Quotessence
Home / Topics / Past Quotes

Past Quotes

Browse 13378 quotes about Past.

Related topics

IfsPeopleThinkingYearsWayKnowsWorldMenHas BeensOur PastMomentsLooksWantMemoriesTodayYour PastMindTryingFeelsDoneMayNeedsLongShouldGivingMovingMy PastRememberStillsMadeBelieveMeanOver The PastWellsPersonsWritingDoeKindHumansFirstsDifferentLittlesAgeTwoHappenedI CanForgetSeemsCountryImportantLastsRealSaidFutureSometimesBookArtDreamMatterStoriesHistoryChildrenHeartLifeInspirationalEndsGonePast LifeRealityOur FutureEventsIdeasFactsMistakeHappensAbleReasonMightUseRegretWholeTimeProblemLyingStatesFeelingsUsedLife IsSelfActionHelpingCenturyEnoughHardWould BeAmericaFormBehindsFacesSoulmore

Past Quotes

“Good government cannot be found on the bargain-counter. We have seen samples of bargain-counter government in the past when low tax rates were secured by increasing the bonded debt for current expenses or refusing to keep our institutions up to the standard in repairs, extensions, equipment, and accommodations. I refuse, and the Republican Party refuses, to endorse that method of sham and shoddy economy.”

GovernmentPastFoundPartyEconomyRepublicanTaxesLowsStandardsEconomicsMethodInstitutionsRateCurrentsRefuseDebtExpensesExtensionsRepublican PartyEquipmentBargainsSampleSecuredAccommodations
Author:Calvin Coolidge
Create image

“Truth is one of the realities covered in the eclectic religion of our fathers by the idea of God. Awe very properly hangs about it, since it is the immovable standard and silent witness of all our memories and assertions; and the past and the future, which in our anxious life are so differently interesting and so differently dark, are one seamless garment for the truth, shining like the sun.”

IdeasRealityTruthPastFatherMemoriesDarkInterestingSunTruth IsStandardsShiningSilentWitnessAweCoveredAnxiousOur FatherGarmentsOur MemoriesAssertionEclecticSeamless
Book:Scepticism and Animal Faith
Create image

“The Past is dead, and has no resurrection; but the Future is endowed with such a life, that it lives to us even in anticipation. The Past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the Future is, in all things, our friend. In the Past is no hope; The Future is both hope and fruition. The Past is the text-book of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.”

BookPastForeverWifeMankindAll ThingsTyrantsResurrectionAnticipationLooking BackIncapableFoeNo HopeFruition
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
Create image

“He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.”

KnowsHumansSaidLightPastViewsClearHuman NatureDivineFindingsAppreciationContrastRepresentingInconsistencyDivine Nature
Book:The Confidence-man: His Masquerade
Create image

“To anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, seems to float there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as a poetic approach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads.”

IfsMaySeemsPastVictoryFameApproachNostalgiaPoeticSolitaryForgivenFloatsNot AloneMonumentNelsonHullIroncladsPortsmouth
Book:Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories
Create image

“Does anyone believe for one moment that the progress we have made would have been possible under bureaucratic control of any government. This country was founded upon the principle of the regulation of private effort, of making rules for the game, and under that system alone can we look for the same success in the future which has been ours in the past. Our position today is the direct result of the free play among our people of private competitive effort.”

PeopleBelieveLooksDoeHas BeensMadeCountryPlayMomentsGovernmentTodayPastGamesResultsEffortPrinciplesProgressPositionDirectCompetitionRegulationFree Play
Author:Roger Babson
Create image

“... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal,that we can understand our past through a male lens--if we are unaware that women even have a history--we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.”

IfsPhilosophyPastAcceptingHistoryOur LivesWindUniversalResponseMalesDefinitionsMythBiasOur PastLensesDrifting
Book:Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985
Create image

“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”

ThinkingMenNeedsArtTodayPastEasyAnswersHistoryGoneRecordsWrittenGenerationsDangerScaryDrivenBlockIdiotReasoningDelusionExceptionalContinuityRiddleQuicksandLifelinesGood Thinking
Book:Occasions and protests
Create image

“The present is burdened too much with the past. We have not time, in our earthly existence, to appreciate what is warm with life, and immediately around us.”

PastExistenceToo MuchAppreciateWarm
Book:Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
Create image

“Yesterday I visited the British Museum; an exceedingly tiresome affair. It quite crushes a person to see so much at once; and I wandered from hall to hall with a weary and heavy heart. The present is burdened too much with the past.”

HeartPersonsPastToo MuchAffairHeavyBritishYesterdayCrushHallsMuseumsWearyTiresomeBritish MuseumHeavy Heart
Book:Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
Create image

“Never, I say, had a country so many openings to happiness as this.... Her cause was good. Her principles just and liberal. Her temper serene and firm.... The remembrance then of what is past, if it operates rightly must inspire her with the most laudable of an ambition, that of adding to the fair fame she began with. The world has seen her great adversity.... Let then, the world see that she can bear prosperity; and that her honest virtue in time of peace is equal to the bravest virtue in time of war.”

IfsWorldWarCountryAmericaPastCausesPrinciplesVirtueHonestInspireBearsFameEqualAmbitionFairsAdversityProsperityOpeningFirmTemperRemembranceSerene
Author:Thomas Paine
Create image

“Our reliance in this country is on the inquiring, individual human mind. Our strength is founded there; our resilience, our ability to face an ever-changing future and to master it. We are not frozen into the backward-facing impotence of those societies, fixed in the rigidness of an official dogma, to which the future is the mirror of the past. We are free to make the future for ourselves.”

MindHumansCountryPastFacesIndividualAbilityMastersMirrorsResilienceFixedOfficialsHuman MindDogmaFrozenRelianceImpotenceInquiring
Author:Archibald MacLeish
Create image

“For most visitors to Manhattan, both foreign and domestic, New York is the Shrine of the Good Time. "I don't see how you stand it," they often say to the native New Yorker who has been sitting up past his bedtime for a week in an attempt to tire his guest out. "It's all right for a week or so, but give me the little old home town when it comes to living." And, under his breath, the New Yorker endorses the transfer and wonders himself how he stands it.”

GivingLittlesHas BeensHomePastWonderWeekNew YorkSittingGive MeTownsBreathsNativeGood TimesGuestsTireManhattanTransfersNew YorkersVisitorsBedtimeShrinesHome TownSitting Up
Author:Robert Benchley
Create image

“The infernal storm, eternal in its rage, sweeps and drives the spirits with its blast; it whirls them, lashing them with punishment. When they are swept back past their place of judgment then come the shrieks, laments, and anguished cries; there they blaspheme God's almighty power.”

PastSpiritCryJudgmentEternalStormRageLustPunishmentAlmightyBlastLament
Book:Dante’s Inferno, The Indiana Critical Edition
Create image

“Never let success hide its emptiness from you, achievement its nothingness, toil its desolation. And so...keep alive the incentive to push on further, that pain in the soul which drives us beyond ourselves...Do not look back. And do not dream about the future, either. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward - your destiny - are here and now.”

GivingLooksSoulDreamPainPastDestinyAliveDutyAchievementRewardsEmptinessNothingnessToilIncentivesOur DestinyYour DestinyHere And NowDaydreamingDesolation
Author:Dag Hammarskjold
Create image

“I'm beginning to believe that Killer Illiteracy ought to rank near heart disease and cancer as one of the leading causes of deathamong Americans. What you don't know can indeed hurt you, and so those who can neither read nor write lead miserable lives, like Richard Wright's character, Bigger Thomas, born dead with no past or future.”

KnowsWritingBelieveHeartCharacterPastReadingCausesBornHurtEducationOughtDiseaseBiggerCancerMiserableKillersIlliteracyHeart DiseaseMiserable LifeLeading Causes
Book:Writin' is fightin': thirty-seven years of boxing on paper
Create image