One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.
~ Gaston Bachelard

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
~ Francis Bacon

There is a way to look at the past. Don't hide from it. It will not catch you -- if you don't repeat it.
~ Pearl Bailey

Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity.
~ John Adams

Nothing is improbable until it moves into past tense.
~ George Ade

It is one thing to learn about the past; it is another to wallow in it.
~ Kenneth Auchincloss

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.
~ George W. Ball

The past should be a springboard, not a hammock.
~ Ivern Ball

I cannot sing the old songs, Or dream those dreams again,
~ Charlotte Barnard

A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don't find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.
~ Sir James M. Barrie

As lousy as things are now, tomorrow they will be somebody's good old days.
~ Gerald Barzan

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.
~ Walter Benjamin

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.
~ John Berger

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.
~ Henri L. Bergson

Many are always praising the by-gone time, for it is natural that the old should extol the days of their youth; the weak, the time of their strength; the sick, the season of their vigor; and the disappointed, the spring-tide of their hopes.
~ Caleb Bingham

Yesterday is a canceled check: Forget it. Tomorrow is a promissory note: Don't count on it. Today is ready cash: Use it!
~ Edwin C. Bliss

If you are carrying strong feelings about something that happened in your past, they may hinder your ability to live in the present.
~ Les Brown

The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth.
~ Warren Buffett

Your past is important, but it is not nearly as important to your present as the way you see your future.
~ Tony Campolo

The past is all holy to us; the dead are all holy; even they that were wicked when alive.
~ Thomas Carlyle