This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"He that feels himself alarmed by his conscience, anxious for the attainment of a better state and afflicted by the memory of his past faults, may justly conclude that the great work of repentance has begun." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"He that hopes hereafter to look back with satisfaction upon past years, must learn to know the present value of single minutes." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"People do not define themselves directly through a chronology of life experiences. Rather, they define themselves through the expression of selected life experiences... people crystallize certain experiences into themes… considered building blocks of identity. Identity in old age – the ageless self – is founded on the present significance of past experience, the current rendering of meaningful symbols and events of a life." - Sharon R. Kaufman
"The focus on themes in the lives of the elderly allows us to conceive of aging as continual creation of the self through the ongoing interpretation of past experience, structural factors, values, and current context…. Identity is built around themes, without regard to time, as past experiences are symbolically connected with one another to have meaning for a particular individual." - Sharon R. Kaufman
"Our children may learn about heroes of the past. Our task is to make ourselves architects of the future." - Jomo Kenyatta
"Although the tongue of God is busy speaking through all things, yet in order to speak to the deaf ears of many among us, it is necessary for Him to speak through the lips of man. He has done this all through the history of man, every great teacher of the past having been this guiding Spirit living the life of God in human guise. In other words, their human guise consists of various coats worn by the same person, who appeared to be different in each. Shiva, Buddha, Rama, Krishna, on the other side, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad on the other; and many more, known or unknown to history, always one and the same person." - Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
"If in the past Christianity, Judaism, or Islam placed itself at the center of the search for truth and unity, there is now a shift away from this kind of tribal centricty to the notion that it is God who is at the center and all the religious traditions of the world must inevitably intersect at this center. One can no longer speak about one’s faith outside the ambience of the plurality of religious traditions." - Madonna Kolbenschlag, fully Madonna Claire Kolbenschlag
"Forgiveness is not explanation… Explanations have to do with exploring causes, with digging down into the past in an effort to exert whatever control is still possible over the past. Forgiveness, on the other hand, has to do with letting go of the past – giving up the claim to control the past and refusing to be controlled by it. But forgiving is not the same thing as forgetting. “Letting go” of the past is not some kind of erasure; forgiveness is not an attempt to obliterate the past or wipe the slate clean… because the past is important, there can be no “unconditional forgiveness.”" - Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham
"In resentment there is no chance of release but only imprisonment in a painful past and the gradual stifling of all serenity, indeed, of all humanity." - Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disentrall ourselves." - Abraham Lincoln
"I believe in the virtue of traditions, and I recall having often spoken this phrase: “Memory is revolutionary.” If one has the ambition of preparing the century to come, breaking with the past or being ignorant of its amounts to cutting one’s own roots and drying up on the spot." - François Mitterand, fully François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterand
"Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. 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
"The future influences the present just as much as the past." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"Beliefs and convictions reach out from the past, and they cannot be altered by fervent desire alone. They possess their own logic and illogic, their own organic existence, their own rhythm of development." - Raisa Orlova, fully Raisa Davydovna Orlova-Kopeleva
"If all the records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. “Who controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”… All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. “Reality control,” they called it; in Newspeak, “doublethink.”" -
"They spend their time mostly looking forward to the past." - John Osborne, fully John James Osborne
"Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future." - Paul Boese
"Life is not completed in a single life span; it cannot but pass on its impulses if the chain of life is traced back into the past, one does not come to a beginning, and if one follows it into the future, one generation follows the next, and no end is ever found." - Tsung Ping or Zong Bing, style name as Zong Shaowen
"Before reaching us, divine revelation has passed through social contests whose coloring it tended to assume; and to catch its spirit it is often necessary to relive the past and breathe its atmosphere." - Ferdinand Prat
"Four things come not back - the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity." - Arabian Proverbs
"Dwell on the past and you’ll lose an eye. Forget the past and you’ll lose both eyes." - Russian Proverbs
"Don't brood on what's past, but never forget it either." - Thomas Raddall, fully Thomas Head Raddall
"The future is hidden from us, but the past warns us that the world in the end belongs to the unworldly." - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
"Eternity is another word for unity. In it, past and future are not apart; here is everywhere, and now goes on forever. The opposite of eternity is diffusion not time. Eternity does not begin when time is at its end. Time is eternity broken into space, like a ray of light refracted in the water… unity is a task, not a condition. The world lies in strife, in discord, in divergence. Unity is beyond not within reality." - Fritz A. Rothschild
"It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless." - Fritz A. Rothschild
"Past and future are what veil God from our sight. Burn up both of them with fire! How long wilt thou be partitioned by these segments as a reed?" - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
"Forget the past, do not try to project yourself into the future for now is the only acceptable time. You are in eternity now." - Baird T. Spalding
"We know of four different languages today where there is not a negative word in the language, there is not a word in the past tense, or a word in the future; tense. All is here and now. Negative words, feelings, conditions have absolutely no power except what we individually give to them. The moment we cease feeding our energy into them they no longer have life, and thus they cease to exist." - Baird T. Spalding
"Depression boils down to one of two things: either dwelling excessively on the past or fantasizing excessively about the future. They have no present. Living in the past or living in the future produces a spiritual and emotional numbness to the present. And a depressed person chooses that numbness over facing the pain of the present." - Ezriel Tauber
"History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past." - Alfred Edward Taylor
"The past has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that. And what is a grievance? The baggage of old thought and emotion." - Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Leonard Tolle
"The future need not be a repetition of the past. Frequently one is caught by a paucity of imagination which conceives of the future only in terms of rearranging past events or experiences that are already known. Persistent attempts to explain the unknown in terms of what is already known, can lead to blind repetition of unsatisfactory patterns that limit growth and restrict possibilities." -
"It is the business of the statesman to provide a decent burial for the past and to facilitate the birth of the future." - Victor Wellesley, fully Sir Victor Alexander Augustus Henry Wellesley
"If we want to work out a policy for the present, we must examine the past and prepare for the future, discard the material and elevate the spirit, rely on the individual and exclude the mass." - Lu Xun, or Lu Hsün, pen name of Zhou Shuren
"In the beginning was God, today was God, tomorrow will be God. Who can make an image of God? He has no body. He is as a work which comes out of your mouth. That word! It is no more, it is past, and still it lives! So is God." - Pygmy Prayer NULL
"He searches all around for his thought. But what thought? It is either passionate, or hateful, or confused. What about the past, future or present? What is past that is extinct, what is future that has not yet arrived, and the present has no stability. For thought, Kasyapa, cannot be apprehended, inside, or outside, or in between both. For thought is immaterial, invisible, nonresisting, inconceivable, unsupported, and homeless. Thought has never been seen by any of the Buddhas, nor do they see it, nor will they see it. And what the Buddhas never see, how can that be an observable process, except in the sense that dharmas proceed by the way of mistaken perception? Thought is like a magical illusion; by an imagination of what is actually unreal it takes hold of a manifold variety of rebirths. A thought is like the stream of a river, without any staying power; as soon as it is produced it breaks up and disappears. A thought is like a flame of a lamp, and it proceeds through causes and conditions. A thought is like lightning, it breaks up in a moment and does not stay on... Can thought review thought? No, thought cannot review thought. As the blade of a sword cannot cut itself, so a thought cannot see itself. Moreover, vexed and pressed hard on all sides, thought proceeds, without any staying power, like a monkey or like the wind. It ranges far, bodiless, easily changing, agitated by the objects of sense, with the six sense-fields for its sphere, connected with one thing after another. The stability of thought, its one-pointedness, its immobility, its undistraughtness, its one-pointed calm, its nondistraction, that is on the other hand called mindfulness as to thought." - Satipatthana Sutra NULL
"What you did in the past, though it might have made you the person you are today, has absolutely no bearing on what you do in the future." - Fred D. Anderson
"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow." - Melodie Beattie
"Nothing is predestined. The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings." - Ralph Blum
"And it’s a good reason to forgive. Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future." - Paul Boose
"Imagine your life is a painting in progress and you are the artist. Each new moment, a blank space on your canvas. The ones painted are your past. Each new moment, another brush stroke, created from your hand, moved by spirit, mind, heart and soul. Strive to make your painting a "masterpiece," and alas - when it is finished, Life will proclaim, "Ahh yes ... well done!"" - Nick Catalina