I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
Alan Watts

For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear.
Lord Byron

A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.
Honore de Balzac

We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship, to the reality, the hard substance of things. And we'll do it not so much with speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that bring people to their senses.
Mario Cuomo

One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it.
Gaston Bachelard

We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
John Buchan

You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.
Johnny Cash

Our past is a story existing only in our minds. Look, analyze, understand, and forgive. Then, as quickly as possible, chuck it.
Marianne Williamson

We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.
Marianne Williamson

Not to be born is, past all prizing, best.
Sophocles

The free world must not prove itself worthy of its own past.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Whoever neglects the arts when he is young has lost the past and is dead to the future.
Sophocles

I looked for the same pitch my whole career, a breaking ball. All of the time. I never worried about the fastball. They couldn't throw it past me, none of them.
Hank Aaron

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.
James M. Barrie

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.
Blaise Pascal

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.
Blaise Pascal

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.
William James

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.
William James

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.
Thomas Sowell