Time To Forget The Past Quotes & Sayings

What's done
is done. Say good-bye to the past, and hello to the future And we're
wasting time, when already we've wasted enough. We've got everything
ahead, waiting for us.
Just the right words to make me feel real, alive, free! Free enough to
forget thoughts of revenge. — V.C. Andrews

When I get bored, or get stuck on an equation, I like to go ice skating, but it makes you forget your problem. Then you can tackle the problem with a fresh new insight. Einstein liked to play the violin to relax. Every physicist likes to have a past time. Mine is ice skating. — Michio Kaku

I've never been able to forget the infinite little smile of pure affection that danced across his livid face. Enough gaiety to fill the universe.
Few people past twenty preserve any of the affection, the affection of animals. This world isn't what we expected. So our looks change! They change plenty! We made a mistake! And turned into a thorough stinker in next to no time! Past twenty it shows in our face! A mistake! Our face is just a mistake! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Karen shuts the back door and turns to me. "You know I trust you, but please ... "
"Don't get pregnant," I interrupt. "I know, I know. You've been saying that every time you leave for the past two years. I'm not getting pregnant, Mom. Only terribly high and cracked out."
She laughs and hugs me. "Good girl. And wasted. Don't forget to get really wasted. — Colleen Hoover

Think of the most discouraging thing that you are currently carrying or the biggest project you can't seem to tackle. Forget about how it happened, forget about how you got there, just look at the clock, and before that number changes, do one little thing to make it better. After you do, enjoy your moment of victory, and then do it again. In less than the time it takes you to blink, the past will burden you no more. — Dan Pearce

Any time you lose a few in a row, you have to hit reset and come back tomorrow and do the best you can to forget about how the past series went. It's frustrating. Individually it's frustrating. I'm trying to figure it out. And I know as a team, it sucks losing a few in a row any time. So you know, we'll snap out of it. — Adam LaRoche

Remembering is my only job and it's hard work. We are natural-born amnesiacs, hardwired to let go of the past, to release ourselves from history; the only way to withstand our pain is to forget our pain. We may think we don't forget, but we do. Time wears down the rough edges of our memory, sure as a stone on the river bank is smoothed by the rushing current. And like the eroding stone, the memory fades so gradually we don't even feel it. We don't notice. Eighteen years fly by, whoosh, and we don't even realize that not long ago, we didn't all drink bottled water, the Soviet Union loomed as a threat, smoking was commonplace in restaurants, and Bono was just a rockstar.
What I want... all I want... is not to forget. But it's an uphill battle. Over time, the image blurs, the scent dissipates, the memory fades. — Greg Olear

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

The significant difference between Proust and Faulkner, for Sartre, is that where Proust discovers salvation in time, in the recovery of time past, for Faulkner time is never lost, however much he may want, like a mystic, to forget time. Both writers emphasize the transitoriness of emotion, of the condition of love or misery, or whatever passes because it is transitory in time. "Proust really should have employed a technique like Faulkner's," Sartre legislates, "that was the logical outcome of his metaphysic. Faulkner, however, is a lost man, and because he knows that he is lost he risks pushing his thoughts to its conclusion. Proust is a classicist and a Frenchman; and the French lose themselves with caution and always end by finding themselves. — John McCormick

She must continue to live life one day at a time. Neither the past nor the future existed for Eva.
She clenched her fist around her reins, drilling in the words she must never forget: 'there can only be the now. — Amy Jarecki

In retrospect people often seem embarrassed by that time--the late sixties into the seventies--as if suddenly confronted with some lunatic member of your family, once revered, now disgraced. Even John Lennon, who would hold on as much as anybody, would at one point have to declare, "Don't give me no more brother, brother." [...]

But, really, so much was accomplished, so much changed (and even less noticed, a lot held on to), that it seems inappropriate to be quite so uncomfortable with our past. For by refusing to accept the world as we were told to (most pointedly the war in Vietnam) we held on to many of the traditional values we had been taught, not the least of which was to demand accountability from our government. We shouldn't forget that a lot had to change. For America couldn't forever remain the child of the Hula-Hoop with the arsenal of Armageddon. — Ethan A. Russell

Five days later, I'm on the same journey, edging down the turnpike with the scrim of sunset lowering in the west, passing through Florida City, strip malls and car dealerships, melting into swampland and fishing tackle shops, past Manatee Bay onto the Overseas Highway. It's drifter territory, where people go to forget and to be forgotten. I've come to think of this land as a second home. The prison motel; the familiar faces though few of us have exchanged names. Each of us serving our sentence, waiting, waiting, because prison has made us more patient than we ever knew we could be, until we get the call that it's time; the end of the sentence, or just the end. — Patricia Engel

A world of "if"s, but it would make no difference. If I could go back in time ... but I couldn't. The past was behind me. The best thing now would be to stop looking over my shoulder. It was time to forget the past and look to the present and future. — Darren Shan

Herman's Trauma and Recovery, which addresses rape, child molestation, and wartime trauma together, notes: Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. . . . After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail. They — Rebecca Solnit

Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. . . . After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail. — Rebecca Solnit

It was revolting that I had been like that. Shameful. Disgraceful, in the old-time sense of the word. And what was even worse? That I could now see myself so wretchedly clearly. I had changed, I recognized bitterly.I hated that I could see myself as I was. What a terrible thing to know. I would never be able to not know it, to forget it.I didn't see how I could ever forgive River for that. — Cate Tiernan

Raise your self-esteem to such a level that you only allow loving experiences in your life. Don't waste time trying to get even. It doesn't work. What we give out always comes back to us. So lets drop the past and work on loving ourselves in the now. Then we will have a wonderful future. — Auliq Ice

We generally have methods of "keeping lonely thoughts away," and our anxiety may appear only in occasional dreams of fright which we try to forget as soon as possible in the morning. But these differences in intensity of the fear of loneliness, and the relative success of our defenses against it, do not change the central issue. Our fear of loneliness may not be shown by anxiety as such, but by subtle thoughts which pop up to remind us, when we discover we were not invited to so-and-so's party, that someone else likes us even if the person in question doesn't, or to tell us that we were successful or popular in such-and-such other time in the past. — Rollo May

Forget the past and live in the present hour. Now is the time to work, the time to fill The soul with noblest thoughts, the time to will. — Sarah Knowles Bolton

Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. Make all your friends feel there is something special in them. Look at the sunny side of everything. Think only the best, be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give everyone a smile. Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others. Be too big for worry and too noble for anger. — Norman Vincent Peale

Diamonds are held under tons and tons of pressure, extremely high temperatures of fire and shuffled under shifting of tectonic plates, for a long, long time! Yet when they come out from there and are put on display for their beauty; does anybody stop to evaluate the diamond based upon all the shit it's been through and say "Remember that disgusting hole it used to be in? I bet it was hell in there!" No, people don't remember where a diamond has come from; they just see the beauty of it now. But it wouldn't have become so beautiful, you know, if not for all of that! So why should we look at other people, or at ourselves and evaluate them/ourselves based upon their/our pasts? Shouldn't we forget that? And only see the beauty that is in front of our eyes? Whatever it was, it made you beautiful! And that is what matters! — C. JoyBell C.

Every time I jerked off over the past few days, I thought about you. Forget the chicks - I'm going with the dicks. Well," he made a face, "one dick, I mean. My own private dick. Start off slow, you know, and then build up to the orgies."
Rhodes brought his lips down onto Wash's smiling mouth. "My dick," Rhodes growled against the curve of Wash's lips. "And my dick only. Remember that. — Katie Allen

It was always better to have friends in low places, often far better, than having them in high places. At least when it came to Sorilla's line of work. Friends in high places tended to forget your name as soon as things got inconvenient, but she'd been consistently surprised by how loyal thugs and thieves could be in the right circumstances. They might literally stab you in the back, true, but they'd never just forget your name and ignore you in a crisis. Sorilla learned a long time past that she preferred an honest betrayal over a political one. — Evan Currie

I have a good friend in the East, who comes to my shows and says, you sing a lot about the past, you can't live in the past, you know. I say to him, I can go outside and pick up a rock that's older than the oldest song you know,
and bring it back in here and drop it on your foot. Now the past didn't go anywhere, did it? It's right here, right now.
I always thought that anybody who told me I couldn't live in the past was trying to get me to forget something that if I remembered it it would get them serious trouble. No, that 50s, 60s, 70s, 90s stuff, that whole idea of decade packaging, things don't happen that way. The Vietnam War heated up in 1965 and ended in 1975
what's that got to do with decades? No, that packaging of time is a journalist convenience that they use to trivialize and to dismiss important events and important ideas. I defy that. — Utah Phillips

The Marquess shrugged. "I'm a shadow. I do know I am a shadow, Iago. I know most of the time. It's only when I cannot bear how everyone looks at me down here that I make myself forget it. Shadows are the other side of yourself. I had longings to be good, even then. I was just stronger than my wanting. I'm stronger than anything, really, when I want to be." The Marquess's hair turned white as the snow. "Do you know, we're right underneath Springtime Parish? This place is the opposite of springtime. Everything past prime, boarded up for the season. Just above us, the light shines golden on daffodils full of rainwine and heartgrass and a terrible, wicked, sad girl I can't get back to. I don't even know if I want to. Do I want to be her again? Or do I want to be free? I come here to think about that. To be near her and consider it. I think I shall never be free. I think I traded my freedom for a better story. It was a better story, even if the ending needed work. — Catherynne M Valente

When I suddenly see myself in the depths of the mirror, I take fright. I can scarcely believe that I have limits, that I am outlined and defined. I feel myself to be dispersed in the atmosphere, thinking inside other creatures, living inside things beyond myself. When I suddenly see myself in the mirror, I am not startled because I find myself ugly or beautiful. I discover, in fact, that I possess another quality. When I haven't looked at myself for some time, I almost forget that I am human, I tend to forget my past, and I find myself with the same deliverance from purpose and conscience as something that is barely alive. I am also surprised to find as I gaze into the pale mirror with open eyes that there is so much in me beyond what is known, so much that remains ever silent. — Clarice Lispector

One minute you are here and the next moment you are some place else, some time a long ago. That is the thing about your mind. Memories. Everything still exists in the folds of your brain; you may try to forget or honestly believe that you have forgotten but nothing is ever erased. Every memory is registered, good or bad does not matter. Sometimes you bring some out on purpose, sometimes some memory jumps at you on its own, shocking you, shaking you, making you realize how far you have come and at the same time proving to you that you can never really go far enough. — Arti Honrao

Many scorned women delude themselves that the past was negative and to be forgotten, whereas the present is positive and to be celebrated. But what they also forget is, at one time they celebrated that past, as the positive present. — Robert Black

For inspiration you go to the archives, you go to things of the past, but you still need to be contemporary for today. You can never forget the time you're living in because the past is the past and it will never come back. — Nicki Minaj

Plane Ride -
In our sport it is natural and necessary to set up goals to inspire us. We all want to achieve the next level, the break-thru performance. What we (all of us) must not forget is that the journey to these goals is the best part. The daily process of obtaining success takes up the majority of our time and effort throughout our lives. Remember to appreciate what you've done in the past and what you are doing in the present on your way to higher goals. This will allow you to always strive for something more without missing out on the fact that your path to success is as much a starting point as it is a finish line. — Matthew Alan

Once he'd had happiness but for so brief a time; happiness was made of quicksilver, it ran out of your hand like quicksilver. There was the heat of tears suddenly in his eyes and he shook his head angrily. He would not think about it, he would never think of that again. It was long ago in an ancient past. To hell with happiness. More important was excitement and power and the hot stir of lust. Those made you forget. They made happiness a pink marshmallow. — Dorothy B. Hughes

A while ago?" Anaxantis asked. "Yes, he raped me a while ago. Exactly nine months and two days ago. What's that? Nine months or nine minutes. It's the same. And it is in the past, you say? Then why is it still happening, every day, every time I close my eyes? Every time I hear someone behind me, and I don't know who it is? How is it that I get an almost irresistible urge to kill anyone who happens to touch me unexpectedly? Tell me, Hemarchidas, how do I forgive, let alone forget, something that is still happening, that keeps happening over and over? How? How do I do that? — Andrew Ashling

And I knew the point of love right then.
The point of love was to help you survive.
The point was also to forget meaning. To stop looking and start living. The meaning was to hold the hand of someone you cared about and to live inside the present. Past and future were myths. The past was just the present that had died and the future would never exist anyway, because by the time we got to it the future would have turned into the present. The present was all there was. — Matt Haig

We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and no amount of education gleaned from our propensity for self-destruction and misguided thinking ever teaches us anything. Not anything that we remember for more than a generation or two.
I think maybe we learn a few things each time that we don't forget. A few things that stick with us. It's just hard to pass those things on to those who come after us because if they didn't live through it, they don't view it the same way we do. If you don't experience something firsthand, it's a lot harder to accept. Terry Brooks, Bearers of the Black Staff, p 89 — Terry Brooks

But don't forget that memory is like salt: the right amount brings out the flavour in food, too much ruins it. If you live in the past all the time, you'll find yourself with no present to remember. — Paulo Coelho

A culture that denies death is a barrier to achieving a good death. Overcoming our fears and wild misconceptions about death will be no small task, but we shouldn't forget how quickly other cultural prejudices--racism, sexism, homophobia--have begun to topple in the recent past. It is high time death had its own moment of truth. — Caitlin Doughty

Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow. — Bob Dylan

I cannot life for life itself: but for the words which stay the flux. My life, I feel, will not be lived until there are books and stories which relive it perpetually in time. I forget too easily how it was, and shrink to the horror of the here and now, with no past and no future. Writing breaks open the vaults of the dead and the skies behind which the prophesying angels hide. The mind makes and makes, spinning its web. — Sylvia Plath

You can never forget the time you're living in because the past is the past and it will never come back. So to adjust your philosophy and creativity in fashion to the time you're living in is the most important thing. — Donatella Versace

You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space. — Johnny Cash

Empowered Women 101: Forgive yourself for having chosen to expose yourself to people who don't care about your feelings and help others to do the same. Enjoy life! It is as simple as changing your focus or perspective when you start thinking about people from the past who hurt your feelings. Eventually, you will forget about those types of people because your time and attention will be taken up by more positive things/people/events/activities etc. When you understand how much time is wasted trying to make people see you, understand you, respect you, value you, like you or agree with you ... life becomes a pointless negative fight for validation that will drain your happiness. You are worth more than the indifference, inattention or crumbs people throw you. You are a queen that demands respect and God will bring the right person into your life to make you forget why you ever wasted your time on nothing important. — Shannon L. Alder

It is our ability to forget our problems, through the process of thought, rather than the passage of time, that frees us from the circumstances of our past. — Richard Carlson

Life is full of lessons; learn the lessons in life you meet each moment of time well! So many people meet the same things in life time after time, because they fail to know, understand and take real lessons from the same things they always meet time and time again! Day by day, make a consistent effort to improve yourself. Day by day, take consistent steps in wit to avoid doing the same thing that resulted in the same thing in the same way! Life is full of lessons; don't forget to learn the lessons life teaches well, or else you shall leave each moment of your life learning the same life lessons! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail. JUDITH LEWIS HERMAN Trauma and Recovery — Jon Krakauer

Now look here, old friend," I said. "I know your bally heart is broken and all that, and at some future time I shall be delighted to hear all about it, but - "
"I didn't come to talk about that."
"No? Good egg!"
"The past," said young Bingo, "is dead. Let us say no more about it."
"Right-o!"
"I have been wounded to the very depths of my soul, but don't speak about it."
"I won't."
"Ignore it. Forget it."
"Absolutely!"
I hadn't seen him so dashed reasonable for days. — P.G. Wodehouse

You won't always spoil her .or treat her like a princess.You won't tell her she's beautiful everyday.You won't make her smile every night and you won't always want her the way you do now.That fades.Those giddy little stomach flutters fade and you're then left with reality.There will be day's you will forget to tell her she's beautiful,even though she needs to hear it.There will be days you'll to say i love you.There will be days you'll forget a birthday or an anniversary.There will be a time when she will walk past you and you won;t want to ravish her, the way you do now.Those things fade, and when they do, what's left is what's truly worth fighting for Love isn't always beautiful, heck,it's not even close to being perfect half the time,feelings change, the spark dies down and what you're left with is something you either chose to fight for you don't When you know that even through those things are gone,you're still willing to fight for every breath ,then you know the love is real. — Bec Botefuhr

Once we have forgiven, however, we get a new freedom to forget. This time forgetting is a sign of health; it is not a trick to avoid spiritual surgery. We can forget because we have been healed. But even if it is easier to forget after we forgive, we should not make forgetting a test of our forgiving. The test of forgiving lies with healing the lingering pain of the past, not with forgetting the past has ever happened. — Lewis B. Smedes

But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not adistance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,
nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon. — Henry David Thoreau

Forget about showering with my fellow students in Tribeca Alternative's prison-style showers - one nozzle for four to six girls at a time - in the locker room.
It was impossible to work up a sweat during what passed for physical education class at TAHS, so there was no need to shower, anyway.
Well, impossible for me, considering that, in the past, whenever a volleyball or whatever came near me,
I'd always make sure to step calmly away to avoid it.
See? No sweat. No need for a shower. Problem solved. — Meg Cabot

Hermione looked at him, not blinking. It was a moment before she replied, "I know that you served your time on Azkaban Station." She looked out the porthole into the inky blackness of space, twirling her fork between her fingers. "Everyone here is hoping for a clean slate when they reach Alpha Centauri, but that will only happen if we all agree to forget and forgive the past. As far as I'm concerned, you've earned your redemption. — Refictionista

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

There are things that you might forget, but you might not clearly forget. Time is the only coin you have to buy the things you want to remember, and to pay for the things you want to leave behind. — Aileene Mhar Jabarani

Diwali means to be in the present, so drop the regrets of the past and the worries of the future and live in the moment. It is a time to forget the bickering and negativities that have happened through the year. It is a time when you throw light on the wisdom you have gained and welcome a new beginning. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

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