Quotes About Past

Temporality is obviously an organised structure, and these three so-called elements of time: past, present, future, must not be envisaged as a collection of 'data' to be added together...but as the structured moments of an original synthesis. Otherwise we shall immediately meet with this paradox: the past is no longer, the future is not yet, as for the instantaneous present, everyone knows that it is not at all: it is the limit of infinite division, like the dimensionless point.

certain details, somewhat curtailed, live in my memory. But I don't see anything anymore: I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, whether they are memories or just fiction.

You don't put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house. I have only my body: a man entirely alone, with his lonely body, cannot indulge in memories; they pass through him. I shouldn't complain: all I wanted was to be free.

All of a sudden something breaks off sharply. The adventure is over, time resumes its daily routine. I turn; behind me, this beautiful melodious form sinks entirely into the past. It grows smaller, contracts as it declines, and now the end makes one with the beginning.

There are also amateurs. These are secretaries, office workers, shopkeepers, people who listen to others in cafes: around forty they feel swollen, with an experience they can't get rid of. Luckily they've made children on whom they can pass it off. They would like to make us believe that their past is not lost, that their memories are condensed, gently transformed into Wisdom.

When you want to understand something you stand in front of it, alone, without help: all the past in the world is of no use.

But I can't see anything any more: however much I search the past I can only retrieve scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, nor whether they are remembered or invented.

The letters I had inscribed on it were not even dry yet and already they belonged to the past.

Non ci si può mettere il passato in tasca; bisogna avere una casa per sistemarvelo. Io non possiedo che il mio corpo; un uomo completamente solo, col suo corpo soltanto, non può fermare i ricordi, gli passano attraverso. Non dovrei lagnarmi: il mio solo desiderio è stato d'esser libero.

Cómo yo, que no he tenido fuerzas para retener mi propio pasado puedo esperar que salvaré el de otro?

Mi son detto stancamente: Come poso sperare di salvare il passato di un altro, io che non ho avuto la forza di trattenere il mio?

The teacher of history's work should be, ideally, not simply a description of past cultures, but a performance of the culture in which we live and are increasingly taking our being.

A lot of my work with the financial and helping my workers involves taking them back to their past life and helping them to understand this past.

I have always had a strong interest in history and finding out about the past can be remarkably helpful with working out the future, too.

Forget the past and live in the present hour. Now is the time to work, the time to fill The soul with noblest thoughts, the time to will.

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

As you continue the work of acknowledging and claiming the gifts of your past and standing in the power of your present, you are freeing up enormous reserves of creative energy.

I want people to recognize me for the work I do now as a model, and not something I did three years ago.

Living in the past is a Jethro Tull album, not a smart poker strategy.

In Los Angeles you get the sense sometimes that there's a mysterious patrol at night: when the streets are empty and everyone's asleep, they go erasing the past. It's like a bad Ray Bradbury story - 'The Memory Erasers'.

Success in past U.S. conflicts has not been strictly the result of military leadership but rather the judgment of the president in choosing generals and setting broad strategy.

The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

The best progressive policies are constructed by learning from past experiences while striving toward a more equitable future.

The past is there, but life is circular. I have a strong sense of the circularity of time.