Quotes About Past

Your bitter recollections have time to change themselves into sweet remembrances.

L'avenir est à Dieu, le présent est à nous, mais le passé est au néant.

I have to admit that my historical work is my favourite occupation. When I go back to the past, I forget the present. I walk free and independently through history, and forget that I am a prisoner.

Aristocracy naturally leads the human mind to the contemplation of the past, and fixes it there. Democracy, on the contrary, gives men a sort of instinctive distaste for what is ancient. In this respect aristocracy is far more favorable to poetry; for things commonly grow larger and more obscure as they are more remote; and, for this two-fold reason, they are better suited to the delineation of the ideal.

Democracy shuts the past against the poet, but opens the future before him.

History is a novel whose author is the people

She was so busy forgetting, she couldn't take a single step into the future.

When you are young you are looking forward and when you are old you are looking back.

the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go. Fate was both what we were given and what we made for ourselves.

Although I am no longer caught in the past, the future seems like a ridiculous thing to me. Try to catch it, hold it in your hand. It disappears every time.

My grandmother was overwhelmed by what was happening to us. She ahd moved back into the past because the here and the now was too terrible.

She wishes nightmares were all that kept her awake. She cannot tell which disturbs here more, the future or the past.

a man has many lives. Each day we chose the path we would take by our own actions... the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go. Fate was both what we were give and what we made for ourselves.

On some nights it was best to remember the past, and not shut it in a drawer. Three hundred years ago people believed in the devil. They believed if an incident could not be explained, then the cause was something wicked, and that cause was often a woman who was said to be a witch. Women who did as they pleased, women with property, women

the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go.

But chains made out of blood and memory were a thousand times more difficult to sever than those made of steel, and the past could overtake a person if she wasn't careful

She was good at forgetting; she had practiced for years, and it was now a skill at which she excelled.

Here lies the life I might have had once upon a time, the man I might have loved for all my life, the days we might have had.

Hochman had been right, the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go. Fate was both what we were given and what we made for ourselves.

Lust was a story I knew. There were many women I took to bed for the night. I yearned for them in the moment, but in the morning, any lover I'd had was already claimed by the past, even if she was still calling my name.

In my memories I have set my life in Brooklyn between pieces of glass, separate from my current existence, and this has enabled me to move forward. The past cannot tie me in knots, nor can it cause me to drown. And yet what is stored in glass belongs to me still. Each piece is a part of me: the hummingbirds, the locked doors, Mr. Morris in the yard, the pear tree, the woman covered by bees, and you. Especially you.

Isn't that what love makes you do? Go on trying, even when you're through, Go on even when you're made of ash, when there's nothing inside you but the past.

Tuesdays were meant for accidents, disappointments, and bad news. Long ago, the day was considered to belong to Mars, the god of war and blood. Now it just meant trouble—it meant that your past could come back to haunt you.

IT WASN'T EASY TO walk away from the past, even when you locked it up in a box for which there was no key. Memories rattle around late at night, they claw at the latch, escaping when you least expect them to do so.