Past Reflection Quotes

I don't know why, but rain comes into my head the minute I think of my childhood.

Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.

A man's memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become.

I write a lot about the past because I really see things clearly in hindsight.

We ought not to look back, unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dear bought experience.

You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

I know I can't change the past, but I change the future. I can change, too. And I will.

I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future.

Remember the past, live the present, think a little less about the future.

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

There were moments when she wasn't talking so much as fading into time, dropping back into some funnelled stretch of recent past.

Until one looks back on one's own past one fails to realise what an extraordinary view of the world a child has.

But this was what happened when you didn't want to visit and confront the past: the past starts visiting and confronting you.

For better or worse, I refuse to live my life with regret. Sometimes, I'll look back on my past mistakes with fondness. But I never wished I wouldn't have made them. That's why I don't like re-takes.

And we should forget, day by day, what we have done; this is true non-attachment. And we should do something new. To do something new, of course we must know our past, and this is alright. But we should not keep holding onto anything we have done; we should only reflect on it. And we must have some idea of what we should do in the future. But the future is the future, the past is the past; now we should work on something new.

You can't undo the past... but you can certainly not repeat it.

One day I was living silently in a personal hell, without anyone to tell what I felt, without even knowing that the feelings I had were possible to have; and then one day I was not living like that at all. I had begun to see the past like this: there is a line; you can draw it yourself, or sometimes it gets drawn for you; either way, there it is, your past, a collection of people you used to be and things you used to do. Your past is the person you no longer are, the situations you are no longer in.

I let my [past] life in peripherally, because I'm interested in what's over there; I want to keep going forward.

When you realize the value of all life, you dwell on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future.

When you begin to think about the past, you realize how much of it is lost to us.

I left family court for the vagaries of TV and said to myself, 'Judy, what the hell are you thinking?' It seems like only yesterday.

[M]emory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present.

I remember making that vow, the one not to forget. Not to remember what happened, but to remember who I was and how I felt.

I do try not to dwell on the past too much, because I have a tendency to do that, and as I've gotten older, I've gotten very good at distancing myself from shoulda, woulda, coulda.