Quotes About Past

Zelfs als morgen de hemel op aarde werd gevestigd, dan nog zou het, door alles wat er gebeurd was in het verleden, niet de hemel kunnen zijn

Al het oude was eens nieuw, en al het nieuwe zal eens oud zijn. Het alleroudste is het heden, want er is nooit iets anders geweest dan het heden. Nooit heeft iemand in het verleden geleefd, en in de toekomst leeft ook niemand.

Besides, whoever keeps the future in front of him and the past at his back is doing something else that's hard to imagine. For the image implies that events somehow already exist in the future, reach the present at a determined moment, and finally come to rest in the past. But nothing exists in the future; it is empty; one might die at any minute. Therefore such a person has his face toward the void, whereas it is the past behind him that is visible, stored in the memory.

The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know

The only new thing is history we don't know.

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know.

The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.

Dreams come from the past, not from the future. Dreams shouldn't control you--you should control them.

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.

Camera and event. Since its invention, film has seemed destined to make history visible. It has been able to portray the past and stage the present. We have seen Napoleon on horseback and Lenin on the train. Film was possible because there was history. Almost imperceptibly, like moving forward on a Moebius strip, the side was flipped. We look on and have to think: if film is possible, then history too is possible.

There is a red line of intimacy that's been crossed. Exes know things about each other that friends never could. You've altered each other's emotional DNA. You can be friendly with an ex, but exes cannot be friends.

Whenever their partner's behavior looks or sounds like the real threats they've experienced in the past, they activate the defenses they used back then. Their defensive arsenal is ready to be deployed at the slightest provocation. An unsuspecting or well-intentioned partner can stumble over a tripwire and never know what they did to set off the attack.

All this may seem like a terrible tangle. But since partnership is designed to resurface feelings from childhood, it means that most of the upset that gets triggered in us during our relationship is from our past. Yes! About 90 percent of the frustrations your partner has with you are really about their issues from childhood. That means only 10 percent or so is about each of you right now. Doesn't that make you feel better?

the unconscious is trying to resurrect the past is not a matter of habit or blind compulsion but of a compelling need to heal old childhood wounds.

The past is nothing and we are in love with it.

The past is reduced to a slide show. The future is a YouTube video that won't load.

I looked around. This house only the night before had been a home, and serves as a storage locker for memories that I could barely remember and a bunch of things I'd rather forget.

I will not allow myself to entertain that though. Yeah, right. I'm not only entertaining that though, I'm taking it out to dinner and a movie. The goal is to focus on the now and to figure out how to reclaim your past. Or the parallel. Or my sanity. Too much thinking never solved anything.

Who recollects distinctly his past adventures, knows his destiny to come.

The past. The Golden Age of the past. What a nostalgia we all feel for it. Yet we don't want it when we get it. Try the South Seas.

I looked up from the street and again at the wretched captives. I vowed not to let the noises of the city drown out their voices or rob me of my past. It was less painful to forget, but I would look and I would remember.

It is said that those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it. That's not quite correct. We all forget history. The key is whether we have a way to go back to rediscover what we forget. More directly, the key is whether an objective past can keep us honest.

Then it's not the past I yearn for, but the idea of a time when everything important has not yet happened: — Lawrence Raab, from section 5 of "The Uses of Nostalgia," What We Don't Know About Each Other (Penguin, 1993)