Quotes & Sayings About Bad Things In The Past

But you couldn't really start over. That was a huge, modern lie invented by talk-show hosts. Sure you could change things that improved your life, but all the bad stuff lingered. It lingered in your body compromising your organs. — Elizabeth Brundage

In sleep things are simpler. No regret over the past. No worry for the future. Only the present. And as bad as a dream gets, at least you get to sleep through it. — Jonathan Goldstein

I don't believe less in American government because of a bad politician. I don't believe less in the Catholic Church because of a criminal priest but I wish we were doing more - and had done more in the past especially - to do something about these things. It doesn't harm my faith but it gets me just mad that these things have existed. — Lino Rulli

God wants to take us step by step to free us from any unhealthy distractions. Don't expect other people to change, nor should we live in the past. He understands our hearts. We are not afraid to go forward because we are his children. Part of healing is understanding the past including the good and bad things — Phil Mitchell

But how? How can you just get over these things, darling? ... You've had so much strife but you're always happy. How do you do it?'
'I choose to ... I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget.'
'But it's not that easy.'
He smiled that Frank smile. 'Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things ... I would have to make a list, a very, very long list and make sure I hated the people on it the right amount. That I did a proper job of hating, too: very Teutonic! No' - his voice became sober- 'we always have a choice. All of us.' p.323 — M.L. Stedman

When you face up to bad things in the past, the most important thing is not to allow them to happen today or in the future, and as storytellers, we must play our part in that. — Michelle Yeoh

Because secrets do not increase in value if kept in a gore-ian lockbox, because one's past is either made useful or else mutates and becomes cancerous. We share things for the obvious reasons: it makes us feel un-alone, it spreads the weight over a larger area, it holds the possibility of making our share lighter. And it can work either way - not simply as a pain-relief device, but, in the case of not bad news but good, as a share-the-happy-things-I've-seen/lessons-I've-learned vehicle. Or as a tool for simple connectivity for its own sake, a testing of waters, a stab at engagement with a mass of strangers. — Dave Eggers

What was wrong with the past?" asked Mama Ramotswe. She intended the question seriously. There were too many people who took the view that the past was bad, that we should rid ourselves of all traces of it as soon as possible. But the past was not bad; some of it may have been less than perfect-- there had been cruelties then that we had done well to get rid of-- but there had also been plenty of good things. There had been the old Botswana ways, the courtesy and the kindness; there had been the attitude that you should find time for other people and not always be in a desperate rush; there had been the belief that you should listen to other people, should talk to them, rather than spend all your time fiddling with your electronic gadgets; there had been the view that it was a good thing to sit under a tree sometimes and look up at the sky and think about cattle or pumpkins or non-electric things like that. — Alexander McCall Smith

To me, the conclusion that the public has the ultimate responsibility for the behavior of even the biggest businesses is empowering and hopeful, rather than disappointing. My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable or selfish, a good guy or a bad guy. My conclusion is instead a prediction, based on what I have seen happening in the past. Businesses have changed when the public came to expect and require different behavior, to reward businesses for behavior that the public wanted, and to make things difficult for businesses practicing behaviors that the public didn't want. I predict that in the future, just as in the past, changes in public attitudes will be essential for changes in businesses' environmental practices. — Jared Diamond

Well, I've got something to tell you, In my last life I was a Spanish Count and one of the things I loved to do when I was a count in Spain was take all the commoners, line them up against a wall and throw rocks at them, being a professional hockey goalie is punishment for my bad habits in past lives.. — Gilles Gratton

I realized that every moment in all our lives - past, present, future, known, unknown, and unknowable - exist simultaneously, as though outside of what we know as time. I became aware that I already was everything I was trying to attain, and I believe that's true for everyone. All things that we perceive as positive, negative, good, or bad, are simply parts of the perfect, balanced Whole. — Anita Moorjani

Basically, you can live your life in one of two ways. You can let your brain run you the way it has in the past. You can let it flash any picture or sound or feeling, and you can respond automatically on cue, like a Pavlovian dog responding to a bell. Or you can choose to consciously run your brain yourself. You can implant the cues you want. You can take bad experiences and sap them of their strength and power. You can represent them to yourself in a way that no longer overpowers you, a way that "cuts them down" to a size where you know you can effectively handle things. — Tony Robbins

Total freedom from your past; both the good and the bad things is the foundation for a successful life. — Sunday Adelaja

But little or great, suffering accepted and offered to Our Lord produces peace and serenity. When it is not accepted, the soul is out of tune and its internal rebellion is shown externally in gloom or bad temper. We have to make a conscious decision to take up and carry the little Cross of every day with determination. Suffering can be sent to us by God to purify many things in our past life or to strengthen our virtues and to unite us to the sufferings of Christ our Redeemer, who, in his innocence, suffered the punishment due to our sins. — Francis Fernandez

In the past I think I had corralled rotten things into groups of three because at some level it gave me the impression I was controlling them, keeping track of them. In my world I believed the universe would only dish out so much shite before it realised it had overdone it and corrected matters.
That, of course, turned out to be nonsense.
The truth is that sometimes the shite just keeps on coming and that is what is so unfair. But here's the thing: it's never all shite. If you can wake up in the morning for just long enough to breathe in and out and see the sun shining, you're already surviving it. You're already if not getting around it, at least getting over it, getting past it.
And who knows what can happen then? — Sarah-Kate Lynch

Every morning, you have a choice either to make your day relaxed or stressful.
To be thankful for what you have or to complain about what you don't have.
To count your achievements and celebrate them, or to dwell on the mistakes of your past and feel bad.
To take action to make things better, or
to continue on in mediocrity. — Maddy Malhotra

Human beings are naturally flawed when it comes to time and memory. The past is forgotten, or it is believed bad things will not recur, and people become bound in their current problems. That which afflicted the grandfathers of their grandfathers is a distant, dim thing, and not as important as present concerns, no matter how trivial. — Kristen Britain

Don't be so harsh on yourself because of your bad decisions you've made in the past and don't let them hinder your life progress. Try to forgive yourself and accept it as a learning curve for you and thank God you have managed to turn things .around. — Euginia Herlihy

One of the commonest things to do with savings is to lend them to some Government. In view of the fact that the bulk of the public expenditure of most civilized Governments consists in payment for past wars or preparation for future wars, the man who lends his money to a Government is in the same position as the bad men in Shakespeare who hire murderers. The net result of the man's economical habits is to increase the armed forces of the State to which he lends his savings. Obviously it would be better if he spent the money, even if he spent it in drink or gambling. — Bertrand Russell

If you fall out of love, remember the love and not the fall. If all you focus on is the fall, the fall will swallow you because it will grow. Focus is water and sunlight. It causes growth. Recalculate all the wrongs that have been done to you and examine the benefits that happened as a result of them. Be grateful for the bad things that happened and were in some way responsible for the good things that followed. Did you catch that be? Be. Thankful. Because this one can slip right past you so easily. — Augusten Burroughs

This is a jury of your peers. They watch the same TV movies. They belong to Oprah's Book Club. You can take any monster, slap a bad dad into his past, and all of a sudden he's just another lost soul, lashing out. And you were the poor lady that got in the way. They'll argue you lacked compassion. You were the one who took things too far. — Jeremy Robert Johnson

Wanderlove is about forgetting the bad things and focusing on the good. Out with the old and in with the new ... The only way to escape the past is to keep moving forward. — Kirsten Hubbard

In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing
the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on. — May Sarton

I think a person can do one of two things in life ... make your own choices despite the past or let your past make your choices for you. Very few poeple go through life completely untouched by something bad. It's just up to the individual on how much of that bad you want to define who you are where it should be that YOU define who you are. — Carroll Bryant

Hindsight, I think, is a useless tool. We, each of us, are at a place in our lives because of innumerable circumstances, and we, each of us, have a responsibility (if we do not like where we are) to move along life's road, to find a better path if this one does not suit, or to walk happily along this one if it is indeed our life's way. Changing even the bad things that have gone before would fundamentally change who we are, and whether or not that would be a good thing, I believe, it is impossible to predict.
So I take my past experiences ... and try to regret nothing.
-Drizzt Do'urden — R.A. Salvatore

Adam was told to toughen up. Get over it. We hear this a lot. History is in the past, bad things happened but it is time to move on. But history is not past for us. Adam — Stan Grant

I think all the bad things I have been through are in the past. I believe I am on the right path now, dealing with the people who can help me, the right kind of people. — Luis Suarez

Don't live in regret! It is such a useless idea.
Use the memory to prevent us do bad things!
Regret is a childish wish, or an empty hope,
trying to revise the bitter memory of the past. — Toba Beta

You are only happy in life if you forget the bad things and focus on the good things — Jeroen Saey

When you have a bad year, there is this need to package it up and write it off-as I have done in the past. I hope, in 2014, when things go badly-people create themselves a New Years's day the moment they need it. Don't make 12 resolutions in January but one with every breath. Don't wait until December 31st to start anew.You can divide time with months and days and weeks-but each minute is only a minute long and belongs completely to itself. What you do in those tiny moments that seem so inconsequential are what will define not only your year-but your life — S.K. Munt

The future was also the place where the bad stuff waited in ambush. My children were embarking on their futures in fragile vessels, and I trembled. I wanted to remove obstacles, smooth their way, I wanted to change their childhoods. I needed to be right all the time, I wanted them to listen to me, learn from my mistakes, and save themselves a lot of grief. Well, now I know I can control my tongue, my temper, and my appetites, but that's it. I have no effect on weather, traffic, or luck. I can't make good things happen. I can't keep anybody safe. I can't influence the future and I can't fix up the past.
What a relief. — Abigail Thomas

People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further. — Pema Chodron

You want to believe in black and white, good and evil, heroes that are truly heroic, villains that are just plain bad, but I've learned in the past year that things are rarely so simple. The good guys can do some truly awful things, and the bad guys can sometimes surprise the heck out of you. — Karen Marie Moning

As you all become more intimate with Me, with opportunities to come closer to Me, all that is good and bad within you comes out in sparks, as it were ... all the impressions of the past, the accumulations of past sanskaras - of all illusory things, which includes both good and bad - come out. My proximity, the intimacy with Me, just changes that mass of sanskaras, and sometimes you find sparks of good and bad flying out. — Meher Baba

That there are many things that we cant understand. the past. the bad things that happened ... and we become afraid. of what might happen in the future. its okay to be afraid. but we have to keep hoping and believeing ... to keep hoping and trying our best to be good and do good. even when we're afraid — Nafisa Haji

No matter the bad things that happened in past time, let's try to live the best we can now. — Ziggy Marley

Every time something really bad happens, people cry out for safety, and the government answers by taking rights away from good people. We have no proof that the bad, stupid crazy people who have planted bombs in the past few years used the phone much for their stupid bad crimes, let alone logged on the Internet. Yet when those kind of bad things happen nowadays, the government tries to do bad things to phones and the Net. The phones and the Internet are just good smart things, and the government should leave them alone. You have to watch the government all the time on everything. Thomas Jefferson didn't say that, but he said something very close to that. — Penn Jillette

But my point is these Civil War songs were gruesome. The hatred that's so bad in this country today, and for the past 10 or 15 years, bad as it is, is nothing compared to the kind of things people would write down and sing back in the Civil War. — T Bone Burnett

If you believe that you are bad and unacceptable, you are unable to look back at your past with pleasure or your future with hope. Only bad things happened to you in the past, and only bad things will happen to you in the future. — Dorothy Rowe

You can take a bad singer and make them sound decent; you couldn't do that in the past. With things like Pro Tools and all the other things you have available; like auto tune, and pitch correction you can make someone who can't sing into someone who can. — Michael Sweet

While we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn't. It's a simple case of like gets like, the ultimate balancing act, nothing more, nothing less. And if you're deteremined to fix every situation you deem as bad, or difficult, or somehow unsavory, then you rob the person of their own chance to fix it, learn from it, or even grow from it. Some things, no matter how painful, happen for a reason. A reason you or I may not be able to grasp at first sight, not without knowing a person's entire life story - their cumulative past. And to just barge in and interfere, no matter how well-intentioned, would be akin to robbing them of their journey. Something that's better not done. — Alyson Noel

It takes time to learn to live in the here and now. You have to hang on past the bad times, ... If you do hang on and do not run from your life you discover that you have more control of your thoughts and feelings, and your life, than you believed possible. You learn to quiet your frantic mind, to downgrade your expectations of things and people, find pleasure in solitude, and finally discover who you really are. — Joan Medlicott

Just like in the real world, the world in our minds is real. You cannot have both positive and negative thoughts at the same time. Negativity brings us down when we should actually be enjoying life and getting the most out of it. Mental de-cluttering is really about getting rid of your worries, bad memories, fears and disappointments, and starting on a new footing where the past doesn't matter. You decide on what you are going to carry with you to a new and better life. Remember, the more the baggage you carry with you, the more difficult life would be. Focus more on the things you have control over; if you cannot handle something now forget about it altogether. — Jesse Jacobs

Good boy" can be canceled out the next day by "bad boy." "You're a smart girl" by "What a stupid thing to do!" "Careful" by "Careless" . . . and so on.

But you can't take away the time he shoveled the whole walkway even though his arms were tired and his toes were frozen. Or the time he made the baby laugh with his goofy faces when the babysitter couldn't get her to stop crying, or found his mom's reading glasses, or figured out how to make the alarm on the cell phone stop going off when no one else could do it. These are the things he can draw upon to give himself confidence in the face of adversity and discouragement. In the past he did something he was proud of, and he has, within himself, the power to do it again. — Julie King

I've done a lot of bad things in the past, and that troubles me. It is often before I could say I was a self. — Malcolm Morley

As we try to learn from the past, we form patterns of thinking based on our experiences, not realizing that the things that happened have an unfair advantage over the things that didn't. In other words, we can't see the alternatives that might well have happened if not for some small chance event. When a bad thing happens, people will draw conclusions that might include conspiracy or forces acting against them or, conversely, if a good thing happens, that they are brilliant and deserving. But these kinds of misperceptions ultimately deceive us. And this has consequences in business - and for the way we manage. — Ed Catmull

Anxiety is just groundless and pointless. It occurs only as a hangover of bad habits established when we were trusting things - like human approval and wealth - that were certain to let us down. Now our strategy should be one of resolute rejection of worry, while we concentrate on the future in hope and with prayer and on the past with thanksgiving. — Dallas Willard

We drove on and on, past little villages and both good things and bad things were happening to the people in those villages too, but I still was nothing but arms and ears and eyes and maybe there'd be either some good luck for me or more death tomorrow. — Charles Bukowski