PAST QUOTES IV
quotations about the past
The past is a mist.
HAROLD PINTER
Moonlight
But we look ahead to the far off skies,
For the years are flying fast,
And we know that the present that round us lies
Ere the light of a few more moments dies,
Will with many loved and severed ties
Fade into the mist-veiled past.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"The Beautiful Past"
See, there's nothing wrong with the past; the past is a good thing, but that's not all there is.
PAT BENATAR
interview, AV Club, August 26, 1997
All the past is not worth one today.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"New Year"
If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other ... for only out of the past can you make the future.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
All the King's Men
Creativity and innovation always builds on the past. The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it. Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past. Ours is less and less a free society.
LAWRENCE LESSIG
keynote address at the Open Source Convention, OSCON, July 24, 2002
Life would be no better than candlelight tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits were not touched by what has been.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
The reverberation often exceeds through silence the sound that sets it off; the reaction occasionally outdoes by way of repose the event that stimulated it; and the past not uncommonly takes a while to happen, and some long time to figure out.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Our most merciless enemy is our past.
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
Keep out of the Past! for its highways
Are damp with malarial gloom;
Its gardens are sere and its forests are drear,
And everywhere moulders a tomb.
Who seeks to regain its lost pleasures,
Finds only a rose turned to dust;
And its storehouse of wonderful treasures
Are covered and coated with rust.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Keep Out of the Past"
It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.
CHARLES DICKENS
David Copperfield
Beyond here lies nothin'
But the mountains of the past
BOB DYLAN
"Beyond Here Lies Nothin'"
It is not that I have no past. Rather, it continually fragments on the terrible and vivid ephemera of now.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Dhalgren
The past is gained, secure, and on record.
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 1, 1845
The only past which endures lies wordlessly within you.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
The day before is what we bring to the day we're actually living through, life is a matter of carrying along all those days-before just as someone might carry stones, and when we can no longer cope with the load, the work is done.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
The Cave
Learn to recognize the future the way a Steersman identifies guiding stars and corrects the course of his vessel. Learn from the past; never use it as an anchor.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
The past was bitter and dry and ashes in his mouth, its bone arms clasped him like some old desiccated lover he could not be shut of.
WILLIAM GAY
Provinces of Night
Youth, hope, and love:
To build a new life on a ruined life,
To make the future fairer than the past,
And make the past appear a troubled dream.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The Masque of Pandora