PAST QUOTES
quotations about the past
The past lies like a nightmare upon the present.
KARL MARX
The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.
LEWIS CARROLL
Alice in Wonderland
After all, the past is such a little thing, one can drown it in a drop. And the future is so big.
STELLA BENSON
I Pose
One's past is what one is.
OSCAR WILDE
Epigrams & Aphorisms
It's no surprise the 'Good Old Days' seem better than the Present ... They've spent more time in Editing!
TOM WILSON
Ziggy, January 24, 2000
The past is never dead. It's not even past.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Requiem for a Nun
The past beats inside me like a second heart.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Sea
Remembrance of the past kills all present energy and deadens all hope for the future.
MAXIM GORKY
"Creatures that Once were Men"
Nothing is ever behind us.
ROBERTO BOLAÑO
2666
My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.
WILLIAM GOLDING
New York Times, October 7, 1983
The past. The Golden Age of the past. What a nostalgia we all feel for it. Yet we don't want it when we get it. Try the South Seas.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Studies in Classic American Literature
The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
OSCAR WILDE
Epigrams & Aphorisms
Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. The events that cause them can never be forgotten.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
Your past is always your past. Even if you forget it, it remembers you.
SARAH DESSEN
What Happened to Goodbye?
You can't change the past, it just is.
ALYSON NOËL
Shadowland
He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
GEORGE ORWELL
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Each future day increase of wealth shall bring,
And o'er the past Oblivion stretch her wing.
HOMER
The Odyssey
We go to the past to lay the blame -- since the past can't argue.
GLEN DUNCAN
Love Remains
Our entire linear and accumulative culture collapses if we cannot stockpile the past in plain view.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
Simulacra and Simulation