The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Albert Einstein1 quote
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. — Albert Einstein · 1930D'Angelo Barksdale1 quote
The past is always with us. Where we come from, what we go through, how we go through it; all this shit matters. — D'Angelo Barksdale · 2006F. Scott Fitzgerald1 quote
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. — F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925Henri Bergson1 quote
The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause. — Henri Bergson · 1907Hermann Hesse1 quote
I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back. — Hermann Hesse · 1919Jimmy Gator1 quote
The book says we might be through with the past, but the past is not through with us! — Jimmy Gator · 1999Joan Didion1 quote
Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a point when choice was any more than sum of all the choices gone before? — Joan Didion · 1963John Clare1 quote
The present is the funeral of the past,
And man the living sepulchre of life. — John Clare · 1845Karl Marx1 quote
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. — Karl Marx · 1852Maya Angelou1 quote
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. — Maya Angelou · 1993Milan Kundera1 quote
The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke us and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. — Milan Kundera · 1979Old Paul Edgecomb1 quote
I guess sometimes the past just catches up with you, whether you want it to or not. — Old Paul Edgecomb · 1999William Faulkner1 quote
The past is never dead. It's not even past. — William Faulkner · 1951