(A) trip to the attic is an excursion into history, and...all over the world the present unravels beneath the stored detritus of the past; that's what attics are for.

There's an old saying about those who cannot remember the past being condemned to repeat it. But those of us who refuse to forget the past are condemned to relive it.

There was a wonderful atmosphere of gentle age, a smell of flowers and beeswax, sweet yet faintly sour and musty; a smell that makes you feel very tender towards the past.

Conventional names define a person's past: ancestry, ethnicity, nationality, religion. I am not who I was ten years ago and certainly not who I will be in twenty years

Mayhap it was not wise to question God's plans; mayhap he had been meant to live, to seek this justice, to serve some purpose. The past was the past. And the future...

He says to me, Ranulph, he says... that the past will never come again, but that we must remember that the past is made of the present, and that the present is always here.

Today you are no longer a victor nor victim of the past and future, today is completely independent, there are no restrictions; except for the ones you place upon yourself.

We incessantly vacillate between what’s behind us and what’s before us depending on the current barometer of our courage and the ambivalent nature of our vision.

Fair as the moon and joyful as the light;Tot wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;Not as she is, but as she fills his dreams.

while she wanted to look neither to her past nor her future, she lived exclusively in both. They had took different paths, but they had journeyed, so she realized, together.

MOTHER TIME: The past is always with us, dear, for better or worse. It is what it is and you can't change it. All you can do is learn how to live with it in the present.

it is always yesterday, tomorrow, and 3 years ago today. It is always your birthday. It is always the future, the present, and the past. It is always eternity that will last.

You can't do anything about the past, it's done and can't be mended. But the future is different, if you just think what you really want and reach out and take it.

I changed it. I had to. Do you know why?" She studied him, her eyes grave. "Because that was then and this is now. Because the past is gone, even though it defines the present.

Everyone’s past has ways of sneaking up on them. You just have to be in a place in the present that you’re strong enough to deal with when your past comes to visit.