PAST QUOTES IV
quotations about the past
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
Our most merciless enemy is our past.
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
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"
It is yesterday that makes tomorrow so sad.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The only past which endures lies wordlessly within you.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
The past is referred to as being dead; but it is terribly alive.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
All the past is not worth one today.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"New Year"
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
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
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"
An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
My past is everything I failed to be.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
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
I have put off the past like a worn-out cloak.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
The Hour of the Dragon
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
The Great Gatsby
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
The past is gained, secure, and on record.
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 1, 1845
The day before is what we bring to the day we're actually living through, life is a matter of carrying along all those days-before just as someone might carry stones, and when we can no longer cope with the load, the work is done.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
The Cave