Bury The Past Quotes & Sayings

Trust no future, however pleasant! Let the dead past bury its dead! Act
act in the living Present! Heart within and God overhead. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

One should not forget the sins of their forebears, but nor can one advance by paying witness only to the failings of the past. To bury the past is to progress, and only in breaking the chains that bind can you escape the prison your predecessors have laid. — Scott Warren

Mademoiselle, I speak as a friend. Bury your dead! ... Give up the past! Turn to the future! What is done is done. Bitterness will not undo it.'

'I'm sure that would suit dear Linnet admirably.'

Poirot made a gesture. 'I am not thinking of her at this moment! I am thinking of you. You have suffered - yes - but what you are doing now will only prolong the suffering. — Agatha Christie

But I believe that, once the shock settles, faith and energy will return. Because let's be real: we always knew this shit wasn't going to be easy. Colonial power, patriarchal power, capitalist power must always and everywhere be battled, because they never, ever quit. We have to keep fighting, because otherwise there will be no future - all will be consumed. Those of us whose ancestors were owned and bred like animals know that future all too well, because it is, in part, our past. And we know that by fighting, against all odds, we who had nothing, not even our real names, transformed the universe. Our ancestors did this with very little, and we who have more must do the same. This is the joyous destiny of our people - to bury the arc of the moral universe so deep in justice that it will never be undone. — Junot Diaz

That's what I meant when I said that about the cheek of Woman as a sex. What I mean is, after what had happened, you'd have thought she would have preferred to let the dead past bury its dead, and all that sort of thing, what? — P.G. Wodehouse

We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion. The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition. This is the reality in which we live. And this is why all efforts to escape from the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are vain. Hannah Arendt — Hannah Arendt

The past can be used to renew the present, not just to bury it. — Terry Eagleton

When we bury the old, we bury the known past, the past we imagine sometimes better than it was, but the past all the same, a portion of which we inhabited. Memory is the overwhelming theme, the eventual comfort. But burying infants, we bury the future, unwieldy and unknown, full of promise and possibilities, outcomes punctuated by our rosy hopes. The grief has no borders, no limits, no known ends, and the little infant graves that edge the corners and fencerows of every cemetery are never quite big enough to contain that grief. Some sadnesses are permanent. Dead babies do not give us memories. They give us dreams. — Thomas Lynch

The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations; before you lies the future-a future full of golden promise. — Jefferson Davis

The present can try to bury the past, an operation that is most atrocious when it is most successful. — Mary McCarthy

Those men and women of Yangzhou died a hundred years ago, Tian Haoli, and nothing can be done to change that. But the past lives on in the form of memories, and those in power are always going to want to erase and silence the past, to bury the ghosts. Now that you know about the past, you're no longer an innocent bystander. If you do not act you are complicit with the Emperor and his Blood Drops in this new act of violence, this deed of erasure. Like Wang Xiuchu, you're now a witness. Like him, you must choose what to do. You must decide if, on the day you die, you will regret your choice. — Ken Liu

Youth. Murder (Biko). Slavery. Freedom. We are all creatures of ignorance at the end of the day. The natural order of the hierarchy of life states that we are creatures. Creatures of habit whether it is normal (following the status quo and all of that jazz). Creatures of marching orders and almost sanitary routine. Creatures of the abnormal. Our leaders are coldly obliterating the past. It is impossible to destroy nations, tribes, individuals without their permission. Many lessons learned from the past come to life like the connect the dots game of a child in a museum. We are swift to forget history. Bury the past like yesterday's newspaper, our infirm and elderly in nursing homes. — Abigail George

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years. — Khaled Hosseini

Be happy today, let the past bury and let the future fly. — Girdhar Joshi

This is the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you. — Lauren Oliver

Not everyone believes in ghost's, but I do. Do you know what they are, Trisha?"
She had shaken her head slowly. "Men and women who can't get over the past," Aunt Evie said. "That's what ghost's are. Not them." She flapped her arm toward the coffin which stood on its bands beside the coincidentally fresh grave. "The dead are dead. We bury them, and buried they stay. — Stephen King

Sometimes we have to face the things that hurt us most. Maybe you won't heal till you do. You haven't yet." They both knew that was true. "You can't move ahead until you bury the past. — Danielle Steel

I thought the love I'd had for him belonged to the past, to the foolish, lonely girl I never wanted to be again. I'd tried to bury that girl and the love she'd felt, just as I'd tried to bury my power. But I wouldn't make that mistake again. — Leigh Bardugo

One reason God created time was so that there would be a place to bury the failures of the past. — James Long

All that is left to bring you pain, are the memories. If you face those, you'll be free. You can't spend the rest of your life hiding from yourself; always afraid that your memories will incapacitate you, and they will if you continue to bury them. — J.D. Stroube

More than anything, this place feels familiar. I bury my hands in the hot sand and think about the embodiment of memory or, more specifically, our natural ability to carry the past in our bodies and minds. Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation. I quietly thank this ancestor of mine for surviving the trip so that I could one day return. — Raquel Cepeda

The only way to bury the past is to build tomorrow on top of it. — Craig Lancaster

We're killers, all of us: We kill our lives, our past selves, the things that mattered. We bury them under slogans and excuses. — Lauren Oliver

The past was finished; let the dead bury their dead. — W. Somerset Maugham

Why doesn't the past decently bury itself, instead of sitting waiting to be admired by the present? — D.H. Lawrence

The men have piled up in my past, have fallen trenchantly through my life, like an avalanche that doesn't mean to kill but is going to bury me alive just the same. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

Come, then, thou regenerate man, thou extravagant prodigal, thou awakened sleeper, thou all-powerful visionary, thou invincible millionaire,
once again review thy past life of starvation and wretchedness, revisit the scenes where fate and misfortune conducted, and where despair received thee. Too many diamonds, too much gold and splendor, are now reflected by the mirror in which Monte Cristo seeks to behold Dantes. Hide thy diamonds, bury thy gold, shroud thy splendor, exchange riches for poverty, liberty for a prison, a living body for a corpse! — Alexandre Dumas

After everything the past has tried to bury us under, we owe it to ourselves to be brave, to do more than float. — Jay Crownover

Forget the past, let the dead bury the dead. Things were working out fine, and that was the only thing he had to remember. — Robert Bloch

When a sin comes back (its memory) you absolutely must bury it. How to bury the memory of a sin that comes from a distant past? I shut it up in a clay pot. Then I dug right into the cold hard ground, deep down. Without of course telling anyone what I had in the pot,then I stuck this pot the size of a little quart saucepan into the ground and I covered the hole in the ground with ice for a long time, and that despite the presence of people who had no inkling what I was ridding myself of in this little improvised coffin. — Helene Cixous

Perhaps I shouldn't call it shit. That's a bit crude. I don't really despise Christianity or even the Roman Church, and certainly not the incontrovertible glory of the Middle Ages. What I do despise is the contemporary inclination to flop to the knees and crawl back into the past, to shy from what seem like impossible problems in order to bury the head, asshole aloft and twitching, in the Sands of Time. Cowardice, I calls it. Illusion-seeking. Womb-crawling. And treason. Desertion in the face of the enemy.
Strong words indeed. But I've always been rather a blunt, tough, plain-spoken type ... — Edward Abbey

The past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you. This is half the reason for the cure: It clean-sweeps; it makes the past, and all its pain, distant, like the barest impression on sparkling glass. — Lauren Oliver

There's the life you live and the life you leave behind. but what you share with someone else - especially someone you love - that's not just how you bury your past. It's how you write you future. — Brad Meltzer

We can bury our heads in the sand and choose to ignore what is going around us, or we can look with new eyes, the eyes of the heart, upon the distortions of the past to walk again in authenticity and truth. — Barbara Meiklejohn-Free

He moved on down the alley, his feet walking forward and his brain swimming backward through a sea of time. It was a dark sea, much darker than the alley. The tide was slow and there were no waves, just tiny ripples that murmured very softly. Telling him about yesterday. Telling him that yesterday could never really be discarded, it was always a part of now. There was just no way to get rid of it. No way to push it aside or throw it into an ash can, or dig a hole and bury it. For all buried memories were nothing more than slow-motion boomerangs, taking their own sweet time to come back. This one had taken seven years. — David Goodis

Memory repression thrives in shame, secrecy, and shock. The shame and degradation experienced during sexual assault is profound, especially for children who have no concept of what is happening to them or why. Sexual abuse is so bizarre and horrible that the frightened child feels compelled to bury the event deep inside his or her mind. — Renee Fredrickson

That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. — Khaled Hosseini

God isn't the son of Memory; He's the son of Immediate Experience. You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment. — Aldous Huxley

I had this daft idea to come and bury the past. Except the past is not quite dead. — Sherry Thomas

First, you must be certain that you are ready for knowledge. There are many things that we bury in our minds for a reason. Are you sure that you want to go digging up the past?"- Elsie (Marked Book #1) page 226 — A.N. Meade

You couldn't get rid of the past. You couldn't ignore it, or bury it, or throw it over the balcony. You just had to learn to live beside it. It had to peacefully co exist with your present. If I could figure out how to do that, I could be okay. — Tarryn Fisher

Doesn't there come a time when you need to bury the past? When you stop using it as excuse to curl up in a ball and not live your life? — Marilyn Grey

Let the dead Past bury its dead! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If you're going to bury the past, bury it deep, girl. Shallow Graves always give up their dead. — Jennifer Donnelly

Say, "This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing proves that it will have to be undone by me alone." That which I created, I can demolish; that which is created by some one else I shall never be able to destroy. Therefore, stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succour you want is within yourselves. Therefore, make your own future. "Let the dead past bury its dead." The infinite future is before you, and you must always remember that each word, thought, and deed, lays up a store for you and that as the bad thoughts and bad works are ready to spring upon you like tigers, so also there is the inspiring hope that the good thoughts and good deeds are ready with the power of a hundred thousand angels to defend you always and for ever. (II. 225) — Swami Vivekananda

This was progress. This was modernity: you could cover over the past completely. You could bury the old under a relentless surface of new, stretched from corner to corner.
That's what I return to again and again, no matter how many times I think about it: how naive we were, how we believed in the promise, how we believed the past could be kept down. No. More than that
how we believed in a future that was distinct from the past. — Lauren Oliver

All the strength and succour you want is within yourselves. Therefore make your own future. "Let the dead past bury its dead." The infinite future is before you. — Swami Vivekananda

Weakness, like not being able to bury the past. Weakness, like not giving up hope when you know you should. — Julianna Baggott