Top 100 Quotes About the Past

Quotes about the Past will help you to become a better person in the future. Past consists of all the events that once occurred in someone’s life. Past experiences of one person differ from the other. Some people are emotionally attached to the past because of their events and memories. While others try to forget it because of the painful events that happened in it.

Some people try to learn from the past to make their future better. The world is not full of flowers and rainbows. It constantly reminds us that it’s a very mean and nasty place to live in.

Quotes About the Past motivate and helps the individual to learn from your mistake which has been done in his life. An attachment to past experiences will constantly stick you in a repetitive cycle of failure and suffering and it will remind you how cruel the world is. This happens in every person’s life. Success will depend on how you will cope it will a more positive approach, how you see the circumstances and events that occurred in the past and how will you learn and get motivation from your past experiences. Some of the famous Quotes About the Past are:

1. “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.” ― Bill Keane

 

2. “Praises for our past triumphs are as feathers to a dead bird.” ― Paul Eldridge

 

3. “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” ― Lesley Hartley

4. “The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it.” ― Mignon McLaughlin

 

5. “The past is never where you think you left it.”― Katherine Anne Porter

6. “The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.” ― H.G. Wells

 

7. Bring the past only if only you are going to build from it.” ― Domenico Cieri Estrada

8. “You know that old phrase ‘Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it’? Well, I think those who remember the past are even worse off.” ― Chuck Palahniuk

 

9. “Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.” ― Haruki Murakami

10. “Walk with me, memory to memory, the shared path, the mutual view. Walk with me. The past lies in wait. It is not behind. It seems to be in front. How else could it trip me as I start to run?” ― Jeanette Winterson

 

11. “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

 

12. “I was so in the present moment the past was no longer part of me”―Laurel Hoodwrit

13. “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”― William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

 

14. “The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it”―Wendell Berry

15. “We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.”― Rick Warren

 

16. “The past, which as always did not know the future, acted in ways that ask to be imagined before they are condemned. Or even simplified.” ― Paul Fussell

17. “You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

18. “Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.” ―Virginia Woolf

 19. “Study the past if you would define the future.”― Confucius

 

20. “What you had yesterday is only memories; what you will have tomorrow is your dreams and what you will do today, let it be love.” ― Santosh Kalwar

 

21. “We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.”― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

22.“There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday.”―Robert Nathan

 23. “My past is everything I failed to be.”― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

24. “The past can’t hurt you anymore, not unless you let it.”― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

 

25. “The past is never there when you try to go back. It exists, but only in memory. To pretend otherwise is to invite a mess.”― Chris Cobbs

26. “Provide for her Future—if you can!—That’s my motto!—But a man’s just a plain bum who doesn’t provide for his own Past!” ― Eleanor Hallowell Abbot

 27. “My yesterday’s walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.”― William Golding

28. “Your past is always your past. Even if you forget it, it remembers you.”― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

 

29. “Pile up too many tomorrows and you’ll find that you’ve collected nothing but a bunch of empty yesterdays.”―The Music Man

30. “Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.”―George S. Patton

31. “The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.”―Rene Descartes

 

32. “Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.”― Steven Wright

33. “Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do.”― Jean de la Bruyere

34. “The past speaks to us in a thousand voices, warning and comforting, animating and stirring to action.”― Felix Adler

35. “Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way.”― Edna Ferbe

36. “Your past doesn’t define who you are. It just gives you the starting point for who you’re going to be.”― Agent Carolina

 

37. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”―George Santayana (1863-1952)

38. “The past is not a package one can lay away.”― Emily Dickinson

39. “The past is never there when you try to go back. It exists, but only in memory. To pretend otherwise is to invite a mess.”― Chris Cobbs

40. “The past does not define me, it ignites me. The past is not a piece of me, it has placed me” ― Ricky Maye

 

41. “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

42. “The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.” ― Wendell Berry

43. “The hardships that I encountered in the past will help me succeed in the future.” – Philip Emeagwali

 

44. “Don’t brood on the past, but don’t forget it either.” ― Thomas H. Raddal

45. “Today I am leading because yesterday I was reading.” ― Amit Kalantri

46. “It’s okay to look back at your past. Just don’t stare.” ― Benjamin Dover

47. “Don’t torture yourself over the past. Use it as a teacher. Whatever happened to you in the past, has only prepared you for now.” ― Robert Tew

 

48. “One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” ― Golda Meir

49. “Leaders build the future with clays of the past. Every good moment gives them ideas; every bad moment gives them lessons.” ― Israelmore Ayivor

 

50. “It was strange how the future seemed tied inseparably to the past, so that both revolved through the present, like a great wheel…” ― Tad Williams

51. “People tend to look on the beliefs of the past as being primitive and unintelligent, yet we are seeing more truth in the past every day.” ― Jennifer

52. “Where you come from, what you look like, and what your past holds do not define you as an individual–you are what you make yourself to be.” ― Kat Von D

53. “Of this I am certain, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.” ― Winston S. Churchill

54. “Life’s all about balance. To move on in life you have to strike a balance between your past, present, and your future; you may either be jerked off or left behind.” ― Richmond Akhigbe

 

55. “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.” ― Lauren Kate

 

Everyone has past and no one can deny it. The past is there for us to learn from it positively. Learning from past experiences makes you a more productive and more effective person.

Quotes About the Past can be helpful to create an impact on individuals. The past is full of learning opportunities to make the present and future bright. Recall your best and worst memories and events from the past and learn from it. Make your past pain as your strength is present. This will guide you to a path of success.

Everyone has a choice to interpret their experience. Some people suffer from it because they perceive them from a narrow lens of defeat while others move on positively by asking a question from themselves that what lesson they get from their past, and what did they learn from it.

Quotes about the past are packed with learning opportunities to learn from the past for our present and future. There is a point in everyone’s life when they become the victim of their past. At that time you didn’t understand what to do and what is wrong and right. You see yourself as a loser. But the time when you distance yourself from those circumstances you will realize that how much you learn from your past experiences and how beautifully it mold you in a better person. Some of the Beautiful Quotes about Learning from the Past as well as the Quotes about Living in the Past are Listed below:

56. “Even if you time travel your past, it can’t be changed, likewise, you can’t possibly change your future, it is always the present which matters.” ― Pushpa Rana

 

57. “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”― Søren Kierkegaa

58. “You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.”― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

59. “I saw this was the way of the future, to leave the past behind as if it were a dream.” ― Alice Hoffman

60. “The past is always tense, the future perfect.”― Zadie Smith

61. “The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.”― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

 

62. “I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.”― Beryl Markham, West with the Night

63. “When we recall the past, we usually find that it is the simplest things – not the great occasions – that in retrospect give off the greatest glow of happiness.” ― Bob Hope

64. “My past has not defined me, destroyed me, deterred me, or defeated me; it has only strengthened me.” ― Steve Maraboli

 

65. “I am not someone who is ashamed of my past. I’m actually really proud. I know I made a lot of mistakes, but they, in turn, were my life lessons.” ― Drew Barrymore

 

66. “Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.” ― William Ralph Inge

67. “Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.” ― Dale Turner

 

68. “I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.” ― Alan Watts

All these Quotes About the Past will help you to Change Your Viewpoint. When you are an adult or teenager, the only thing you desperately want to be in a relationship with someone. When you truly love someone, they will always be a part of you throughout life. First love is very special and not forgettable. There is a time in life where u can’t imagine living life without them. You think you will never be happy again because this person was the only reason for your happy life for feeling loved.

But as time passes and some people remain in the same place from where they started as they were not able to forget their first love and they suffer due to depression with no desire of living life. At the same time, some people thank God that it didn’t work because if it works out they wouldn’t be in the current relationship. So everyone perceives their past in their own way.

Some of the Quotes about the past and moving forward are given below which will help you to move positively and to learn from your past experience so that it will never happen again with you.

69. “Everyone has a story; everyone hides his past as a means of self-preservation. Some just do it better, and more thoroughly, than others.” ― Jodi Picoult

 

70. “Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

71. “Every relationship must have a starting point so that past errors may remain in the past.” ― Mary Lydon Simonsen

 

72. “Everything you think you know or feel is based on an attachment to the past.” ― Akiroq Brost

73. “Love can only be true and free when you are fully healed from painful past and any form of brokenness.” ― Kemi Sogunle

 

74. “ Learn 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

75. “If we wish to see where our future is headed, all we need to do is have a look at our past and that will tell us all the answers.” ― Anthony T. Hincks

76. “If you are carrying strong feelings about something that happened in your past, they may hinder your ability to live in the present.”― Les Brown

 

77. “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, Unexpected Blessings

78. “I’m looking forward to the future and feeling grateful for the past.”― Mike Rowe

 

79. “The past beats inside me like a second heart.”― John Ba

 In life, everybody is searching for an inspiration to get motivated and to be creative. Mostly we seek inspiration from others to enlighten our future. But do you ever think that your past is the biggest source of inspiration you ever get? Quotes about the past will help you to get inspired and to move on to do some creative things in life.

The biggest problem of reflecting on our past is that it reminds us of all the mistakes that we have made during this period. It carries unpleasant memories and events that are a hindrance we didn’t remind it. But our past motivates us to never do the same mistake ever in life.

When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us. – Alexander Graham Bell

We are so emotionally attached to our past that we can’t be able to see the opportunities that are for us in present. To be in past will ruin your present. So try to get a positive inspiration from the mistakes that you have done in the past to make your present and future bright. Quotes About the Inspiration from the past and Quotes about the Past and the Future are listed below:

80. “We don’t have to be defined by the things we did or didn’t do in our past. Some people allow themselves to be controlled by regret. Maybe it’s a regret, maybe it’s not. It’s merely something that happened. Get over it.”― Pittacus Lore, I Am Number Four

 

81. “We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic – now mercifully stilled, thank God – might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion as it had before.”― Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

82. “ May you look back on the past with as much pleasure as you look forward to the future.”―Paul Dickson

83. “There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.”― Eckhart Tolle

84. “Sooner or later we’ve all got to let go of our past.”― Dan Brown, Deception Point

85. “One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present. -Golda Meir“A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives – of approving of some and disapproving of others.”― Charles Darwin

86. “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

 

87. “Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.”― Gautama Buddha

88. “Stop being a prisoner of your past. Become the architect of your future.”― Robin Sharma

89. “Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

90. “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

91. “I like to use the hard times in the past to motivate me today.”― Dwayne Johnson

92. “ The past can hurt, but the way I see it; you can either run from it or learn from it.”― The Lion King

93. “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”— George Orwell.

94. “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”― Buddha

95. “Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.”— Lewis B. Smedes

 

96. “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

97. “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

98. “I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it anyway except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.”— Beryl Markham

99. “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”― John F. Kennedy

 

100. “There is the past, and there is the future. The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other. We live poised on that second as it’s hurtling forward—toward what?”― Laini Taylor, Dreams of Gods and Monsters

 

These all are the Famous Quotes About the Past. One of the important lessons we can get from the past is that nobody is permanent in this life. People come and get out of your life. So instead of getting depressed and feeling low try to tolerate and face everything life hit at you, it will be helpful in the present and future both.

Quotes About the Past teach us that nobody is perfect. We can’t do well always and ups and downs are the part of life. So don’t be self-conscious and don’t lose hope of doing better in life.