Quotes about Past

We are wistful about the golden days of the past and dream of a distant future unclouded by necessity. But I suspect that if our inner souls were asked what in life they really missed, the answer would be primal danger and stress.

Free men and women... can think across time, viewing their own lives, inclusive of past, present, and future, as architectural wholes, static in mental space. They can therefore see, as others cannot, the cracks and buttresses of repeated action, the points of stress, the established framework. They are not perfect; but they are less imperfect than we by a full dimension of being.

The face of the angel of history is turned toward the past.  Where we perceived a chain of events, he sees a single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.  The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed.  But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them.  This storm irresistably propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.  The storm is what we call progress.

To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it - who are you?

You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present.

Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.

In general people experience their present naively, as it were, without being able to form an estimate of its contents; they have first to put themselves at a distance from it - the present, that is to say, must have become the past - before it can yield points of vantage from which to judge the future. 

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day.  There is no time in them.  There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.  Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less.  Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike.  But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future.  He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present above time.

Past is past and we must live the present to survive the future.

These tenses--past, present and future--are not the tenses of time; they are tenses of the mind. That which is no longer before the mind becomes the past. That which is before the mind is the present. And that which is going to be before the mind is the future. Past is that which is no longer before you. Future is that which is not yet before you. And present is that which is before you and is slipping out of your sight. Soon it will be past....

Never limit your view of life by any past experience.

The instant experience of the present, right now and here, as it is, for your mind, energy and body, are many, and each is operating in a different state of awareness and dimension of time.
The present of your mind is far away from the time of here and started beyond the time your remember, in a time that is ever lasting and always there.
The present of your energy is actively in a time you can perceive, beyond the vision of the world in this time, and is replicated at each dimension you are manifested or related.
The present of your body, is an experience of your senses, limited to the infinite potentiality of a body that exists beyond time.
The instant experience of all dimensions of time, is available here and now, through every cell you experience and nourish with life.
 

Examine the present and learn from the past to see how the future will unfold. Too often we just look at the present and base our actions solely on that.

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.

You cannot see the past that did not happen any more than you can foresee the future.

History is written by those who survive their past.

When we dwell on the past, we tend to want to live there. When we dream of the future, we want to go there. Our dreams are where God paints a picture of a life waiting to be created.

Understanding your past is the best way to forget it.

No matter what a man's past may have been his future is spotless.

The past: our cradle, not our prison; there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.

Ever so often the Key to the Future lies in the Past!

we live in the past
light is fast, but thoughts and emotions are faster
counsciousness and perception can be really fast
our body, and material world is too slow

today, is a sparkle of an event that did happend long time ago.
we live the past of our consciousness ,in our material world
we live the present of our body
we live the trip of light and perception, a continues change
our future have been  decided  already, right now

You cannot change the past in the future, unless you begin in the present.

The past should not be followed after,
and the future not desired;
what is past is dead and gone,
and the future is yet to come.

Majjhima Nikāya 3.272

The failure of the past philosophers is largely the failure to see the self-evident.

We are vulnerable to fear only when we leave the present.  If I drift into the past, my regrets surge up, my memories of failing and forsaking.  If I shift into the future, I meet with doubt and delusion, fear of what's to come, what I'm not capable of controlling.  It's in the present moment that I belong.

These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.

''The seeds of the future,lie buried in the past.''

The future belongs to those who survive their past

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.