Past

There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternally new now that builds and creates itself out of the Best as the past withdraws.

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

The beauty of the past is that it is the past. The beauty of the now is to know it. The beauty of the future is to see where one is going.

Man... cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.

Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

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.

Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.