Past

One can't carry one's father's corpse about everywhere.
~ Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm-Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky), Les peintres cubistes (1913).

Research can trap you into the past.
~ Bill Bernbach

In high school I took a little English, some science, some hubcaps and some wheel covers.
~ William James "Gates" Brown

Childhood, with all its mirth,
Youth, Manhood, Age that draws us to the ground,
And last, man's Life on earth,
Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1832 edition). To The Past

Full many a mighty name
Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered --
With thee are silent fame,
Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1832 edition). To The Past

The visions of my youth are past
Too bright, too beautiful to last.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1832 edition). The Rivulet

Those pure and happy times -- the golden days of old.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1821). The Ages

If you do not like the past, change it.
~ William L. Burton, in American Historical Association Newsletter 20:2 (1982). The Use and Abuse of History

Let me taste the old immortal
Indolence of life once more!
~ (William) Bliss Carman, from Songs from Vagabondia (1894). Spring Song

Most of us want to save yesterday because we think it was better than today, because memory has a sugarcoater and we can never remember pain.
~ Bill Cosby, Time Flies (1987).

Weep no more for what is past,
For time in motion makes such haste
He hath no leisure to descry
Those errors which he passeth by.
~ Sir William Davenant, The Cruel Brother (1630). Act V, Scene I. Song

The past does not influence me; I influence it.
~ Willem de Kooning

Memory is a very amorphous thing. It is selective and shaped by emotion ... people are constantly in pursuit of the details of their past because it is from that they determine their own identity upon which they can base their strategy of survival.
~ Will Eisner, Famiglia Cristiana magazine, #38 (Interview; 23 September 2001).

Let the past abolish the past when--and if--it can substitute something better; not us to abolish the past simply because it was.
~ William Faulkner, Address to the American Academy of Arts and Letters upon Acceptance of the Gold Medal for Fiction, Manhattan, New York NY (24 May 1962)

The past is never dead. It's not even past.
~ William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun (1951). Act I, scene iii

There was a clock, high up in the sun, and I thought about how, when you dont want to do a thing, your body will try to trick you into doing it, sort of unawares.
~ William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (October 1929).

Our early days! -- They haunt us ever.
~ William Davis Gallagher, from Selections from the Poetical Literature of the West (1841). Our Early Days

I have a great reverance for antiquity.
~ William Ewart Gladstone, Speech at Norwich (16 May 1890)

Something lingering, with boiling oil in it, I fancy.
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, The Mikado (1885 opera).

Old phrases with new meanings to dispense,
Amuse the fancy, -- and confound the sense!
~ William Gifford, The Maeviad (1794).

What happened in the past that was painful has a great deal to do with what we are today, but revisiting this painful past can contribute little or nothing to what we need to do now ...
~ William Glasser, M.D., Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom (1998). Chapter 13: Redefining Your Personal Freedom

My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are grey faces that peer over my shoulder.
~ William Golding, Free Fall (1959). Chapter 1

Don't be bound by the past and your failures. ... But don't forget it's lessons either.
~ Billy Graham, Wisdom for Each Day (2008).

Press boldly on, the things behind forget;
Part with thy past, let go!
~ William Hall, from Via Crucis (1906). Renunciation. XX

'Tis impotent to grieve for what is past.
~ William Havard, Scanderbeg: A Tragedy (1733).

How easy to relive the past if you've never left it!
~ William Heath, The Children Bob Moses Led (1995).

What is to come we know not. But we know
That what has been was good -- was good to show,
Better to hide, and best of all to bear.
We are the masters of the days that were;
We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered ... even so.
~ William Ernest (W.E.) Henley, What Is to Come

You can't go back to anything.
~ William Dean Howells, Ragged Lady (1899). XXXIX

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter. This is what makes the trade of historian so attractive.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, Assessments and Anticipations (1929). Prognostications

We cannot afford to throw away the wisdom of the past. It is too precious a treasure to be lost.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, from Lay Thoughts of a Dean (1926).

What is the original of our experience of pastness, from whence we get the meaning of the term?
~ William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890). Vol. 1. Chapter XV: The Perception of Time

In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
To heal the wounds from lovers past
Until a new one comes along.
~ Billy Joel, And So It Goes

The past is supposed to be a place of reference, not a place of residence! There is a reason why your car has a big windshield and a small rearview mirror. You are supposed to keep your eyes on where you are going, and just occasionally check out where you have been. ... Otherwise you are going to crash.
~ Willie Jolley, A Setback is a Setup for a Comeback (September 1999).

If we continue to spend too much energy arguing the past, we lose the window to see the future. I'm not asking to forget the past. But, when you focus exclusively on the past, you sow the seeds for new tensions. We need to close the past, to a certain extent, without forgetting, so that it doesn't hold us down from doing what we need to do in the future.
~ Frederik Willem (F.W.) de Klerk, Speech at Kennedy School of Government's ARCO Forum, Harvard College (7 February 2001).

We have long passed the Victorian era, when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Constant Wife (1926).

From the deep's abysses floats a ditty
Wild and wondrous, of the olden time.
~ Wilhelm Müller, The Sunken City

Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human. First Sequel: Mixed Opinions and Maxims (March 1879).

Man ... cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

There is no power on earth to match the power of the poor, who, just by sitting in their hopelessness, can bring the rest of us down.
~ William O'Dwyer

In the continual remembrance of a glorious past individuals and nations find their noblest inspiration.
~ William Osler, from Aequanimitas: With Other Addresses to Medical Students, Nurses and Practioners of Medicine (1904). V. The Leaven Of Science (delivered at Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology of the University of Pennsylvania; 1894)

Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows.
~ William Osler

The truth is, the past haunts us like a shadow. To disregard it is not easy.
~ William Osler, An address delivered to Yale students (20 April 1913). A Way of Life

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.
~ William Penn, (attributed).

Last year we said, "Things can't go on like this", and they didn't -- they got worse.
~ Will Rogers

The good old horse-and-buggy days: then you lived until you died and not until you were just run over.
~ Will Rogers

In those days, there was something more to the world than there is now.
~ William Saroyan, Here Comes There Goes You Know Who (1961).

Custom calls me to't.
What custom wills, in all things should we do't,
The dust on antique time would lie unswept,
And mountainous error be too highly heaped
For truth to o'erpeer.
~ William Shakespeare, Coriolanus. Act II, scene iii

Nay that's past praying for.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I

The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.
~ William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well. Act V, scene iii

They say miracles are past.
~ William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well

Things past redress are now with me past care.
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard II. Act II, scene iii

What's gone and what's past help
Should be past grief.
~ William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale. Act III, scene ii

What's past is prologue.
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Act II, scene i

What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Act I, scene ii

For you and I are past our dancing days.
~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. Act I, scene v

I priz'd every hour that went by,
Beyond all that had pleas'd me before;
But now they are past, and I sigh;
And I grieve that I priz'd them no more.
~ William Shenstone, A Pastoral Ballad in Four Parts (written in 1743). I: Absence

Gone are those pleasant nineteenth-century days when a country could remain neutral and at peace just by saying it wanted to.
~ William L. Shirer

Fossils have been long studied as great curiosities, collected with great pains, treasured with great care and at a great expense, and shown and admired with as much pleasure as a child's hobby-horse is shown and admired by himself and his playfellows, because it is pretty; and this has been done by thousands who have never paid the least regard to that wonderful order and regularity with which nature has disposed of these singular productions, and assigned to each class its peculiar stratum.
~ William Smith, notes written January 5, 1796

She lived in her past life -- ... these relics and remembrances of dead affection were all that was left her in the world, and the business of her life, to watch the corpse of Love.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero (1848). Chapter XVIII. Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought?

I do not intend to prejudge the past.
~ William Whitelaw (on taking office in Northern Ireland), (1972)

Let us not forget that Mr. Hitler was Austrian. ... I always get into terrible fights with the newspapermen there, because I remember my days in school. I remember the attitudes.
~ Billy Wilder, in Wilder Times: The Life of Billy Wilder (May 1996).

You can accept the past and examine it, use what is valuable from it.
~ Kate Wilhelm

As it was more than 30 years ago, the Empire State Buildlng is once again the city's tallest structure.
~ Brian Williams, MSNBC telecast (11 September 2001).

In retrospect, you are always looking back.
~ James Francis "Jimy" Williams

all the old things
are gone now
and the people are
different
~ Jonathan Williams, Blues & Roots, Rue and Bluets: A Garland from the Appalachians (1971). A Valediction For My Father, Ben Williams

The past, however satisfactory, is only a challenge to the future.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, in Tennessee Williams Notebooks (2006). Thursday, 16 September 1937

The past just came up and kicked me.
~ Vanessa Williams (on losing Miss America title after Penthouse publication of nude pictures), People magazine (6 August 1984).

Our past is a story existing only in our minds. Look, analyze, understand, and forgive. Then, as quickly as possible, chuck it.
~ Marianne Williamson, A Woman's Worth (1993).

You can't undo the past ... but you can certainly not repeat it.
~ Bruce Willis, US Magazine, (Issue 249)

It is futile to talk too much about the past ... like trying to make birth control retroactive.
~ Charles E. Wilson

The only way you can own the past is by respecting it -- by not turning it into something quaint or laughable or pastel or bittersweet. It's a real place where real people lived.
~ Robert Charles Wilson, A Bridge Of Years (1991).

Gone, gone for ever is the Past, and vain are all regrets, save as monitors for the Future.
~ William Wilson, A Little Earnest Book Upon a Great Old Subject (1851). Chapter V

The Past is utterly indifferent to its worshippers.
~ William Winter, from English Rambles: And Other Fugitive Pieces, in Prose and Verse (1883). I. English Rambles. Chapter VII: On Barnet Battle-field

And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes (1807). Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, VIII

Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems by William Wordsworth, Vol. II (1815). Miscellaneous Sonnets. XXXII

Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence.
And pure religion breathing household laws.
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes, Volume I (1807). Part II. Sonnets Dedicated to Liberty. XIII. Written in London, September 1802

Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.
~ William Butler Yeats, from The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933). Vacillation

We that have done and thought,
That have thought and done,
Must ramble, and thin out
Like milk spilt on a stone.
~ William Butler Yeats, from The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933). Spilt Milk