Oh cease! Must hate and death return? Cease! Must men kill and die? Cease! Drain not to its dregs the urn of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past Oh might it die or rest at last!
He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging…. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth to turn it over as one turns over soil. For the matter itself is only a deposit a stratum which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth: the images severed from all earlier associations that stand like precious fragments or torsos in a collectors gallery in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.
PAST n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. [T]he Past is the Future of yesterday the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one the knowledge and the dream.
Many are always praising the bygone time for it is natural that the old should extol the days of their youth; the weak the time of their strength; the sick the season of their vigor; and the disappointed the spring-tide of their hopes.
Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies or can die; but is all still here and recognized or not lives and works through endless changes.
With memory set smarting like a reopened wound a mans past is not simply a dead history an outworn preparation of the present: it is a still quivering part of himself bringing shudders and bitter flavours and the tinglings of a merited shame.
Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened but of what men believe happened.
Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future Without fear and with a manly heart.
If you cant get rid of the skeleton in your closet youd best teach it to dance.
The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters economists and calculators has succeeded.
Study the past if you would divine the future.
Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.
Oh cease! Must hate and death return? Cease! Must men kill and die? Cease! Drain not to its dregs the urn of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past Oh might it die or rest at last!
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
Those who misremember the past are pleased to repeat it as proof.
To be able to look back on one?s past life with satisfaction is to live twice.
This only is denied to God: the power to undo the past.
There is a way to look at the past. Dont hide from it. It will not catch you if you dont repeat it.
The past should be a springboard not a hammock.
He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging…. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth to turn it over as one turns over soil. For the matter itself is only a deposit a stratum which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth: the images severed from all earlier associations that stand like precious fragments or torsos in a collectors gallery in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.
PAST n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. [T]he Past is the Future of yesterday the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one the knowledge and the dream.
Many are always praising the bygone time for it is natural that the old should extol the days of their youth; the weak the time of their strength; the sick the season of their vigor; and the disappointed the spring-tide of their hopes.
I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.
Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies or can die; but is all still here and recognized or not lives and works through endless changes.
To look back to antiquity is one thing to go back to it is another.
Actions of the last age are like almanacs of the last year.
With memory set smarting like a reopened wound a mans past is not simply a dead history an outworn preparation of the present: it is a still quivering part of himself bringing shudders and bitter flavours and the tinglings of a merited shame.
Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past.
Ones eyes are what one is ones mouth what one becomes.
The illusion that times that were are better than those that are has probably pervaded all ages.
The mill cannot grind with the water that is past.
Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened but of what men believe happened.
As the problems are new we must disenthrall ourselves from the past.
Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future Without fear and with a manly heart.
While I take inspiration from the past like most Americans I live for the future.
The past is but the past of a beginning.
We think in generalities but we live in details.