Top 1200 Past Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

And it is clear to Evan, now: the difference between what is and what has been done; the present and the past. He sees that what he does and who he is isn't based on the past unless he wants it to be... No. That is the past, which has been seen differently through many different eyes and has become hazy and unclear, like a pond when stirred with a stick. Only the present moment is clear and free from prejudice.

So many designers now look to the past for their inspiration when creating new looks, but if you get one from the past, it won't go out of fashion.

Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it.

The past is important for all the information and wisdom it holds. But you can get lost in it. You've got to learn to keep the knowledge of the past with you as you pursue the present.

The past exists not as a factual recounting of what happened, but as an experience that we are constantly recreating in our mind which means we CAN change the past!

Let the past abolish the past when -- and if -- it can substitute something better.

I am happy to debate the past with the Prime Minister... I have a big dossier on his past, and I did not even have to sex it up.

Everyone has a past, but that's just it--it's in the past. You can learn from it, but you can't change it.

Faith in the creative process, in the dynamics of emergence, in the values and purposes that transcend past achievements and past forms, is the precondition of all further growth.

The philosophy of poetry must acknowledge that the poetic act has no past, at least no recent past, in which its preparation and appearance could be followed.

Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not. But one veilhangs over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts; where a battle is being fought, there are hearts beating.

The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past.

The function off the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present.

[W]e are the heirs of a past of rope, fire, and murder. I for one am not ashamed of this past. My shame is for those who became so inhuman that they could inflict this torture upon us.

The past is past and I guess if you live in the past, you cease to live.

This thing you carry inside you, I don't know what it is. I don't know where you got it. But Harry, the past is the past. You are alive today. That is all that matters. You must remember, because it is who you are, but as it is who you are, you must never, ever regret. To regret your past is to regret your soul.

Truth: We are the present. We are now. We are the razor's edge of history. The future flies at us and from that dark blur we shape the past. And the past is forever.

Clothing is . . . an exercise in memory. It makes me explore the past: how did I feel when I wore that. They are like signposts in the search for the past.

The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.

You can see the ball go past them, or the man, but you'll never see both man and ball go past at the same time. So if the ball goes past, the man won't, or if the man goes past they'll take the ball.

The past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill.

Where the mind is past hope, the heart is past shame.

We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.

I love the past. There are parts of the past I hate, of course.

I know not why there is such a melancholy feeling attached to the remembrance of past happiness, except that we fear that the future can have nothing so bright as the past.

Sometime we get so addicted to murmuring about the past and blaming the past for everything that we miss our whole future. You're not going to enjoy your future, and you're not going to enjoy your right now, if all you can do is be guilty and ashamed and afraid of your past.

We may not live in the past, but the past lives in us.

Libraries are public treasuries. They're ways in which well-meaning societies leave the wealth of the past arranged A to Z so that anyone walking past can find it.

Originally the structure was . . . a modern narrator who would appear intermittently and talk about his memories of his grandmother, which would then be juxtaposed against scenes from the past. But the stories from the past were always more interesting that the things in the present. I find this almost endemic to modern plays that veer between past and present. . . . So as we've gone on developing GOLDEN CHILD, the scenes from the past have become more dominant, and all that remains of the present are these two little bookends that frame the action.

People move forward into the future out of the way they comprehend the past. When we don't understand something in our past, we are therefore crippled.

You realize yourself when you start reflecting - because I don't live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are - that you can't ignore it. But I don't look at scrapbooks.

I think a lot about the past, it's true. But at my age, the past is more present than the here and now. And there is not much percentage in the future.

For the innocent, the past may hold a reward. But for the treacherous, it's only a matter of time before the past delivers what they truly deserve.

Mass literacy is a phenomenon of the past few centuries, and one that has reached the majority of the world's adult population only within the past 75 years.

If the universe is a non-spatial computer, a 'time machine' is a program that allows a user to have the same (ontologically non-spatial) feelings or experiences that occurred or s/he merely feels to have occurred in the past, with an in-built function to have different feelings or experiences than those of the past, and thus creating a possibility to change the past or to rewrite history in a pseudo sense.

We must abandon completely the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation we're in and reverse our thinking and see that the past always flows back from the present. That now is the creative point of life. So you see it's like the idea of forgiving somebody, you change the meaning of the past by doing that...Also, watch the flow of music. The melody as its expressed is changed by notes that come later. Just as the meaning of a sentence...you wait till later to find out what the sentence means...The present is always changing the past.

What 'Floating Worlds' does draw on is Holland's artistry in bringing the past to life in her historical fiction and depicting the people who inhabited that past.

art is the most general condition of the Past in the present. ... Perhaps no work of art is art. It can only become art, when it is part of the past. In this normative sense, a 'contemporary' work of art would be a contradiction - except so far as we can, in the present, assimilate the present to the past.

Some say that no one ever leaves Montreal, for that city, like Canada itself, is designed to preserve the past, a past that happened somewhere else.

My biggest life lesson is that the past is the past. I do my best not to bring history into my present. It ain't ever easy, but it usually creates more opportunity for joyful experiences.

Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past—the past of others, loaded onto their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace.

I love the past. I read about the past all the time.

I don't want to talk about the past. I don't live in past.

We must learn from the past, but we cannot dwell in the past.

We in ancient countries have our past- we obsess over the past. They, the Americans, have a dream: they feel nostalgia about the promise of the future.

Live in the present and shape the future, do not be casting lingering looks to the distant past for the past has passed away, never again to return.

Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.

What happens in the past, is in the past. But don't be surprised if it comes back and haunts you.

It is only by making the past alive again for a person that a true growth in the present is facilitated. If the past is cut off, the future does not exist.

Whoever controls the image and information of the past determines what and how future generations will think; whoever controls the information and images of the present determines how those same people will view the past." "He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past.

I complain that the years fly past, but then I look in a mirror and see that very few of them actually got past.

The past was always there, lived inside of you, and it helped to make you who you were. But it had to be placed in perspective. The past could not dominate the future.

You let go of the past, and stop bringing the past into the present and replaying it into the future. You release guilt, shame, and you can create an entirely new pattern for yourself.

Everything else was in the past, and the past no longer mattered.

What's gone, and what's past help, Should be past grief.

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.

Think there is nothing we can do to change the past, so we have to look at the present to make sure that the past will never repeat itself again.

The future is foretold from the past and the future is only possible because of the past. Without past and future, the present is partial. All time is eternally present and so all time is ours. There is no sense in forgetting and every sense in dreaming. Thus the present is made rich.