These past quotes will inspire you. Past an earlier time or gone by in time and no longer existing.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging past quotes, past sayings, and past proverbs.
Best Past Quotes
- “You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.” ~ Johnny Cash
- “The past is behind, learn from it. The future is ahead, prepare for it. The present is here, live it.” ~ Thomas S. Monson
- “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
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“The past is a bucket of ashes” ~ Carl Sandburg
- “I can’t go back to yesterday – because I was a different person then.” ~ Lewis Carroll
- “One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it.” ~ Gaston Bachelard
- “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” ~ Oscar Wilde
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“We can never know what might have been but what is to come is another matter entirely” ~ C. S. Lewis
- “Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.” ~ Adrienne Rich
- “Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give everyone a smile. Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others. Be too big for worry and too noble for anger.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale
- “You have to know the past to understand the present.” ~ Carl Sagan
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“Our past may explain why we’re suffering but we must not use it as an excuse to stay in bondage.” ~ Joyce Meyer
- “Right actions in the future are the best apologies for bad actions in the past.” ~ Tryon Edwards
- “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” ~ Mother Teresa
- “One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” ~ Golda Meir
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“Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.” ~ Wayne Dyer
- “You are what you are today because of the choices you made in the past” ~ Jim Rohn
- “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” ~ Hans Hofmann
- “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
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“Best not to mix the past with the present. The present paints the past with gold. The past paints the present with lead.” ~ Henry Rollins
- “You got your guards up, I do too, there’s things we might discover. Cause you got a past and I do too, we’re perfect for each other.” ~ Drake
- “We are all here for some special reason. Stop being a prisoner of your past. Become the architect of your future.” ~ Robin Sharma
- “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” ~ George Orwell
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“The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of loving in the present.” ~ Barbara De Angelis
- “Losers live in the past. Winners learn from the past and enjoy working in the present toward the future.” ~ Denis Waitley
- “The error of the past is the wisdom of the future.” ~ Dale E. Turner
- “As the great Confucius said, “The one who would be in constant happiness must frequently change.” Flow. But we keep looking back, don’t we? We cling to things in the past and cling to things in the present…Do you want to enjoy a symphony? Don’t hold on to a few bars of the music. Don’t hold on to a couple of notes. Let them pass, let them flow. The whole enjoyment of a symphony lies in your readiness to allow the notes to pass.” ~ Anthony de Mello
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“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” ~ William Butler Yeats
- “Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.” ~ Robert H. Schuller
- “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” ~ George Santayana
- “One reason God created time was so that there would be a place to bury the failures of the past.” ~ James Long
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“What is past is prologue.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” ~ Gautama Buddha
- “Things without all remedy should be without regard: what’s done is done.” ~ William Shakespeare” Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today and you make your tomorrow.” ~ L. Ron Hubbard , Past quotes about life
- “People are all over the world telling their one dramatic story and how their life has turned into getting over this one event. Now their lives are more about the past than their future.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk
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“Every past is worth condemning.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
- “You can never plan the future by the past.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “Sooner or later we’ve all got to let go of our past.” ~ Dan Brown
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“We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.” ~ George Washington
- “We are not held back by the love we didn’t receive in the past, but by the love we’re not extending in the present.” ~ Marianne Williamson , Past quotes about love
- “The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.” ~ Andre Maurois
- “Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging up your back and runing its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do-the only thing-is run.” ~ Lauren Oliver
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“Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.” ~ Will Rogers
- “Nostalgia is a seductive liar.” ~ George Ball
- “No man is rich enough to buy back his past.” ~ Oscar Wilde
- “Each had his own business to think of. Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.” ~ Virginia Woolf
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“Study the past, if you would divine the future.” ~ Confucius
- “Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “I cannot sing the old songs, Or dream those dreams again.” ~ Charlotte Alington Barnard
- “I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.” ~ Herb Caen
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“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
- “There is just one life for each of us: our own.” ~ Euripides
- “A good man will take care of his horses and dogs, not only while they are young, but when old and past service.” ~ Plutarch
- “However we pass Time, he passes still,
Passing away whatever the pastime,
And, whether we use him well or ill,
Some day he gives us the slip for the last time.” ~ Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton -
“The future comes slowly, the present flies and the past stands still forever.” ~ Friedrich Schiller
- “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 we need to do now.” ~ William Glasser
- “We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.” ~ George Santayana , Remembering past quotes
- “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put the past together again. So let’s remember: Don’t try to saw sawdust.” ~ Dale Carnegie
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“Forgiveness means letting go of the past.” ~ Gerald Jampolsky
- “No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worrying can change the future” ~ Umar
- “Happiness is the ability to move forward, knowing the future will be better than the past.” ~ Zig Ziglar
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“What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” ~ William Least Heat-Moon
- “The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjects – making it possible… to see a new beauty in what is vanishing.” ~ Susan Sontag
- “Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.” ~ Tennessee Williams
