Past Quotes

"Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is." ~ An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde 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. ~ Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future. ~ The Time Machine by H. G. Wells Animals arrived, liked the look of the place, took up their quarters, settled down, spread, and flourished. They didn't bother themselves about the past--they never do; they're too busy. ~ The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame At a single strain of music, the scent of a flower, or even one glimpse of a path of moonlight lying fair upon a Summer sea, the barriers crumble and fall. Through the long corridors the ghosts of the past walk unforbidden, hindered only by broken promises, dead hopes, and dream-dust. ~ Old Rose and Silver by Myrtle Reed With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame. ~ Middlemarch by George Eliot "More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before.
The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,
Writ in remembrance more than things long past." ~ King Richard II by William Shakespeare We are sons of yesterday, not of the morning. The past is our mortal mother, no dead thing. Our future constantly reflects her to the soul. ~ The Adventures of Harry Richmond by George Meredith For who can wonder that man should feel a vague belief in tales of disembodied spirits wandering through those places which they once dearly affected, when he himself, scarcely less separated from his old world than they, is for ever lingering upon past emotions and bygone times, and hovering, the ghost of his former self, about the places and people that warmed his heart of old? ~ Master Humphrey's Clock by Charles Dickens Recollections of the past and visions of the present come to bear me company; the meanest man to whom I have ever given alms appears, to add his mite of peace and comfort to my stock; and whenever the fire within me shall grow cold, to light my path upon this earth no more, I pray that it may be at such an hour as this, and when I love the world as well as I do now. ~ Master Humphrey's Clock by Charles Dickens