The Past Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old the past quotes, the past sayings, and the past proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

Dwelling on the past only blinds you to the future. Andrew Boyd
The past can hurt, but the way I see it; you can either run from it or learn from it. The Lion King
The lessons of the past are ignored and obliterated into a contemporary antagonism known as the generation gap. Spiro T. Agnew
The past should be a springboard, not a hammock. Ivern Ball
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. Walter Benjamin
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet. Cyril Connolly
Study the past if you would divine the future. Confucius
The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows. King Jr. Martin Luther
There is a way to look at the past. Don't hide from it. It will not catch you -- if you don't repeat it. Pearl Bailey
Your past is important, but it is not nearly as important to your present as the way you see your future. Tony Campolo
What is past is prologue. William Shakespeare
The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can't achieve it. Jordan Belfort
No matter what happened to you in your past, you are not your past, you are the resources and the capabilities you glean from it. And that is the basis for all change. Jordan Belfort
Learm form the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have any control: now. Denis Waitley
What happened in the past that was painful has a great deal to do with what we are today, but revisiting this painful past can contribute little or nothing to what wee need to do now. William Glasser
May you look back on the past with as much pleasure as you look forward to the future Paul Dickson
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana
The past always looks better than it was because it isn't here. Finley Peter Dunne
Look back, and smile at perils past. Sir Walter Scott
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future. Frederick Douglass
You couldn't erase the past. You couldn't even change it. But sometimes life offered you the opportunity to put it right. Ann Brashares
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. Barbara Taylor Bradford
The past is a ghost, the future a dream and all we ever have is now. Bill Cosby
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present. Bill Keane
Everything has a past. Everything a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present and plan properly for the future. Chaim Potok
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. Gautama Buddha
It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one. George Harrison
One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present. Golda Meir
Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting. Haruki Murakami
Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look. James Burke