Top 1200 Past Future Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

The mystery lies in the here and now. The mystery is: What is one to do with oneself? As you get older you begin to realize the trick time is playing, and that unless you do something about it, the passage of time is nothing but the encroachment of the horrible banality of the past on the pure future. The past devours the future like a tape recorder, converting pure possibility into banality. The present is the tape head, the mouth of time. Then where is the mystery and why bother kicking through the ashes? Because there is a clue in the past.

To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.

Your whole past hangs around you with nothing completed - because nothing has been lived really, everything somehow bypassed, partially lived, only so-so, in a lukewarm way. There has been no intensity, no passion. You have been moving like a somnambulist, a sleepwalker. So that past hangs, and the future creates fear. And between the past and the future is crushed your present, the only reality.

The person I loved...was the 'past' you. If I couldn't accept that 'past' you, then there won't be time in the future to do so.

Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ. Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him.

A lot of people are really hung on the past - they can't get past that - but you've gotta get past that if you want any future.

We are often wrong about the past, but at least with the past you can change your thinking. We can't do that with the future.

Mankind in Amnesia has to do not only with the past, like my other books -- primarily it has to do with the future, a future not removed by thousands or tens of thousands of years, but the imminent future, on whose threshold we now stand.

You can analyse the past, but you need to design the future. That is the difference between suffering the future and enjoying it.

The present is big with the future, the future might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the near.

We cannot live in the past; it is gone. Nor can we live in the future; it is forever beyond our grasp. We can live only in the present. If we are unaware of our present actions, we are condemned to repeating the mistakes of the past and can never succeed in attaining our dreams for the future.

There are those who regard this history of past strife and exile as better forgotten. But, to use the phrase of Yeats, let us not casually reduce "that great past to a trouble of fools." For we need not feel the bitterness of the past to discover its meaning for the present and the future.

We can say that true gratitude does not give rise to the debtor's ethic because it gives rise to faith in future grace. With true gratitude there is such a delight in the worth of God's past grace, that we are driven on to experience more and more of it in the future...it is done by transforming gratitude into faith as it turns from contemplating the pleasures of past grace and starts contemplating the promises of the future.

Because you are obsessed with the idea of past, present, and future, you are forced to think of reincarnations as strung out one before the other. Indeed we speak of past lives because you are used to the time sequence concept... You have dominant egos, all part of an inner identity, dominant in various existences. But the separate existences exist simultaneously. Only the egos involved make the time distinction... a thousand years in your past or in your future - all exist now.

The past is such a subtle thing. [But] in the end, nothing else exists, everything is made of the past, even the future.

I teach you that there is no other aim than to live with such totality that each moment becomes a celebration. The very idea of "aim" brings future into the mind, because any aim, any end, any goal, needs future. All your goals deprive you of your present, which is the only reality you have. The future is only your imagination, and the past is just footprints left in the sands of your memory. Neither is the past real anymore, nor is the future real yet. This moment is the only reality.

I'm more interested in the future than in the past, because the future is where I intend to live.

If you don't have a vision for the future, then your future is threatened to be a repeat of the past.

Most of all, perhaps, we need an intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has anything magical about it, but we cannot study the future.

The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.

I thought I wanted the truth, but I don't. The past is the past and it can't be changed. It's the future I'm interested in." -Gabriel McGregor

The man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present... he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and the future... he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear.

These tenses-past, present and future-are not the tenses of time; they are tenses of the mind. That which is no longer before the mind becomes the past. That which is before the mind is the present. And that which is going to be before the mind is the future. Past is that which is no longer before you. Future is that which is not yet before you. And present is that which is before you and is slipping out of your sight. Soon it will be past.

My future is in my past and my past is my present. I must now make the present my future.

The future doesn't exist. The only thing that exists is now and our memory of what happened in the past. But because we invented the idea of a future, we're the only animal that realized we can affect the future by what we do today.

What the nostalgic past and the imaginary future seem to share in common is a form of idealism, perhaps a dream of wholeness. Our future is just as goopy with sentiment as our past. To me, they're the same, both very tempting, and I don't believe in either, although the idealism is probably important.

I've been bothered about time generally and our tripartite division of time into past, present, and future. I think I know what the past is, and I think I know what future is, but I'm really not comfortable with the notion of present.

By keeping the mind in the present, unless you deliberately want to contemplate the past or future, it's possible to firmly face life without fear. Then, no thoughts of past failures or future problems will exist in the mind, and a truly positive mental state will result-fudoshin, the "immovable mind".

One has to live in the present. Whatever is past is gone beyond recall; whatever is future remains beyond one's reach, until it becomes present. Remembering the past and giving thought to the future are important, but only to the extent that they help one deal with the present.

People who live in the past generally are afraid to compete in the present. I've got my faults, but living in the past is not one of them. There's no future in it.

We who run in the way of Love must never torment ourselves about anything. If I did not suffer minute by minute, it would be impossible for me to be patient; but I see only the present moment, I forget the past, and take good care not to anticipate the future. If we grow disheartened, if sometimes we despair, it is because we have been dwelling on the past or the future.

In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense. The past and the future are both rolled up in this present moment of illumination, and this present moment is not something standing still with all its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on.

The future or the past - It's very simple: building the future, or a restoration of post-communism.

Memory is the keyword which combines past with present, past and future.

Everybody's got a past. The past does not equal the future unless you live there.

You can get over a broken past if you decide to believe that there's nothing in your past that can keep you from having a great future.

Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future; impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past; neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely.

I never dreamed that my future would be my husband's past. But it's such a huge past in terms of the recorded content.

The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.

Losers live in the past. Winners learn from the past and enjoy working in the present toward the future.

Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.

The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are. The facts: nothing matters but the facts: worship of the facts leads to everything, to happiness first of all and then to wealth.

But I can't confront the doubts I have. I can't admit that maybe the past was bad, and so, for the sake of momentum I'm condemning the future to death so it can match the past.

As time goes on we become old, the future contracts, the past expands...But by future we don't just mean the years ahead; we always mean as well the plenitude of possibilities which challenge our creativity...In confrontation with the future we can become young if we accept the future's challenges.

Either you are drowned in the past or you are drowned in the future. That's why you are not. That's why you yourself have become a falsehood. You are too concerned with the false, and that concern makes you pseudo. Withdraw yourself from the past and the future. Love is always an emperor.

Reality includes both the past and the future, but existence includes only the present and is totally dependent on the reality of past and future universes. Without them there is no existence now.

Partition is bad. But whatever is past is past. We have only to look to the future.

Architecture is measured against the past; you build in the future, and you try to imagine the future.

To imagine a new world is to live it daily, each thought, each glance, each step, each gesture, killing and recreating, death always a step in advance. To spit on the past is not enough. To proclaim the future is not enough. One must act as if the past were dead and the future unrealizable.

If the mind wants to comprehend reality, it will have to come out of the past and the future. But coming out of the past and the future, it is no longer the mind at all. Hence the insistence of all the great masters of the world that the door to reality is no-mind.

We face the future fortified with the lessons we have learned from the past. It is today that we must create the world of the future.

The past is past, the future unformed. There is only the moment, and that is where he prefers to be.

Somebody who can reckon with the past, who can live with the past in the present, and move towards the future - that's fabulous.

What is past is past, there is a future left to all men, who have the virtue to repent and the energy to atone.

I'm focused on my future. I'm ignoring my past, apart from the bits that I draw from to help me focus on my future.

What we are left with then is the present, the only time where miracles happen. We place the past and the future as well into the hands of God. The biblical statement that “time shall be no more” means that we will one day live fully in the present, without obsessing about past or future.

Italy will start the future. Because in the last 20, 20 years, Italy discussed only about the past. "Oh, the past is wonderful in Italy." Look, look Palazzo Vecchio. The most beautiful place in the world, in my opinion, I think this is incredible place. But the past is not sufficient. Is not enough. We need the future. Because we are Italians. And Italy is not only a museum.

Zen is really just a reminder to stay alive and to be awake. We tend to daydream all the time, speculating about the future and dwelling on the past. Zen practice is about appreciating your life in this moment. If you are truly aware of five minutes a day, then you are doing pretty well. We are beset by both the future and the past, and there is no reality apart from the here and now.

People feel that the beauty of the Istanbul is something we used to have in the past or something we will have in the future. But we have that beauty today, too, in the mixture of past and future. We have to save it today and we have to enjoy it today.

With each passing moment I'm becoming part of the past. There is no future for me, just the past steadily accumulating.