49 Quotes About Overcoming the Past

We are always told it is better to look forward and not back. Our past can sometimes leave us feeling emotionally scarred. These quotes about overcoming the past will bring us the encouragement we need to succeed.

“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.”

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”

“I demolish my bridges behind me…then there is no choice but to move forward.”

“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.”

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”

“If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world.”

“It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.”

“It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.”

“It’s being here now that’s important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now.”

“Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.”

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

“My past has not defined me, destroyed me, deterred me, or defeated me; it has only strengthened me.”

“My past is everything I failed to be.”

“My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.”

“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”

“Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over.”

“People are all over the world telling their one dramatic story and how their life has turned into getting over this one event. Now their lives are more about the past than their future.”

“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.”

“Sooner or later we’ve all got to let go of our past.”

“Study the past if you would define the future.”

“Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging up your back and runing its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do-the only thing-is run.”

“The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.”

“The past beats inside me like a second heart.”

“The past can’t hurt you anymore, not unless you let it.”

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

“The past is a ghost, the future a dream and all we ever have is now.”

“The past is always tense, the future perfect.”

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

“The past is never where you think you left it.”

“The past was always there, lived inside of you, and it helped to make you who you were. But it had to be placed in perspective. The past could not dominate the future.”

“The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.”

“There are things that we never want to let go of, people we never want to leave behind. But keep in mind that letting go isn’t the end of the world, it’s the beginning of a new life.”

“There is no point in using the word ‘impossible’ to describe something that has clearly happened.”

“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.”

“To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit.”

“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”

“We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.”

“We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.”

“We need to learn to let go as easily as we grasp and we will find our hands full and our minds empty.”

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need.”

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”

“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”

“You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.”

“You’re just another story I can’t tell anymore.”

“Your past does not equal your future.”

“Your past is always your past. Even if you forget it, it remembers you.”

Getting over the past will sometimes leave behind the biggest things we regret and let us focus on the good we can make in the future.