Quotations About The Past

Look back and smile at perils past. ~ Walter Scott

There is nothing in the whole world which abides. All things are in a state of ebb and flow, and every shadow passes away. Even time itself, like a river, is constantly gliding away . ~ Ovid

The present joys of life we doubly taste,
By looking back with pleasure to the past. ~ Martial

Never look for birds of this year in the nests of the last. ~ Miguel de Cervantes

No man is rich enough to buy back his past. ~ Oscar Wilde

Study the past if you would divine the future. ~Confucius

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ~ George Santayana

The passing minute is everyman's equal possession, but what has once gone by is not ours. ~ Marcus Aurelius

It is delightful to transport one's self into the spirit of the past, to see how a wise man has thought before us, and to what a glorious height we have at last reached ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Only one accomplishment is beyond both the power and mercy of the Gods. They cannot make the past as though it had never been. ~ Aeschylus

We live in reference to past experience and not to future events, however inevitable. ~ H. G. Wells

The best prophet of the future is the past. ~ John Sherman

God cannot alter the past, but historians can. ~ Samuel Butler

Past and to come seems best; things present worst. - William Shakespeare

We all live in the past, because there is nothing else to live in. To live in the present is like proposing to sit on a pin. It is too minute, it is too slight a support, it is too uncomfortable a posture, and it is of necessity followed immediately by totally different experiences, analogous to those of jumping up with a yell. ~ G. K. Chesterson

Be not the slave of your own past. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.
~ William Shakespeare

Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I believe the future is the past again, only opened through another gate. ~ Pinero

You can never plan the future by the past. ~ Edmund Burke

I believe the future is only the past again, entered through another gate. ~ Sir Aurthur Wing Pinero

There is no past, as long as books shall live.
Books make the past our heritage and our home.
~ Edward Bulwer Lytton

Even God cannot change the past. ~ Agathon

Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

The best prophet of the future is the past. ~ Byron

He is a fool who only sees the mischiefs that are past. ~ Bryant

Fear not the future, weep not for the past. ~ Shelley

Twice does he live who can enjoy the remembrance of the past. ~ Ovid