Past And Present Quotes

“My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present.”
― Steve Goodier

“Fuck the past. This was the present.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“I don't think humanity just replays history, but we are the same people our ancestors were, and our descendants are going to face a lot of the same situations we do. It's instructive to imagine how they would react, with different technologies on different worlds. That's why I write science fiction -- even though the term 'science fiction' excites disdain in certain persons.”
― Kage Baker

“I'm a bad man. I need to understand the past. It illuminates the present.”
― Glen Cook, Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

“An overflowing pot must be emptied before anything new can be added. If you cling to the sorrows of the past, how can you make space for the happiness and joy of the present?”
― Sanu Sharma, विप्लवी [Biplavi]

“Until an overflowing pot is emptied, nothing else can be added to it. If you keep holding onto the sorrows of the past, how and where will you make room for the happiness and joy of the present?”
― Sanu Sharma, अर्को देशमा [Arko Deshma]

“भरिएको भाँडो खाली नगरेसम्म त्यसमा अरू केही राख्न मिल्दैन । अतीतको दुःखलाई समातेर राखिरहे वर्तमानको सुख र खुसीलाई कसरी र कहाँ ठाउँ दिने ?”
― Sanu Sharma, अर्को देशमा [Arko Deshma]

“The ascendancy over men's minds of the ruins of the stupendous past, the past of history, legend and myth, at once factual and fantastic, stretching back and back into ages that can but be surmised, is half-mystical in basis. The intoxication, at once so heady and so devout, is not the romantic melancholy engendered by broken towers and mouldered stones; it is the soaring of the imagination into the high empyrean where huge episodes are tangled with myths and dreams; it is the stunning impact of world history on its amazed heirs.”
― Rose Macaulay, The Pleasure of Ruins

“Like distant music these words that he had written years before were borne towards him from the past.”
― James Joyce, The Dead

“He may actually have been existing in the past and approximating a conceivable future, which brought even the assumption of his immediate perceptions as being in the present into doubt. And thus, he couldn’t—beyond a hint of skepticism—say that he truly existed right now and in this moment, but instead it seemed more rational to assume that he simply existed and nothing more.”
― Ashim Shanker, Don't Forget to Breathe

“It's all history out there, Clemens. Your history, my history. You and me, boy, not dates and things. You and me. That's what history is all about. How we came to be here, in the way we are, the clothes we wear.”
― David Wiseman, Jeremy Visick: A Gripping Adventure About Loyalty and Destiny Across Time in Cornwall for Children

“Every book is a conversation with the past, present, and future.”
― Educator X, Tango Secrets: Your Ultimate Guide To Tango Dance & Culture

“The past can't now be altered, the future has yet to be lived, and consciously to experience every moment of the present is the only way to gain at least the illusion of immortality.”
― P.D. James, Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography

“Be not so foolish as to cling to what was, rather than embrace what can be.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“Once you lie about your past, you wall yourself off from the present.”
― Julie Clark, The Ghostwriter

“Often...
In reflecting on the past, we discover fragments of our present selves hidden within the chapters of our history—
A realization that our journey is a continuous narrative, shaped by the echoes of who we once were.”
― Monika Ajay Kaul

“We should make a rule that we only spend some of our time talking about the past. It doesn’t mean we care about them less. It just means that we still have to live.”
― Jeff Zentner, Goodbye Days

“You of all people should know it matters more where we are than where we’ve been.”
― Rodney Barnes, Star Wars: Inquisitors

“A new trunk had grown, covering the scar of the burn with thick new growth. Not hiding it, no, for the past could never be hidden, but embracing it with new hope and new dreams so that both past and present formed one unified trunk that continued to shelter our people as we lived on in the shadows of the great Blue Mountains that had seen an eternity and stood ready to face another.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“When I look at the past I do it in the present, it becomes the present and I don't have any desire to cling to it. I make the three piles of stuff that we have all made at some time: a pile to keep, a pile to go, and a pile that I don't know what to do with.”
― Marc Hamer, Spring Rain

“We heal the past by living in the present and visioning the future we deserve.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“Inasmuch as relics are a reminder of history, your past shouldn't be a bridge between what was and what remains for gossips, rumours and personal attacks.”
― Eduvie Donald

“Let’s never say ‘tomorrow,’ because all we ever have is the moment. People think there’s a future, but there really isn’t, not if we want to be totally honest with ourselves. There’s the past, which we might wish desperately that we can change, and there’s now. If we don’t seize the now with all our might, it becomes just another part of the past that we end up wishing we could change.”
― Dean Koontz, The Other Emily

“Don’t bring the past into the present and don’t project the present into the future.”
― Brittany Burgunder

“What about my past?

What about it? We all have a past, lovey. Yours might have a few bits and pieces that are more public than others, but that doesn't make them worse, just more available.

I think you should own it, all of it.

After all, the only thing the world loves more than watching someone fall is watching them rise again. (p177)”
― Stacey Ballis, Wedding Girl

“Usually the wedding that wasn't is an off-limits topic for me, but the damn Canyon Ranch counselor told me that I will never fully move forward to the future I deserve until I am able to claim the whole event as an important part of my past.
Ouch. (p47)”
― Stacey Ballis, Wedding Girl

“The past always has its hands around your neck, doesn’t it?”
― Catriona Ward, Sundial

“I suggest that those who live in the past don't want a confrontation with the present. I believe that white Americans welcome the present race violence and that under the surface reactions of horror and shock is very deep relief. Now white Americans are back in the familiar jungle. Now the confrontation is in terms they can understand and in accord with their prejudices. Now they can have a confrontation because they think they know the answer to violence, and the answer is force, and furthermore they welcome the use of force. Now they no longer have to talk or think about injustice, guilt, or the immorality of racism. Now it is simple: "Law and order must be upheld before we get around to anything else.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals

“There were times it made one happy to be a fool. It made you feel that you were driving straight back into the past.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Blythes Are Quoted

“She hadn't seen him in years, but everything that had ever passed between them - love and sex and rage and grief and anger and finally, horribly, indifference - was suddenly present, too. Surrounding them, ghosts. None of it ever goes away.”
― Aja Gabel, Lightbreakers