PAST QUOTES IV
quotations about the past
The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.
ÉMILE ZOLA
The Masterpiece
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
You always romanticize the past as soon as the future begins to frighten you.
RICK REMENDER
Uncanny X-Force, No. 16, December 2011
It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.
CHARLES DICKENS
David Copperfield
Whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it.
BARACK OBAMA
speech, June 4, 2009
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"
Our most merciless enemy is our past.
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
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
The past is such a curious creature,
To look her in the face
A transport may reward us,
Or a disgrace --
EMILY DICKINSON
"The past is such a curious creature"
The world is weary of the past,
Oh, might it die or rest at last!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Hellas
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
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"
The past is gained, secure, and on record.
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 1, 1845
Youth, hope, and love:
To build a new life on a ruined life,
To make the future fairer than the past,
And make the past appear a troubled dream.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The Masque of Pandora
Beyond here lies nothin'
But the mountains of the past
BOB DYLAN
"Beyond Here Lies Nothin'"
How easy it is to destroy the past and how difficult to forget it.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
The past is never where you think you left it.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
Ship of Fools
It is not that I have no past. Rather, it continually fragments on the terrible and vivid ephemera of now.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Dhalgren
What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
JOHN ASHBERY
"37 Haiku"
All the past is not worth one today.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"New Year"