There seem to be two schools of thought on the past: 1. Embrace it! 2. Move the heck on and never look back! This list is a beautiful mix of both.
“The one charm of the past is that it is the past. - Oscar WIlde
“The past has no power over the present moment. - Eckhart Tolle
“It’s okay to look back at your past. Just don’t stare. - Benjamin Dover
“Be careful who you make memories with. Those things can last a lifetime.- Ugo Eze
“The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings. - Ralph Blum
“Your past is just a story. And once you realize this, it has no power over you. - Chuck Palahniuk
“I’ve never tried to block out the memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don’t understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now. - Sophia Loren
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. - Søren Kierkegaard
“We need not destroy the past. It is gone. - John Cage
“Never look back unless you are planning to go that way. - Henry David Thoreau
“Don’t cry over the past, it’s gone. Don’t stress about the future, it hasn’t arrived. Live in the present and make it beautiful. - Unknown
“To hold onto the past always creates suffering, even if it was wonderful. - Teal Scott
“There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind. - Kiran Desai
“I always knew looking back on my tears would bring me laughter, but I never knew looking back on my laughter would make me cry. - Cat Stevens
“The past is like an anchor holding us back. You have to let go of who you are to become who you will be. - Unknown
“The past is not a package one can lay away. - Emily Dickinson
“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then. - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. - Cormac McCarthy
“Dwelling on the past only blinds you to the future. - Andrew Boyd
“Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going. - Tennessee Williams
“I try not to live in the past, but sometimes the past lives in me. - Jamie Ford
“If you believe that feeling bad will change a past event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system. - Wayne Dyer
“Just because the past didn’t turn out like you wanted it to, doesn’t mean your future can’t be better than you’ve ever imagined. - Unknown
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
“My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder. - William Golding
“Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title. - Virginia Woolf
“Pain makes you stronger, tears make you braver, and heartbreak makes you wiser. So thank the past for a better future. - Unknown
“A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body. - André Maurois
“The longer you live in the past, the less future you have to enjoy. - Unknown
“I don’t believe in yesterday. - John Lennon
“The only time you should ever look back, is to see how far you have come. - Unknown
“The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it. - Wendell Berry
“You are not defined by your past. You are prepared by your past. - Unknown
“Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today, and you make your tomorrow. - L. Ron Hubbard
“Sometimes we need to stop analyzing the past, stop planning the future, stop figuring out precisely how we feel, stop deciding exactly what we want, and just see what happens. - Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City
“Without a past you can’t have a future. - Michael Ende
“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be. - Marcel Pagnol
“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present. - Golda Meir
“Whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it. - Barack Obama
“No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again. - Unknown
“Let go. Why do you cling to pain? There is nothing you can do about the wrongs of yesterday. It is not yours to judge. Why hold on to the very thing which keeps you from hope and love? - Leo Buscaglia
“The past cannot be changed, forgotten, edited, or erased. It can only be accepted. - Unknown
“He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past. - Gabriel García Márquez
“Let your past make you better, not bitter. - Unknown
“The past can teach us, nurture us, but it cannot sustain us. The essence of life is change, and we must move ever forward or the soul will wither and die. - Susanna Kearsley
“The past is never where you think you left it. - Katherine Anne Porter
“What’s done is done. - Hilliard MacBeth
“Forget the past. Remember the lesson. - Mandy Hale
“The past beats inside me like a second heart. - John Banville, The Sea
“The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence. - Unknown
“All the past is not worth one today. - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
“I will not walk backward in life. - J.R.R. Tolkien
“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward. - C.S. Lewis
“When we think we have been hurt by someone in the past, we build up defenses to protect ourselves from being hurt in the future. So the fearful past causes a fearful future and the past and future become one. We cannot love when we feel fear…. When we release the fearful past and forgive everyone, we will experience total love and oneness with all. - Gerald G. Jampolsky
“Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today. - Unknown
“The past is finished. There is nothing to be gained by going over it. Whatever it gave us in the experiences it brought us was something we had to know. - Unknown
“The past is a closed door. - Margaret Atwood
“Only a fool trips over what is behind him. - Unknown
“When your past calls, don’t answer. It has nothing new to say. - Unknown