It’s drilled into you to let go of the past, yet you can’t stop thinking about it and wishing you did certain things differently.
It’s only human nature to ponder over times passed. However, being completely present is the only key to happiness. Well, at least I think so.
Some people believe that the past holds great lessons for you to learn from and that the answers to the future lie in the past.
But regardless of your opinion, the past should be let go of because there is no point in trying to hold onto something that has let go of you.
Here are 67 quotes about the past that will inspire you to move on and live in the moment.
67 Quotes About the Past
1. “Renew, release, let go. Yesterday’s gone. There’s nothing you can do to bring it back.” Steve Maraboli
2. “We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.” Rick Warren
3. “When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.” Friedrich Nietzsche
4. “The hardships that I encountered in the past will help me succeed in the future.” Philip Emeagwali
5. “It’s being here now that’s important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.” George Harrison
6. “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” L.P. Hartley
7. “Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.” Haruki Murakami
8. “We don’t have to be defined by the things we did or didn’t do in our past. Some people allow themselves to be controlled by regret. Maybe it’s a regret, maybe it’s not. It’s merely something that happened. Get over it.” Pittacus Lore
9. “I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.” Beryl Markham
10. “The past can’t hurt you anymore, not unless you let it.” Alan Moore
11. “Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you’ll find an edge to cut you.” Mark Lawrence
12. “Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging up your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do-the only thing-is run.” Lauren Oliver
13. “My past has not defined me, destroyed me, deterred me, or defeated me; it has only strengthened me.” Steve Maraboli
14. “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” John F. Kennedy
15. “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” Unknown
16. “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Søren Kierkegaard
17. “I like to use the hard times in the past to motivate me today.” Dwayne Johnson
18. “The past explains how I got here, but the future is up to me – and I love to live life at full throttle.” Janice Dickinson
19. “Stop being a prisoner of your past. Become the architect of your future.” Robin Sharma
20. “I realise there’s something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they’re experts at letting things go.” Jeffrey McDaniel
21. “Forgiveness means letting go of the past.” Gerald Jampolsky
22. “There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.” Eckhart Tolle
23. “I use memories, but I will not allow memories to use me.” Deepak Chopra
24. “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” Mother Theresa
25. “We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.” George Washington
26. “Fearful past causes a fearful future and the past and future become one.” Gerald G. Jampolsky
27. “The past is never there when you try to go back. It exists, but only in memory. To pretend otherwise is to invite a mess.” Chris Cobbs
28. “Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.” Henry David Thoreau
29. “The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?” Mary Manin Morrissey
30. “We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for yesterday and fear of tomorrow.” Fulton Oursler
31. “I have memories-but only a fool stores his past in the future.” David Gerrold
32. “It’s okay to look back at your past. Just don’t stare.” Benjamin Dover
33. “Why do you cling to pain? There is nothing you can do about the wrongs of yesterday. It is not yours to judge.” Leo Buscaglia
34. “You cannot harden your heart to the future just because of your past. You cannot use cruelty against yourself to justify cruelty to others.” Marie Lu
35. “You can’t undo the past… but you can certainly not repeat it.” Bruce Willis
36. “Happy is the person who cherishes the precious lessons of the past and lives vigorously in the present.” Jerome Hines
37. “To design the future effectively, you must first let go of your past.” Charles J. Givens
38. “In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me.” Julia Cameron
39. “Your past does not determine who you are. Your past prepares you for who you are to become.” Joel Osteen
40. “Bring the past only if only you are going to build from it.” Domenico Cieri Estrada
41. “The past does not define me, it ignites me. The past is not a piece of me, it has placed me.” Ricky Maye
42. “If you worry about yesterday’s failures, then today’s successes will be few. The future depends on what we do in the present.” Mahatma Gandhi
43. “We can never know what might have been but what is to come is another matter entirely.” C. S. Lewis
44. “When you accept things as they are, you allow yourself to make choices, that will help create the change you seek.” Patricia Dsouza
45. “You couldn’t erase the past. You couldn’t even change it. But sometimes life offered you the opportunity to put it right.” Ann Brashares
46. “Don’t torture yourself over the past. Use it as a teacher. Whatever happened to you in the past, has only prepared you for now.” Robert Tew
47. “You know that old phrase ‘Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it’? Well, I think those who remember the past are even worse off.” Chuck Palahniuk
48. “Bitterness and blame only imprison us and prevent us from moving forward.” Miquel Reina
49. “You cannot build an empire on a graveyard. The ghosts of the past will it down.” Shreya Naik
50. “The past is never where you think you left it.” Katherine Anne Porter
51. “Where you come from, what you look like, and what your past holds do not define you as an individual–you are what you make yourself to be.” Kat Von D
52. “It was no good to look back, to apologize for what had happened, or to wonder what could have been different.” Lily Blake
53. “I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment.” Maya Angelou
54. “Even if you time travel your past, it can’t be changed, likewise, you can’t possibly change your future, it is always the present which matters.” Pushpa Rana
55. “The past is important for all the information and wisdom it holds. But you can get lost in it. You’ve got to learn to keep the knowledge of the past with you as you pursue the present.” Lauren Kate
56. “We cannot change our past. We can not change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.” Charles R. Swindoll
57. Don’t ever think that the sin of your past means there is no hope for your future.” John Piper
58. “Don’t judge me by my past. I don’t live there anymore.” Zig Ziglar
59. “Your past is just a story. And once you realize this it has no power over you.” Chuck Palahniuk
60. “No matter how dirty your past is, your future is still spotless.” Drake
61. “The only person with whom you have to compare ourselves, is that you in the past. And the only person better you should be, this is who you are now.” Sigmund Freud
62. “Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses.” Nhat Hanh
63. “When you begin to realize that your past does not necessarily dictate the outcome of your future, then you can release the hurt. It is impossible to inhale new air until you exhale the old.” T.D. Jakes
64. “Losers live in the past. Winners learn from the past and enjoy working in the present toward the future.” Denis Waitley
65. “You cannot fix the past, but you can create a distance with it. That is how the yogic system approaches it.” Sadhguru
66. “Live each day as if was your last, not in the future, not in the past. You may not get what you want, but, in the long run, you will get what you expect.” Denis Waitley
67. “The only real battle in life is between hanging on and letting go.” Shannon L. Alder
Final Thoughts
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