotes are grouped by topic: people and the past, the future and the past, memory and the past, time and the past, attitudes towards the past, the present and the past, love and the past, changes and the past, life and the past, features of the past, mood and the past, death and the past, attitude towards ancestors, return to the past, history and the past, a wonderful past, Russia and the past, women and the past, happiness and the past, etc.
People and the past
A person is forever chained to the past: no matter how far and fast he runs, the chain runs with him. (F. Nietzsche)
We cannot accept the former unchanged, because we ourselves have become different. (V. Windelband)
O shadows of the past, how powerful you are over us! (V. Bryusov)
Man has power over the past, present and future. (A. Green)
So we fight, boats sailing against a current that carelessly carries us into the past. (F.S. Fitzgerald)
Obsession with the past is a plausible and therefore very popular excuse to tie yourself hand and foot. (A. Adler)
People are never satisfied with the present and, from experience, having little hope for the future, decorate the irrevocable past with all the colors of their imagination. (A. Pushkin)
I am my past, and if I am not, my past will not exist longer than me or anyone else... I am the only one in whom my past exists in this world. (J.-P. Sartre)
We reach into the past, to our parents, and forward, to our children, into a future that we will never see, but which we want to take care of. (K. Jung)
They are everywhere - these strange people who don’t know that yesterday is yesterday, and who wake up every morning with last year’s thoughts in their heads. (G. Ford)
The only person you should compare yourself to is your past self. And the only person you should be better than is you now. (S. Freud)
The worst thing is when those who should have become the future become the past. (H. Marias)
It is impossible to pull a person out from under the rubble of the past. Either you climb out on your own, or you remain under the rubble. (E. Sebold)
When we remember, we later treat many of the things that once worried us with complete indifference. (V. Windelband)
Some detail, the most insignificant and long-standing, stands out like a peak, while entire layers of my past settle without a trace. (K. Lévi-Strauss)
People are not objects, they are not former. They remain in the past. (D. Zavadsky)
When there is nothing to be proud of in the present, they boast about yesterday’s merits. (M.T. Cicero)
I just can’t manage to return to my shell and settle into myself as before - it’s such a mess: the furniture has been rearranged, the light bulb has burned out, my past is torn to shreds. (V. Nabokov)
Only when dealing with a frankly fictitious tale about past events does a person agree to accept responsibility for them and consider past events to be his past. (H. Arendt)
God or nature - I don’t know who - having given man an almost divine mind, at the same time invented two painful traps for him: the unknown of the future and the unforgettableness, irrevocability of the past. (A. Kuprin)
The past is always with us, and everything that we are, everything that we have, comes from the past. We are his creation, and we live immersed in him. Not understanding this and not feeling the past... means not understanding the present. (D. Nehru)
Our greatest regret is the excessive and unjustified speed of time... Before you know it, your youth is fading and your eyes are dimming. Meanwhile, you have not yet seen even a hundredth part of the charm that life has scattered around. (K. Paustovsky)
We are never limited to the present. We wish the future to come as soon as possible, we regret that it is moving towards us so slowly; or we remember the past, we want to hold on to it, but it quickly runs away from us. We are so unreasonable that we wander in times that do not belong to us, without thinking about the one that is given to us. We vainly dwell in thought in times that no longer exist, and without reflection we miss the present. (B. Pascal)
By the way, quotes about people
Future and past
The best prophet for the future is the past. (D. Byron)
The past nodded, smiled and walked further into the future. (T. Pratchett)
For the most part, the future is like the past. (Aristotle)
Before the past, bow your head; before the future, roll up your sleeves. (G. Mencken)
A person looks into the future with his past. (P. Buck)
The future, being everything, is perceived as nothing; the past, being nothing, is perceived by everything! (C. Lam)
Looking to the future is better than dreaming about the past. (Voltaire)
Those who do not look back cannot look forward. (E. Burke)
Any “yesterday” was once a desired “tomorrow”. (H. Jagodzinski)
If you are facing the past, then you are standing with your back to the future. (M. Monroe)
Uncertainty about the future makes it difficult to break with the past. (C. Palahniuk)
Only by closing the door behind you can you open a window to the future. (F. Sagan)
Knowing the past is unpleasant enough; knowing the future would be simply unbearable. (S. Maugham)
To know what is going to happen, it is enough to trace what happened... This comes from the fact that all human affairs are done by people who have had and always will have the same passions and therefore will inevitably have to give the same results. (N. Machiavelli)
We cannot take away either our past, because it no longer exists, or our future, because we do not have it yet. (M. Aurelius)
We question and interrogate the past so that it can explain our present and give us hints about our future. (V. Belinsky)
The future worries us, but the past holds us back. This is why the present eludes us... (G. Flaubert)
Whoever hides the past jealously is unlikely to be in harmony with the future... (A. Tvardovsky)
A person who renounces the past cannot have a future. (E. Safarli)
There is only one place you can escape from the future - the past. (S. King)
Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future. (O. Wilde)
Memory and the past
There is no use remembering the past if those memories cannot help in the present. (C. Dickens)
Anyone who does not remember his past is condemned to relive it. (D. Santayana)
The things that people remember, no matter how ridiculous they are, are the things that they will want to revisit. (R. Bradbury)
The more you love a memory, the more powerful and amazing it becomes. (V. Nabokov)
Memory resurrects everything except smells, but nothing resurrects the past so completely as the smell once associated with it. (V. Nabokov)
Memories are magical clothes that do not wear out from use. (R.L. Stevenson)
Memory, this scourge of the unfortunate, revives even the stones of the past and even adds drops of honey to the poison once drunk. (M. Gorky)
Think about the past only when it brings back only pleasant memories. (D. Austin)
The memory of the heart destroys bad memories and exalts good ones, and it is thanks to this trick that we manage to bear the burden of the past. (G. Marquez)
There is nothing more dangerous than a memory immortalized on paper. (G. Marquez)
Memory also has immunity - it erases what brings pain. (E. Safarli)
My memories are like gold in a purse given by the devil: you open it, and there are dry leaves. (J.-P. Sartre)
But I don’t see anything anymore: no matter how much I rummage through the past, I extract from it only fragmentary pictures, and I don’t really know what they mean, whether they are memories or fiction. However, for every hundred dead stories, only one or two were still alive. I recall these with caution, not often, so that they do not wear out. (J.-P. Sartre)
The news is often nothing more than oblivion of the past. (G. Derzhavin)
Time and the past
The past robs you of time. Grab him by the collar! (C. Dickens)
They always grieve about one thing - about the time that has passed, leaving nothing behind, about the wasted days. (A. Saint-Exupery)
Time, which has become the past, loses all reality in people's minds. It comforts, frightens, and inspires indifference. (E.M. Remarque)
Sometimes we think we are longing for some distant place, when in fact we are longing for the time we spent there, younger and more vigorous than we are now. This is how time deceives us under the guise of space... (A. Schopenhauer)
What happened recently, is it older or younger? (Marseille)
Since time is infinite, infinity has already passed up to the present moment, that is, every possible development should have already taken place. Therefore, the observed development must be a repetition. (F. Nietzsche)
The past is the past, and anyone who claims that history repeats itself is lying. (D. London)
The river of times in its rush carries away all the affairs of people and drowns peoples, kingdoms and kings into the abyss of oblivion. And if anything remains Through the sounds of the lyre or trumpet, It will be devoured by the mouth of eternity And the common fate will not go away. (G. Derzhavin)
By the way, quotes about time
Relation to the past
The beauty of the past is that it is the past. (O. Wilde)
You can't go anywhere in the carriage of the past. (M. Gorky)
We must take fire from the past, not ashes. (J. Jaurès)
Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened. (G. Marquez)
Does the sun shine on me today so that I can think about yesterday? (F. Schiller)
Do not linger in the past, do not dream about the future, focus your mind completely on the present moment. (Buddha)
The past has passed: whether it was successful or whether it would have been better not to have existed at all, whether we recognize some kind of “meaning” behind it or not - all this is equally devoid of meaning. (G. Hesse)
What has died as reality is alive as edification. (V. Hugo)
I hate birthdays... For me it's evolution. I don't celebrate the past. I prefer the present and the future. (K. Lagerfeld)
The past cannot simply be cut down with a sweeping blow of an axe. We need to figure out what in the old is dead and belongs to the grave and what is still alive and worthy of life. (F. Chaliapin)
The past should be treated ruthlessly and calmly. The blows that kill us don't matter. Only those after which we survived and live matter. (S. King)
No matter how much you scold your past, you still won’t have another. (Shlomo Ibn Gabirol)
How many of you have ever sawed sawdust in your life? Of course, no one can saw sawdust. They are already sawed. It's the same with the past. When you start worrying about things that have already passed, you are sawing sawdust. (D. Carnegie)
Present and past
The present is the sum of the past. (T. Carlyle)
What has passed, but remains in our memory, is the present. (T. Kotarbinski)
Every day is a student for yesterday. (Publius Syrus)
The bitter the past, the sweeter the present. (W. Shakespeare)
Much will pass, but much will remain. (A. Tennyson)
He who has seen the present has already seen everything that has happened throughout eternity, and everything that will happen during infinite time. (M. Aurelius)
Fertilizing the past and giving birth to the future is what the present should be. (F. Nietzsche)
The past never has the same power over us that the present has. (N. Dobrolyubov)
The present allows us to understand the past, and not vice versa. (A.D.P. Taylor)
A gaze riveted to the present, time deceives, slipping away with its speed easily and smoothly. The past remains in one place, equally visible, united and motionless, and everything falls into its depth. (L.A. Seneca)
The past is known in the present, from the present, through the present. (L. Karsavin)
When the past becomes legend, the present becomes nonsense. (Don Aminado)
The emptiness in the present is filled exclusively by the past. The first step to overcoming the past is a future-filled present. (E. Safarli)
The present is a consequence of the past, and therefore constantly turn your gaze to your backside, which will save you from significant mistakes. (K. Prutkov)
Love and the past
Love is the only passion that cannot stand either the past or the future. (O. Balzac)
When love begins, lovers talk about the future; when it declines, they talk about the past. (A. Maurois)
No person can become more of a stranger than someone you loved in the past. (E.M. Remarque)
The past is a lie, there is no way back for memory, every past spring is irrevocable, and the craziest and most persistent love is just a fleeting feeling. (G. Marquez)
Men who think that a woman's past love interests diminish her love for them are usually stupid and weak. (M. Monroe)
You should never wander alone through places where you two have been. (V. Kaverin)
Just yesterday you believed in a wonderful future with her, but today you live in the past and don’t understand why you need the present... (C. Palahniuk)
It is much better to have love affairs in the past than in the present - from a distance you can judge, compare, and think about it. (J.-P. Sartre)
Love has two barriers - circumstances and fears. We often lack the courage to step over the stones of the past and the doubts of the present. (E. Safarli)
By the way, quotes about love
Changes and the past
It is easier to blame the past than to correct it. (Titus Livy)
There is too much of the past in us. We are making too little progress. (E. Canetti)
Change is the law of life. And those who look only at the past or only at the present will undoubtedly miss the future. (D.F. Kennedy)
We must move into the future. But we also have to take with us things from the past that actually work. (D. Clarkson)
Do not put out the torch, although its flame fluctuates until the lantern shows you the way; do not erase old expressions from speeches until you have managed to create new words. (G. Ibsen)
Those who overly revere antiquity become a laughing stock in modern times. (F. Bacon)
Any renunciation of the past, any sweeping denial of it is evil and delusion. (S. Frank)
There is no need to cling to vain regrets about the past and mourn over the changes that plague us, for change is the basis of life. (A. France)
The point is not about mentally drawing a big demarcation line between the past and the future, but about realizing the thoughts of the past. (K. Marx)
Life and past
We admire antiquity, but live in modernity. (Ovid)
To be able to enjoy the past means to live doubly. (Martial)
Life is not about the days that have passed, but about those that are remembered. (G. Marquez)
We don't live for the future. We live to preserve our past. (F. Nietzsche)
Just as sea sand again and again lies on top of what was before, so the old in life is quickly covered by the new. (Marcus Aurelius)
Our life is divided into two eras: we spend the first in the future, and the second in the past. (N. Karamzin)
No one lived in the past, no one will have to live in the future; the present is the form of life. (A. Schopenhauer)
The three-syllable formula of human life: the irrevocability of the past, the insatiability of the present and the unpredictability of the future. (V. Nabokov)
Life in the form in which it now presented itself to him seemed unbearably, painfully disgusting. It was not death that frightened him, but the impossibility in case of death of healing the past. (A. Green)
A past life is like an old car - you can be touched, but you can’t drive it. We left. (M. Zhvanetsky)
By the way, quotes about life
Features of the past
What has passed is no more. (M.T. Cicero)
“Passed” and “did not happen” are equal. (I. Goethe)
Nothing changes as often as the past. (J.-P. Sartre)
The past is like a closet: don't go too deep. There could always be a monster hiding there, ready to bite you. (S. King)
In the past, nothing is lost forever, but everything is preserved. (V. Frankl)
The peculiarity of the spiritual past is that, unlike the historical past, it is not squandered by descendants. (S. Freud)
The past is like that distant steppe in the haze. In the morning I walked along it, everything was clear all around, but I walked twenty kilometers, and now you could no longer distinguish the forest from the weeds, the arable land from the grass cutter. (M. Sholokhov)
Mood and past
Mood is how the soul knows the past, how it feels in the present and how it builds the future. (V. Levi)
Anything that can make you laugh thirty years later is not a waste of time. In my opinion, this is something very close to immortality. (S. King)
I miss. This is the only explanation for my craving for the past. No advice or psychotechnics help. You can only come to terms with it, try to be bored more and more quietly, with the hope of someday learning to just remember. (E. Safarli)
There are different states. Then you strive forward, completely filled with a sunny, energetic, free present, you rejoice and nothing exists for you except this. And sometimes you suddenly feel a pang about something lost, and you feel sad about the silvery, rainy, tender past. Both are great to experience. Both are wealth. (E. Grishkovets)
By the way, quotes about mood
Death and the past
The past is dead, it can be forgotten. (S. King)
Never look back. The past is dead. But there is always a future. There is always a future. (A. Rand)
When memories fade in our hearts, death makes them bloom again in its hands. (F. Tyutchev)
The past is as dead as a broken gramophone record. Chasing the past is a thankless task, and if you want to be convinced of this, go to the sites of your past battles. (E. Hemingway)
When a writer dies, his work begins to be overestimated. In the same way, when a person dies, their role among us begins to be overestimated. This means that the past is completely created by death, which populates it with illusions. (A. Camus)
Relationship to ancestors
Blessed is he who honors his ancestors with a pure heart. (I. Goethe)
Wise people say that it is good and honorable to follow in the footsteps of our ancestors, if, of course, they followed the straight path. (Pliny the Younger)
Past generations left us not so much ready-made solutions to problems, but rather the questions themselves. (L.A. Seneca)
Those who lived before us accomplished a lot, but completed nothing. (L.A. Seneca)
Two feelings are wonderfully close to us - In them the heart finds food: Love for the native ashes, Love for the tombs of our fathers. (A. Pushkin)
No solution to our problems can be found ready-made in the heritage of the ancients. (J. Maritain)
Return to the past
The best way to bring back the past is to remember everything you have experienced. (B. Franklin)
Flight into the past, strictly speaking, is the same as flight into the ideal. (V. Windelband)
No one can return the past. We must go, continue our path, and it is useless to look back. (R. Rolland)
If you asked me if I would like to go back to the past, I would answer that the fact that I once visited there was enough for me. (D. Lennon)
It's amazing how quickly you shut yourself off from the past when you have something to occupy your hands and head. You can survive anything, even the most terrible pain. You just need something to distract you. (C. Palahniuk)
History and past
About the past we know only the versions of the winners. (B. Verber)
Dead history is reborn, the past becomes present if life itself demands it. (B. Croce)
The subject of history is something in the past that does not pass away, like an inheritance, a lesson, an unfinished process, like an eternal law. By studying our grandfathers, we get to know our grandchildren, that is, by studying our ancestors, we get to know ourselves. (V. Klyuchevsky)
Even where life changes rapidly and dramatically, as, for example, in revolutionary eras, with all visible transformations much more of the old is preserved than is usually believed, and this old dominates, uniting with the new into a new unity. (H.G. Gadamer)
Wonderful past
The past day is always better than the present day. (Ovid)
It’s good where we are not: in the past we are no longer there, and it seems beautiful. (A. Chekhov)
A pleasant memory of the hardships of the past. (Virgil)
The misconception that the past is better than the present seems to have been common in all eras. (X. Greeley)
We must admit that the past is beautiful only in our dreams, and that in fact the good old time, the poetry of which we sweetly inhale, had a vulgar and sad tendency towards all those things that make up any human life. (A. France)
Russia and the past
There is too much of the past in our present; It would be desirable if there was less history around us. (V. Klyuchevsky)
Our future is heavier than our past and emptier than our present. (V. Klyuchevsky)
We are only talking about this: why set the past as an ideal for the future, why demand from new generations unconditional, blind submission to the opinions of the previous ones? (N. Dobrolyubov)
There are various dead ones, some from the depths of millennia that have been experienced and now powerfully determine the direction of our modern best. (M. Prishvin)
By the way, quotes about Russia
Women and the past
Ladies have no other occupation than to hide the past dozen years. (M. Lermontov)
I wanted to shout after him: “Come back, I have become close to you!” But for a woman there is no past: She fell out of love and became a stranger to her. Well! I’ll light the fireplace, I’ll drink... It would be nice to buy a dog. (I. Bunin)
By the way, quotes about women
Happiness and the past
Almost everyone is confident that they will be happy in the future, and confident that they were happy in the past. (P. Buast)
With all the vicissitudes of fate, the greatest misfortune is to be happy in the past. (Boethius)
No matter how happy a person is, looking back, he sighs. (D. Granin)
Mother's happiness is like a beacon illuminating the future. And under the guise of pleasant memories, it reflects the past. (O. Balzac)
By the way, quotes about happiness
Music and the past
Music gives us our own past. (O. Wilde)
Music for me is my favorite means of traveling through time and the fastest way to return to the past. (F. Begbeder)
Tango is nostalgia, the past. The past is in the present, the past is in the future. (O. Pasensa)
Nothing evokes the past with such force as music; she achieves more: when she calls it, it seems as if it itself passes before us, shrouded, like the shadows of those who are dear to us, in a mysterious and sad veil. (J. de Stael)
Age and background
From the point of view of youth, life is an endless future; from the point of view of old age, it is a very short past. (A. Schopenhauer)
Youth thinks about the present, but mature age neglects neither the present, nor the past, nor the future. (F. Rojas)
Children have neither a past nor a future, but unlike us adults, they know how to use the present. (J. Labruyère)
Exalting the past at the expense of the present is the first sign of old age. (S. Smith)
Politics and the past
Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past. (D. Orwell)
If the party can reach back into the past and say about this or that event that it never happened, this is worse than torture or death. (D. Orwell)
Every nationalist is haunted by the idea that the past can—and should—be changed. (D. Orwell)
By the way, quotes about politics
Society and past
A people that has forgotten its past has lost its future. (W. Churchill)
Destroying the past is perhaps the worst of all crimes. (S. Weil)
A lie in the interpretation of the past leads to failures in the present and prepares for disaster in the future. (V. Klyuchevsky)
Revolutionaries worship the future but live in the past. (V. Klyuchevsky)
Purpose and past
The past and present are our means, only the future is our goal. (B. Pascal)
Without knowing the past, it is impossible to understand the true meaning of the present and the goals of the future. (M. Gorky)
To move forward, look back more often, because otherwise you will forget where you came from and where you need to go. (L. Andreev)
By the way, quotes about the goal
Time machine and the past
Each of us has a time machine: something that takes us back to the past—memories; what carries you into the future is dreams. (G. Wells)
We are all time machines. That's why I've been under the spell of old people all my life. Because I know: now I’ll press his secret button and find myself in 1900. Or in the Civil War... And as a child I met Civil War veterans! (R. Bradbury)
Soul and past
The past is the birthplace of the human soul. Sometimes we are overcome by longing for the feelings we experienced, even longing for past sorrow. (G. Heine)
The soul remembers the past, sees the present, and foresees the future. (M.T. Cicero)
By the way, quotes about the soul
Dream and past
The dream leads back to the past, to childhood. (P. Ricker)
While awake, we walk through a dream - we ourselves are just ghosts of bygone times. (F. Kafka)
Take the past as a dream... And it will stop bothering you. (V. Gibert)
By the way, quotes about sleep
Feelings and the past
The past is the tomb of our dead feelings. (K. Bovey)
These feelings from the past sometimes come back to me. Together with the then sound of the rain, the then smell of the wind... (H. Murakami)
Historians and the past
God cannot change the past, but historians can. (S. Butler)
Politicians care about a bright future, historians care about a bright past, journalists care about a bright present. (J. Pétan)
Early life and past
Mourning youth is the same as regretting a beautiful woman who deceived us.. (L. Stern)
I am full of thoughts about my cheerful youth, But I don’t regret anything in the past. (S. Yesenin)
By the way, quotes about youth
Home and past
In a house, especially an old house, the past is closer. (S. King)
You can’t put the past in your pocket; you have to have a home where to put it. (J.-P. Sartre)
By the way, quotes about home
As we can see, statements about the past are primarily related to the themes of people, the future, memory, time, the present, and attitudes towards the past.
Then you can move on to other collections:
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It is easier to blame the past than to correct it.
It is easier to blame the past than to correct it.
We question and interrogate the past so that it can explain our present and give us hints about our future.
The past is characterized by immobility and constancy. It does not change; it bears the stamp of eternity, like an oil painting or a statue made of bronze or marble.
The past cannot be returned. At least restore faith in the future! (Boris Krutier)
The past stored in memory is part of the present. (Tadeusz Kotarbiński)
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