A lot of people go through life like they are rowing a boat. They look at where they have been (the PAST) rather than where they are going (the FUTURE).
A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don't find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.
All the king's horses and all the king's men can't put the past together again. So let's remember: Don't try to saw sawdust.
Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.
Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
As lousy as things are now, tomorrow they will be somebody's good old days.
Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past.
Clogged with yesterday's excess, the body drags the mind down with it.
Don't brood on the past, but don't forget it either.
Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.
Every man is his own ancestor, and every man his own heir. He devises his own fortune, and he inherits his own past.
Fearfulness, contrary to all other vices, maketh a man think the better of another, the worse of himself.
I cannot sing the old songs, Or dream those dreams again,
I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.
I never look back, I look forward.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, no just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future.
If the only new thing we have to offer is an improved version of the past, then today can only be inferior to yesterday. Hypnotized by images of the past, we risk losing all capacity for creative change.
If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time.
If you are carrying strong feelings about something that happened in your past, they may hinder your ability to live in the present.
If you look back too much, you will soon be headed that way