Milan Kundera Quotes

For me, the new pictures are what I'm thinking about every day. The past is the past, no? Every day is a new challenge.

I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now.

I haven't collected memorabilia. I am not a person who lives in the past.

Don't go to eighth grade...don't talk about something old...don't bring up old memories that have nothing to do with who we are now. THIS is all that matters! TODAY.

Rather than dwelling on the past, we should make the most of today, of the here and now, doing all we can to provide pleasant memories for the future…If you are still in the process of raising children be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled, will disappear all too soon, and that you will, to your surprise, miss them, profoundly.

I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.

It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, that the mind might perform its functions without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present.

The past is one evil less and one memory more.

Never let success hide its emptiness from you, achievement its nothingness, toil its desolation. And so...keep alive the incentive to push on further, that pain in the soul which drives us beyond ourselves...Do not look back. And do not dream about the future, either. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward - your destiny - are here and now.

Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again.

I avoid looking back. I prefer good memories to regrets.

All pasts are like poems; one can derive a thousand things, but not live in them.

Why doesn't the past decently bury itself, instead of sitting waiting to be admired by the present?

There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday.

Life is the future, not the past. The past can teach us, through experience, how to accomplish things in the future, comfort us with cherished memories, and provide the foundation of what has already been accomplished. But only the future holds life. To live in the past is to embrace what is dead. To live life to its fullest, each day must be created anew.

The past is not a package one can lay away.

There is nothing you can do about the past except keep it there.

You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing. What! Is it nothing to be happy? Nothing to skip, play and run around all day long? Never in his life will he be so busy again.

These are things you should learn. Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you; your future is a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don’t wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is. Now, these skeletons are made of memories, dreams, and voices. And they can trap you in the in-between, between touching and becoming. But they’re not necessarily evil, unless you let them be.

Even if you are loaded down with guilt about everything you did in the past, you still are experiencing the guilt in the moment.

It's OK to quote from your past. But I'm more interested in quoting from my present and pointing towards the future.

We learn in the past, but we are not the result of that. We suffered in the past, loved in the past, cried and laughed in the past, but that's of no use to the present. The present has its challenges, its good and bad side. We can neither blame nor be grateful to the past for what is happening now. Each new experience of love has nothing whatsoever to do with past experiences. It's always new.

Since there my past life lies, why alter it?

The future’s too bright to dwell on the past. Life moves fast, run faster.

Don't think of what's past!" said she. "I am not going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who knows what tomorrow has in store?