“The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.”
“The past always looks better than it was because it isn't here.”
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
“The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.”
“The historian looks backward. In the end he also believes backward.”
“To look back to antiquity is one thing, to go back to it is another.”
“Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.”
“To design the future effectively, you must first let go of your past.”
“Clogged with yesterday's excess, the body drags the mind down with it.”
“It is one thing to learn about the past; it is another to wallow in it.”
“Things without remedy, should be without regard; what is done, is done.”
“As lousy as things are now, tomorrow they will be somebody's good old days.”
“The good of other times let people state; I think it lucky I was born so late.”
“One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.”
“To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice.”
“While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.”
“May you look back on the past with as much pleasure as you look forward to the future.”
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
“We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.”
“The past is all holy to us; the dead are all holy; even they that were wicked when alive.”
“The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
“The people who get into trouble in our company are those who carry around the anchor of the past.”
“We live in a world where amnesia is the most wished-for state. When did history become a bad word?”
“Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.”
“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.”
“Losers live in the past. Winners learn from the past and enjoy working in the present toward the future.”
“Your past is important, but it is not nearly as important to your present as the way you see your future.”
“Fearfulness, contrary to all other vices, maketh a man think the better of another, the worse of himself.”
“The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.”
“Man... cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.”