Shall we never, never get rid of this Past?... It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body.
The future was a matter of keeping the past at bay.
Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
The future was sunset; the past something to leave behind. And if it didn't stay behind, well, you might have to stomp it out.
- Each future day increase of wealth shall bring,
- And o'er the past Oblivion stretch her wing.
Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning.
What's past is prologue.
As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our day.
When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions and so forth, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past.
You're always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.
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