Famous Quotes & Sayings

Emily Dickinson

The Things that never can come back, are several- Childhood-some forms of Hope-the Dead- Though Joys-like Men-may sometimes make a Journey- And still abide-.

Emily Dickinson

The Past is such a curious Creature To look her in the Face A Transport may receipt us Or a Disgrace-.

Emily Dickinson

The past is not a package one can lay away.

Emile Durkheim

What history teaches us is that man does not change arbitrarily; he does not transform himself at will on hearing the voices of inspired prophets. The reason is that all change, in colliding with the inherited institutions of the past, is inevitably hard and laborious; consequently it only takes place in response to the demands of necessity. For change to be brought about it is not enough that it should be seen as desirable; it must be the product of changes within the whole network of diverse casual relationships which then determine the situation of man.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Wisely improve the Present. It is thine.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This is the place. Stand still, my steed,- Let me review the scene, And summon from the shadowy past The forms that once have been.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Nor deem the irrevocable Past As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If, rising on its wrecks, at last To something nobler we attain.

Henri Matisse

I'm growing old, I delight in the past.

Henri Matisse

A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave.

Henri Nouwen

When we no longer pray, no longer listen to the voice of love that speaks to us in the moment, our lives become absurd lives in which we are thrown back and forth between the past and the future. If we could just be, for a few minutes each day, fully where we are, we would indeed discover that we are not alone and that the One who is with us wants only one thing: to give us love

Henri Nouwen

It is freeing to become aware that we do not have to be victims of our past and can learn new ways of responding. Forgiveness is love practiced among people who love poorly. It sets us free without wanting anything in return.

Henri Nouwen

Nuclear man is the man who realizes that his creative powers hold the potential for self-destruction. He sees that in this nuclear age vast new industrial complexes enable man to produce in one hour that which he labored over for years in the past, but he also realizes that these same industries have disturbed the ecological balance and, through air and noise pollution, have contaminated his own milieu...

Heath Ledger

I'm not good at future planning. I don't plan at all. I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow. I don't have a day planner and I don't have a diary. I completely live in the now, not in the past, not in the future.

Hassanal Bolkiah

Asean is obviously a very important association for us. Over the past 30 years Asean has made great strides in regional cooperation covering a number of areas, although recently it has been under strain because of the financial crisis and other challenges.

Hernando Cortes

For I assure Your Majesty that if God had not mysteriously assisted us and the victory had gone to Narváez, it would have been the greatest harm that Spaniards had done to each other for a long time past.

Hermione Gingold

She never sets foot out of her apartment or her past.

Henry Paulson

Well, as you know, we're working through a difficult period in our financial markets right now as we work off some of the past excesses. But the American people can remain confident in the soundness and the resilience of our financial system.

Heinrich Heine

The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions.

Hideo Kojima

Building the future, and keeping the past alive - are one and the same thing.

Hilary Mantel

History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.

Henry Waxman

He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do.

Henry Ward Beecher

Troubles loom up big when they're ahead, And joys seem always sweeter when they're past.

Henry Ward Beecher

What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.

Henry Ward Beecher

Next to the pastoral came the agricultural life. When you add to that the manufacturing phase of development, society begins to fill out, and needs but wings to fly, and commerce is its wings.

Henry Ward Beecher

What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages.

Henry Ward Beecher

There is nothing that is so wonderfully created as the human soul. There is something of God in it. We are infinite in the future, though we are finite in the past.

Henry Ward Beecher

A man is a fool who sits looking backward from himself in the past. Ah, what shallow, vain conceit there is in man! Forget the things that are behind. That is not where you live. Your roots are not there. They are in the present; and you should reach up into the other life.

Henry James

We are divided of course between liking to feel the past strange and liking to feel it familiar.

Helen Vendler

All good poets of the past, almost without exception, were at least bilingual if not trilingual.

Heinrich Schliemann

We could imagine nothing pleasanter than to spend all of our lives digging for relics of the past.

Helen Dunmore

Those who try to obliterate the past are injuring the present.

Helen Dunmore

If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.