Quotes about the past

Ah! my Belovéd, fill the Cup that clears

To-day of past Regrets and future Fears —

To-morrow?—Why, To-morrow I may be

Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.

Rodriguez remained dubious. Everybody who was an old-timer at this, that, or the other thing always went on and on about how tough things had been before all these new fellows came in. Talk was cheap. Talk was also commonly nonsense.

Moss sighed and nodded. Might-have-beens was a stupid game, when you got right down to it. Look back on things, and you couldn’t help but see they’d come out the way they had to come out.

The old notion that the savage is the freest of mankind is the reverse of the truth. He is a slave, not indeed to a visible master, but to the past, to the spirits of his dead forefathers, who haunt his steps from birth to death, and rule him with a rod of iron.

There is, however, no advantage in reflections on the past further than may be of service to the present. For the future we must provide by maintaining what the present gives us and redoubling our efforts; it is hereditary to us to win virtue as the fruit of labour, and you must not change the habit, even though you should have a slight advantage in wealth and resources; for it is not right that what was won in want should be lost in plenty.

Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently!

Bofusdiaga says past wrongs cannot be righted because past wrongs are past and time only runs one way. Bofusdiaga says all you independent creatures suffer great wrongs sometime in past, which is normal, but you stay always living in past so you can continue wronged forever! Forever miserable, forever tragical! Bofusdiaga says so long as you go chewing yesterday’s pains, you cannot eat today’s pleasures, so it is no help!

A man may not face both ways at once. If he looks back, he cannot look forward.

As with other peoples who had focused their lives upon wrongs in the past and heaven in the future, Voorstod made an everlasting hell of the present.

Time past was nothing, no matter how long. Time ahead was everything, no matter how brief.

He looked upon the time that had been my future in a disturbing way. My future was his past, and being young, he was indifferent to the past.

Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn't exist and never shall. There is only now.