Learned From The Past Quotes & Sayings

It had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping laugh. She had forgotten how deep and down it could be. So different from the miscellaneous giggles and smiles she had learned to be content with these past few years. — Toni Morrison

And he gave me a few of the Xeroxed sheets of paper lying on the table in front of him. As he passed them to me, his thumb brushed mine and I trembled from the touch. I had the sensation that our past and our future were in our fingers and that they had touched. And so, when I began to read the proffered pages, I at one moment lost the train of thought in the text and drowned it in my own feelings. In these seconds of absence and self-oblivion, centuries passed with every read but uncomprehended and unabsorbed line, and when, after a few moments, I came to and re-established contact with the text, I knew that the reader who returns from the open seas of his feelings is no longer the same reader who embarked on that sea only a short while ago. I gained and learned more by not reading than by reading those pages ... — Milorad Pavic

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience. — George Santayana

To do that Cinnamon had to fill in those blank spots in the past that he could not reach with his own hands. By using those hands to make a story, he was trying to supply the missing links. From the stories he had heard repeatedly from his mother, he derived further stories in attempt to recreate the enigmatic figure of his grandfather in a new setting. He inherited from his mother's stories the fundamental style he used, unaltered, his own stories: namely, the assumption that fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual. The question of which parts of story were factual and which parts were not was probably not a very important one for Cinnamon. The important question for Cinnamon was not what his grandfather did but what his grandfather might have done. He learned the answers to this question as soon as succeed in telling the story. — Haruki Murakami

His life, for years past, had been mainly a succession of resigned adaptations, and he had learned, before dealing practically with his embarrassments, to extract from most of them a small tribute of amusement.
("The Triumph Of The Night") — Edith Wharton

He wanted to say that he'd learned to read in gaol [jail], to really read. He wanted to tell her that the library had been his favorite place inside, that when he read 'As I Lay Dying' he'd found a voice that made sense of time and space as he was experiencing it in gaol, that it had spoken to him more clearly and more profoundly than any voice he'd ever encountered before: of how the past could not be separated from memory, of how it was not only time that changed people, but memory as well. — Christos Tsiolkas

I learned from my past, and I now employ those lessons going forward, looking to the future - don't you think it's about time our government did, too? — Ian Somerhalder

For me, I can't understand something unless I've experienced it and I tend to be very judgmental by nature. But, it's very telling when you see the world from the other side of the lens because it opens the door to self-discovery. Perspective changes everything. I prefer empathy to sympathy if I have a choice. That's where the research comes in. I've packed a lot of life into the past few years trying to understand people and situations. Trying to make sense of my life. I have a lot to work through. My past is something that requires introspection and forgiveness. And that takes time. Research. When I feel like I've learned something about myself and grown as a person, I move on to the next journey. Hopefully with new perspective. — Kim Holden

Regret and guilt are useless emotions that hold ye in a past that's already gone . . . and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that allowing yerself to be dragged down by the past helps no one. It jest keeps ye from ha'ing both feet in the present where ye should be. — Lynsay Sands

I thought you'd be gone by now." Velkan
"Hardly, I have to much to do." Esperetta
"Such as?" Velkan
"Apologize to you." Esperetta
"Why would you do that?" Velkan
"Because I'm stupid and pigheaded. Judgmental. Unforgiving. Mistrustful
you can stop me at anytime, you know?" Esperetta
"Why should i? You're on quite a roll. Besides, you missed the worst flaw." Velkan
"And that is?" Esperetta
"Hotheaded." Velkan
"I learned that one from you." Esperetta
"How so?" Velkan
"Remember that time you threw your boots into the fire because you had trouble getting them off?"
"I never did that." Velkan
"Yes, you did. You also gave your favorite saddle to the stable master because it scratched your leg as you dismounted and told him he could have it but, personally, you'd burn it, too." Esperetta — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Well, he thought, dwelling on past failures once you'd learned all there was to learn was just heaping futility on failure. — Raymond E. Feist

I have a feeling,' he said, 'I have a feeling that we were meant to be together. That we have fought the good fight, side by side, in the past or in the future, I do not know. I am a rational man, but I have learned the value of a good companion, and from the moment I clapped eyes on you, I knew I trusted you as well as I do myself. Yes, I want you with me. — Neil Gaiman

Like most of those who study history, he (Napoleon III) learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones. — A.J.P. Taylor

If I've learned anything from my past and my present, it's the power of fear. You can give your subjects all the generosity in the world, and still they will demand more. But those who are afraid don't fight back. I know this well enough. — Marie Lu

The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead and remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. — Jeffrey R. Holland

The first time Mr. Darcy asked Lizzy to marry him in Pride and Prejudice, he went about it all wrong," I started, smiling at the connection I'd just made in my mind. "He insulted her and her
family. But after her refusal, he made a conscious effort to change for the better, and everything worked out for them the second time he proposed. It's the same with us. You learned from your past mistakes, and everything's different now. Just as Lizzy gave Mr. Darcy a second chance, I'm going to do the same for you."
"I'm glad that Lizzy gave Mr. Darcy a second chance." He smiled at the comparison. "She was the only one for him. He would have been miserable without her."
"And she would have been miserable without him." I laughed. "Even though she might not have admitted it. — Michelle Madow

It's hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I've learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place. — Angelina Jolie

A fresh start gives us the chance to reflect on the past, weigh the things we've done, and apply what we've learned from those things to the future. — R.J. Palacio

The pain you endure today will lead to a better tomorrow. Don't dwell so much on the pain but focus on the lessons learned. There in lies your strength to rise above all odds. Your best is yet to come. — Kemi Sogunle

He had in his Bronx apartment a lodger less learned than himself, and much fiercer in piety. One day when we were studying the laws of repentance together, the lodger burst from his room. "What!" he said. "The atheists guzzles his whiskey and eats pork and wallows with women all his life long, and then repents the day before he dies and stands guiltless? While I spend a lifetime trying to please God?" My grandfather pointed to the book. "So it is written," he said gently. - "Written!" the lodger roared. "There are books and there are books." And he slammed back into his room.
The lodger's outrage seemed highly logical. My grandfather pointed out afterward that cancelling the past does not turn it into a record of achievement. It leaves it blank, a waste of spilled years. A man had better return, he said, while time remains to write a life worth scanning. And since no man knows his death day, the time to get a grip on his life is the first hour when the impulse strikes him. — Herman Wouk

Art is a means of memorialization of the past, a record of a rapidly vanishing world; a means of exorcising, at least temporarily, the ravages of homesickness. To speak of 'what is past, or passing or to come'-in the most meticulous language thereby to assure its permanence; to honor those we've loved and learned from and must outlive. — Joyce Carol Oates

Although she was a logical, practical person, she believed that in books there existed a kind of magic. Between the aging covers on these shelves, contained in tiny, abstract black marks on sheets of paper, were voices from the past. Voices that reached into the future, into Claire's own heart and mind, to tell her what they knew, what they'd learned, what they'd seen, what they'd felt. Wasn't that magic? — Christi Phillips

We should not forget, no matter how we quantify it: 'Freedom is not free.' It is a painful lesson, but one from which we have learned in the past and one we should never forget. — Paul Gillmor

Tell me about it. Despite all the changes in the twenty-first century, it seems that the rich are still rich and the poor are still poor. There are still countless people in the world who starve every day, and it's not because they're anorexic or fasting. It's because they can't afford food while the rich waste money all the time on trivial things. Every time I hear about famine, I ask myself if we've learned nothing from the past- from the revolutions, all the wars. All they did was ruin thousands of lives. (Danger)
Chronia apostraph, anthrice mi achi. (Alexion)
What is that? (Danger)
It's Atlantean. Something Acheron says a lot. Roughly translated, it means 'time moves on, people do not.' (Alexion) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

At first it was, as I have said, rather bracing and tonic. For after the dream there is not reason why you should not go back and face the fact which you have fled from (even if the fact seems to be that you have, by digging up the truth about the past, handed over Anne Stanton to Willie Stark), for any place to which you may flee will not be like the place from which you have fled, and you might as well go back, after all, to the place where you belong, for nothing was your fault or anybody's fault, for things are always as they are. And you can go back in good spirits, for you will have learned two very great truths. First, that you cannot lose what you have never had. Second, that you are never guilty of a crime which you did not commit. So there is innocence and a new start in the West after all.
If you believe that dream you dream when you go there. — Robert Penn Warren

I thought back on my running career at Oregon. I'd competed with, and against, men far better, faster, more physically gifted. Many were future Olympians. And yet I'd trained myself to forget this unhappy fact. People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that's only true of people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, I'd learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past. You — Phil Knight

For the past six years, I've become a student on longing. I've read hundreds of books, articles, and studies on relationships, attended workshops, and sought the advice of spiritual counselors and trusted friends. And this is what I've learned: all of us long to be loved; we are searching for that perfect love - the perfect union that we read about in romantic novels or see on the silver screen. What we fail to realize is that we are human and because we are human, we are imperfect. We seek the impossible: perfect love from imperfect people. We fail to see that our longing for unconditional, perfect, or divine love can only be satiated by reunion and communion with the divine. — Randy Siegel

She walked through the underpass at the Elephant and Castle, enjoying the sense that nothing really mattered, not the truth about the past, nor whether they believed her, not Winnie's drinking or Vik's ultimatum. It was the perfect place to escape from a painful past. She could waste years at home trying to make sense of a random series of events. There was no meaning, no lessons to be learned, no moral - none of it meant anything. She could spend her entire life trying to weave meaning into it, like compulsive gamblers and their secret schema. Nothing mattered, really, because an anonymous city is the moral equivalent of a darkened room. She understood why Ann had come here and stayed here and died here. It wouldn't be hard. All she had to do was let go of home. She would phone Leslie and Liam sometimes, say she was fine, fine, let the calls get farther apart, make up a life for herself and they'd finally forget. — Denise Mina

When I met you - somehow you healed me. From the inside out, the outside in. We conquered fears together, we learned, we laughed, and we loved. I swear, you caused my heart to soar more in the past few months than it has in my entire existence. My heart is whole because you chose to share yours with me, and it's for that reason that I get down on not one, but both knees ... " I knelt in front of her and gripped her hand. "And say thank you. Thank you for saving my life, thank you for loving me enough to treasure your own, and thank you for being my strength when I had none. I'd like to think our hearts are joined - forever entwined - but considering that's not technically a legal joining, I have a question for you
Marry me? Make me the happiest man alive." I opened the box revealing my mom's ring. — Rachel Van Dyken

just about every human being can reflect on his or her past and say, 'I learned from that hardship. I didn't think I would at the time, but I'm a bigger and better person for having endured it and persevered. — Lee Strobel

But what he had learned over these past weeks was that people were entwined one with the other, and that you couldn't isolate yourself from them and say, 'I am going to be happy', because their emotions penetrated you and cast a shadow over your happiness, they tinged your love with sadness and fear until you were being forced to believe that sadness and fear were part of love. — Catherine Cookson

The fact that Newton and Michael Faraday and other scientists of the past were deeply religious shows that religious skepticism is not a prejudice that governed science from the beginning, but a lesson that has been learned through centuries of experience in the study of nature. — Steven Weinberg

An old book was a time capsule. When you opened the front cover, you opened a door to another world - a world accessible through a kind of looking glass made of hard-board and cloth. The author's voice resonated in the reader's head with the same words that had resonated in his own as he wrote them. He spoke to the reader from the past. What he had witnessed, experienced, learned, and discovered would live forever. You only had to turn a page to travel in time. — Stephen Parrish

You NEED to look back to remember the awesome memories, to remember the positive lessons you have learned, to help someone else learn from what you have lived and to see how far you have come. — Tanya Masse

Everything about singing, I learned from busking. Everything I learned about songwriting, I learned from busking. Busking, you learn people, you learn about reading people. You learn about reading the atmosphere of the street. If you stand still in any city long enough, you see everyone pass you by. It's almost like you get to know personality types, just by watching people walk past. You get a sense for things. — Glen Hansard

I had a massive heart attack, and in my belief that I was close to dying, I took the opportunity to teach my son about death. That lesson increased his faith in such a way that he completely accepted all the changes that life brings us. He learned that only the present exists. From that moment on, he began living in the present time, knowing that the future is just a possibility, and without believing all the opinions from the past. He understood that there are no guides, or masters. Each one of us is our own guru, and we can only save ourselves. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God. — Helen Shucman

I learned one thing from De Niro: He taught me to listen. Nobody says anything strictly from the script. It's improvised. It was the best piece of advice I have ever gotten in my life. It has helped me through the past thirty years. — Cathy Moriarty

People don't need to know what Albert Belle is thinking. I've learned from my mistakes in the past, and that's what's made me a better person. — Albert Belle

Back when he had first come to the monastery, they had given him a very simple ritual called Forgiving the Day. Even the youngest child could do this; all it required was looking back over the day and dismissing the day's pains as a thing that were past while choosing to remember as gains lessons learned or moments of insight. As initiates grew in the ways of Sa, it was expected they would grow more sophisticated in this exercise, learning to balance the day, taking responsibility for their own actions and learning from them without indulging in either guilt or regrets."
p. 240 — Robin Hobb

Faith is about going through hell, coming out with some scars, and becoming a wiser person from the lessons you've learned along the way. You must take the scars of your past and appreciate them for what they have taught you. You also have to take the scars, the lessons of your past and not let them control your future ... . — James A. Murphy

A lot of people talk about life. Some love it. Some disparage it. And a few realize that life can be what you make it because they have learned from past experiences. Lessons learned from these experiences have often contributed greatly toward seeing the possibilities in what some people call "the game of life." When we've "been there" and "done that," we can have as good of an idea of what we don't want as what we do want. Experience is certainly an excellent teacher! — John Templeton

Fear is the culprit that robs us of our greatest lives. And although it's mostly made up or a learned behavior from our past, almost everybody I've ever met in my life struggles with fear. — Debbie Ford

And when I had learned it, I looked at
my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only
separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a
shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha's previous births were
no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing
was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is
present. — Hermann Hesse

I couldn't stop it from happening," I told her. "I've been able to stop it before, but this time I just couldn't stop it from happening." "Well, now." Her blue eyes were very wise. "You've learned a valuable lesson from this, then, haven't you? You can't cheat fate, Julia. If you don't go looking for the lessons of the past, then the past will come looking for you. — Susanna Kearsley

We have all examined our past critically and are very much aware of even the unpleasant things. Now, we need to look at what we plan to do with the lessons we have learned from the past. — Heinz Fischer

Whether you want to lose 20 pounds or 200, what the contestants on 'The Biggest Loser' have learned - and taught me - holds true: You've got to make a break. You've got to divorce yourself from the past and find a different way of living. And you can never go back. — Bob Harper

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 learned from your mother that you can't get past something like this," I said. I glanced at Allison and Travis and saw they were listening. "You have to get through it. If you try to ignore the pain, it will just make things worse. You have to embrace it, feel it all, and then somehow emerge on the other side. It won't happen all at once, but it will happen. And in the end, after all the hurt and tears and pain, it will become a part of who you are. — Steve Gannon

It was only because men learned to cooperate that we could make the great discovery of the division of labor; a discovery which is the chief security for the welfare of mankind. To preserve human life would not be possible if each individual attempted to wrest a living from the earth by himself with no cooperation and no results of cooperation in the past. Through the division of labor we can use the results of many different kinds of training and organize many different abilities so that all of them contribute to the common welfare and guarantee relief from insecurity and increased opportunity for all the members of society. It — Alfred Adler

I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. — Beryl Markham

As I've always said to Talyn, tough times never last. But tough Andarions. I learned that from watching you as a boy. Your parents, grandparents, and Keris treated you like shit and yet you never once spoke against them. You'd just lift your chin and carry on. 'Barking dogs don't bother me,' you used to say. 'Sooner or later, they reach the end of their yard and hit a fence. I'll keep going past it, and won't hear them anymore. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Something has worked in the past, until - well, it unexpectedly no longer does, and what we have learned from the past turns out to be at best irrelevant or false, at worst viciously misleading. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

They would always be a family, but if she'd learned anything in the past few weeks it was that a family wasn't a static thing. There were always changes going on. Like with continents, sometimes the changes were invisible and underground, and sometimes they were explosive and deadly. The trick was to keep your balance. You couldn't control the direction of your family any more than you could stop the continental shelf from breaking apart. All you could do was hold on for the ride. — Kristin Hannah

I point out to you, Marcus Claire Luyseyal, a lesson from past over-machined societies which you appear not to have learned. The devices themselves condition the
users to employ each other the way they employ machines. — Frank Herbert

For after the dream there is no reason why you should not go back and face the fact which you have fled from (even if the fact seems to be that you have, by digging up the truth about the past, handed over Anne Stanton to Willie Talos), for any place to which you may flee will now be like the place from which you have fled, and you might as well go back, after all, to the place where you belong, for nothing was your fault or anybody's fault, for things are always as they are. And you can go back in good spirits, for you will have learned two very great truths. First, that you cannot lose what you have never had. Second, that you are never guilty of a crime which you did not commit. So there is innocence and a new start in the West, after all.
If you believe the dream you dream when you go there. — Robert Penn Warren

Past is aipsom if you learned from the past. — Debasish Mridha

And I'd say one of the great lessons I've learned over the past couple of decades, from a management perspective, is that really when you come down to it, it really is all about people and all about leadership. — Steve Case

Apart from Christ, we cannot stand against our own hearts. The verses above presume that we will struggle with sin, but they warn us not to declare any sin a "sanctifiable" character quality, even if through it we may learn valuable lessons about life. Learning lessons is not God's first priority for his children. Transformed character is. I learned here that God may, in his providence, bring good from my past, but the good that comes is not because of the sin, but in spite of it. It is very tempting to see "good" in those things that tempt us to sin or lead us to sin because then we don't seem nearly as corrupt as Original Sin renders us. According to God, sinful temptations are inclinations to do something or become something that cost Jesus his life for my sake. We are not to try to ransom it on our own terms. Suggesting that our sin is good or produces good is tantamount to calling cancer good health. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

To make love is to become like this infant again. We grope with our mouths toward the body of another being, whom we trust, who takes us in her arms. We rock together with this loved one. We move beyond speech. Our bodies move past all the controls we have learned. We cry out in ecstasy, in feeling. We are back in a natural world before culture tried to erase our experience of nature. In this world, to touch another is to express love; there is no idea apart from feeling, and no feeling which does not ring through our bodies and our souls at once. — Susan Griffin

My eyes fix on my reflection in the mirror as the water warms up for my shower.
I'm not sure if it's just my perception, but I look older than my thirty-eight years.
I certainly feel older, too.
I feel like I've lived more than one lifetime, each of them lasting an eternity. An eternity of rage, and resentment, and wrongdoing ... it takes its toll on a man, that's for certain. But none of it had half as much effect on me as this past year. Something I learned was sentiment can take it out of you. I used to have no regard for myself - or anybody, for that matter. I had no reason to live anymore. But now that I care about what happens to her - and for her sake, me - I'm growing exhausted from the constant worry.
Worry my past will catch up to us.
Worry that she'll be the one to pay for those sins.
It's the consequence, I think, of loving me.
The consequence of being with someone who lived so carelessly. — J.M. Darhower

Some shows suck, but I always - the show must go on. I learned it from my past as a child actor. The show must go on. You have to just keep on with it. — Jenny Lewis

It was not only from Europe that so much could be learned! This modern age had provided many breasts to suckle me - from among the Natives themselves, from Japan, China, America, India, Arabia, from all the peoples on the face of this earth ... In humility, I realized I am a child of all nations, of all ages, past and present. Place and time of birth, parents, all are coincidence: such things are not sacred. — Pramoedya Ananta Toer

I learned from an early age that my heritage, my love for people, and my desire to be a vehicle that can be used through my voice, that my expressions and actions can transport a person to experience a scene from the past, present and future. — Francesco Quinn

The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented precisely such a hope - that America had learned from its past and acted to secure a better tomorrow. — Aberjhani

But there is, I have learned, no permanent escape from the past. It may be an unrecognized law of our nature that we should be drawn back, inevitably, to the place where we have suffered most. — Ellen Glasgow

Excerpt from "The Long Road from Perdition" for the day:
" ... I've always been drawn to the ocean. It is here that I now feel peaceful and can lose my thoughts while immersed in the deafening sounds of waves crashing around me. The spray and mist of the ocean's past seem to be a living, breathing yet wounded animal. The fury of the waves never settled and the spew of the foam touched all that dared to sit near it.
There is no reason to flinch as the waves spray and crash against the shore. It is a natural progression I have learned to endure. However, it is the rescinding of the waves and fluid release of fury that I struggle to understand and coexist with peacefully. I hope one day to master it. — J.R. Stone

Every second you dwell on the past you steal from your future. Every minute you spend focusing on your problems you take away from finding your solutions. And thinking about all those things that you wish never happened to you is actually blocking all the things you want to happen from entering into your life. Given the timeless truth that holds that you become what you think about all day long, it makes no sense to worry about past events or mistakes unless you want to experience them for a second time. Instead, use the lessons you have learned from your past to rise to a whole new level of awareness and enlightenment. — Robin S. Sharma

If I have learned one thing in my life, it is that lamentation and regrets only make things worse. A person must move on, move forward but never forget the past, but learn from it. If you ponder the 'if onlys' of life, they will drive you mad. — Lorraine Heath

Dr. Ambrose himself told Mark Nechtr ... that the problem with young people, starting sometime in about the 1960s, is that they tend to live too intensely inside their own social moment, and thus tend to see all existence past age thirty or so as somehow postcoital. It's then that they'll relax, settle back, sad animals, to watch- and learn, as Ambrose himself said he learned from hard artistic and academic experience- that life instead of being rated a hard R, or even a soft R, actually rarely even makes it into distribution. Tends to be too slow. — David Foster Wallace

According to John Shook, "'Go see, ask why, show respect' is the way we turn the philosophy of scientific empiricism into actual behavior." It's an expression he originally learned from Fujio Cho (past president and chairman of Toyota). In an LEI blog, Shook went on to say, "We go observe what is really happening (at the Gemba where the work takes place), while showing respect for the people involved, especially the people who do the real value-creating work of the business. — Michael Bremer

Through my writing, I learned my Life Lessons from all the experiences in my past, good and bad. Letting go of the drama we create for ourselves is the biggest gift we can ever receive. — KoKo Nervelli

I just did what I did in my era, basically because of my admiration for the guys who came before me. That's how I've always looked at it. I never thought of boxing like, I'm going to be the greatest fighter ever and make a lot of money. Instead, I thought I was going to win because I learned from the best. I carefully studied the videotapes of all the fighters from the past, dissected their styles, and entered the ring with their spirit. — Mike Tyson

Ordinary moments make the life. This is what she knew to be trustworthy and this is what I learned, eventually, from those years we spent together. No leaps or falls. I inhale the little drizzly details of the past and know who I am. What I failed to know before is clearer now, filtered up through time, an experience belonging to no one else, not remotely, no one, anyone, ever. I watch her use the roller to remove lint from her cloth coat. Define coat, I tell myself. Define time, define space. — Don DeLillo

During the past five years, I've learned that time flies faster than you think, and because you only live once you have to learn from your mistakes, live your dreams and be accountable. — Lindsay Lohan

am an Addict's Mom. I am an Addict's Mom. I stand before you able to state without hesitation that Yes, I am an addict's mom. I have learned to look past those judgmental stares, sensing what you are thinking, that I must be "one of those Moms." That somewhere, somehow, I made some horrific choices that sent my child into the depths of hell. I am here to tell you that the choices my child made are his own and his alone. This nightmare is far from what I wanted for my child. Just like everyone with children, there were big dreams and hopes for my child. — Joe Herzanek

What has been seen cannot be unseen, what has been learned cannot be unknown. You cannot change the past, but you can learn from it. You can grow from it. You can be made stronger. You can use that strength to change your life, to change your future. — C.A. Woolf

Tashi says nomads keep to the routines and customs they learned from their parents and they know the basic truths: that life is full of suffering, that suffering can be understood and lived through, that their actions and intentions will determine their future lives just as the past has allowed for this present life. — Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

The history of the past, a hundred years from now, won't be the history of the past that we learned in school because much more will have been revealed, and adjectives we can't even imagine will have been brought to bear on what we did learn in school. — William Gibson

From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revelation of prominent historical figures. This kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. — George Orwell

In my experience, copy editors, like the stalwart staff I've worked with and learned from in my 34 years at 'TIME,' are linguistic conservatives - the keepers of the flame ignited by the Strunk-White 'Elements of Style,' published in full in 1957 and chosen by 'TIME' as one of the 100 most influential nonfiction books of the past century. — Richard Corliss

I learned very quickly that when you emigrate, you lose the crutches that have been your support; you must begin from zero, because the past is erased with a single stroke and no one cares where you're from or what you did before. — Isabel Allende

Kaladin was the one who had changed, not they. He felt a strange dislocation, as if he'd allowed himself to forget - if only in part - the last nine months. He reached back across time, studying the man he had been. The man who'd still fought, and fought well. He couldn't be that man again - he couldn't erase the scars - but he could learn from that man, as a new squadleader learned from the victorious generals of the past. Kaladin Stormblessed was dead, but Kaladin Bridgeman was of the same blood. A descendant with potential. — Brandon Sanderson

I've learned from the past that it's important to recharge and get time in-between jobs, and if I can't get time in-between jobs then when I know I've got some time coming up at the end of a job, really try and take advantage of that. And do very mundane things at home and putter in the garden and spend time with family and make music and, you know, play with the dogs. Just get back to being me. — Guy Pearce

Depression can be a very disturbing and frightening experience. People often feel that depression descends upon them from nowhere and feel powerless to understand or change how they are feeling. It can physical changes such as tiredness and loss of appetite but depresson is not primarily a physical problem. Depression is routed in people's past experiences; their thoughts and feelings about themselves and the world; and the ways they have learned to cope. — Carolyn Ainscough

What I have learned from the year past is something about miracles
miracles of healing and answered prayer and unexpected happy endings. Each came quietly and simply, on tiptoe, so that I hardly knew it had occurred.
All this makes me realize that miracles are everyday things. Not only the sudden, great good fortune, wafting in on a new wind from the sky. They are almost routine, yet miracles just the same.
Every time something hard becomes easier; every time you adjust to a situation which, last week, you didn't know existed; every time a kindness falls as softly as the dew; or someone you love who was ill grows better; every time a blessing comes, not with trumpet and fanfare, but silently as night, you have witnessed a miracle. — Faith Baldwin

From birth to death we explore and seek, and in the end we arrive where we started, the past having made one great slow turn on a carousel to become our future, and if we have learned anything worth learning, the carousel will bring us to the one place we most need to be. — Dean Koontz

One's past can't be erased, it can only be learned from, the child taught her. — H. L. Balcomb

Perhaps we just need little reminders from time to time that we are already dignified, deserving, worthy. Sometimes we don't feel that way because of the wounds and the scars we carry from the past or because of the uncertainty of the future. It is doubtful that we came to feel undeserving on our own. We were helped to feel unworthy. We were taught it in a thousand ways when we were little, and we learned our lessons well. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

At times Sophie sang songs for her that she had learned on the streets. Sometimes she still remembered verses that her parents had sung for her before they died. But they were only scraps, fragments from the past, linked to the hazy memory of a friendly face or laughter. — Anonymous

I mean, I've been stupid in the past, and I've learned from that. — Aidan Quinn

Man has always learned from the past. After all, you can't learn history in reverse! — Archimedes

We face the future fortified with the lessons we have learned from the past. It is today that we must create the world of the future. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Vonnegut was talking," I say today, "about the psychic effects of trauma." There's a sentence of Alice Miller's looping in my mind, about grandiose people and depressives, Narcissus and Echo: "Neither can accept the truth that this loss or absence of love has already happened in the past, and that no effort whatsoever can change this fact." It's the main thing I've learned from reading all this psychology: the future is always trying to feel like the past. When it does, it feels like selfishness, hurt, loss at the hands of others. The trick is to let it empty. Maybe this is another way to come unstuck in time. — Kristin Dombek

When you look to the past, don't sit and dwell on your regrets. Instead, focus on the things you learned from each experience and how they may enrich your future. Use the past not as something to hold you back, but as a method for reaffirming the drive to move forward on your chosen path. — Jack Davenport

Pouring mercy into the darkness, Miao Shan becoming the bodhisattva Kuan Yin. She liberated hell, singing: Old stories, legends of creation, won't keep Hades from becoming paradise. Rumi said for the person who loves the truth "Their water is fire." He made spring out of winter. He learned from his mistakes. There were moments when numb from thinking we forget we pass through hell on our way to heaven. And if that heavenly glow does not distract us too much, dehypnotized by grace, we continue past heaven into the boundless enormity which dwarfs it. — Stephen Levine

Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future. — Dale Turner

1] The absence of the personal story: in order for magical rites to pass from generation to generation, the sorcerer (shaman) must forget all he learned before his initiation into magic. According to tradition, a man or women who are tied to his past, will in the end allow himself to be governed by his parents' way of thinking, or that of the society in which he lives. This is why all those who are initiated choose a new name and seek to free themselves from their memories, both good and bad. — Paulo Coelho

Who am I? I am who I say I am and tomorrow someone else entirely. You are too nostalgic, you want memory to secure you, console you. The past is a bore. What matters is only oneself and what one creates from what one has learned. Imagination uses what it needs and discards the rest - where you want to erect a museum. Don't hoard the past, Astrid. Don't cherish anything. Burn it. The artist is the phoenix who burns to emerge. — Janet Fitch

[I] learned ... that friends are a good source of food and soul when one has not yet gotten the hang of cooking or living (as opposed to dying) alone. That nothing-not booze, not love, not sex, not work, not moving from state to state-will make the past disappear. Only time and patience heal things. I learned that cutting up your arms in an attempt to make the pain move from inside to outside, from soul to skin, is futile. That death is a cop-out. I tried all of these things. — Marya Hornbacher