The Past (n.) is still essentially undiscovered and there is no way of telling what may yet become part of history, for with every great man a thousand secrets of the past crawl out of their hiding places into his sunshine.
The Past (n.) enters man through the password 'it was', which lets in conflict, suffering and satiety to remind him that his existence is an imperfect tense that can never become a perfect one.
The Past (n.) must be forgotten at a certain boundary, or it becomes the gravedigger of the present.
The Past (n.) can be interpreted only out of the fullest exertion of the present's vigour: like to like — otherwise you draw the past down to you.
The Past (n.) always speaks as an oracle: only if you are an architect of the future and know the present will you understand it; only he who constructs the future has a right to judge the past.
The Past (n.) is a mark of debility when a people's spiritual struggles chiefly concern it, leaving that people exposed to every rampant fever, the political one for instance.
The Past (n.) must be tended even more than posterity by whoever wants to outlive his death — which is why tyrants of every kind do violence to history, making it a step-ladder to themselves.
The Past (n.) is perhaps still essentially undiscovered: every great human being exerts a retroactive force, and a thousand secrets crawl out into his sunshine.
Past (n.) is the will's gnashing of teeth and loneliest misery: the stone it cannot roll aside, for the will cannot will backward.
The Past (n.) is abandoned: every generation reinterprets it as the bridge to itself — and the rabble's memory stops at its grandfather.