Past Quotes - Page 36

• Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash--for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last. Custom, therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Fashion, Party, Law

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.232

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is generally said, "Past labors are pleasant," Euripides says, for you all know the Greek verse, "The recollection of past labors is pleasant."
  [Lat., Vulgo enim dicitur, Jucundi acti labores: nec male Euripides: concludam, si potero, Latine: Graecum enim hunc versum nostis omnes: Suavis laborum est proeteritorum memoria.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Greek, Males, Said

  8 Copy quote

• Time is a stream which glides smoothly on and is past before we know.

  Ovid

  Streams, Knows

  6 Copy quote

• Be satisfied, and pleased with what thou art, Act cheerfully and well thou allotted part; Enjoy the present hour, be thankful for the past, And neither fear, nor wish, the approaches of the last.

  Martial

  Art, Being Thankful, Wish

  4 Copy quote

• Love is friendship that has caught fire. ... Love is content with the present, it hopes for the future, and it doesn't brood over the past. It's the day-in and day-out chronicle of irritations, problems, compromises, small disappointments, big victories and working toward common goals. If you have love in your life it can make up for a great many things you lack. If you don't have it, no matter what else there is, it's not enough.

  Ann Landers

  Disappointment, Love Is, Fire

  Ann Landers (1996). “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee!: Advice, Wisdom, and Uncommon Good Sense”, Random House Large Print Publishing

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is for us to discharge the high duties that devolve on us, and carry our race onward. To be no better, no wiser, no greater than the past is to be little and foolish and bad; it is to misapply noble means, to sacrifice glorious opportunities for the performance of sublime deeds, to become cumberers of the ground.

  William Lloyd Garrison

  Mean, Sacrifice, Opportunity

  William Lloyd Garrison (1852). “Selections from the writings and speeches of William Lloyd Garrison: With an appendix ...”, p.259

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Next to the pastoral came the agricultural life. When you add to that the manufacturing phase of development, society begins to fill out, and needs but wings to fly, and commerce is its wings.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Wings, Development, Phases

  4 Copy quote

• Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dry Bones, Generations, Masquerade

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.32, Penguin

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Children have neither past nor future; and that which seldom happens to us, they rejoice in the present.
  [Fr., Les enfants n'ont ni passe ni avenir; et, ce qui ne nous arrive guere, ils jouissent du present.]

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Children, Childhood, Rejoice

  "Les Caractères", XII, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 97-106,

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To forget is the great secret of strong creative natures; to forget is the way nature herself who knows no past and who at every hour begins the mysteries of her untiring labors afresh.

  Honore de Balzac

  Strong, Creative, Secret

  8 Copy quote

• Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Sorrow, Young

  17 Copy quote

• Many of us marvel at the icy insensitivity with which women snuff out their armours. But if they did not blot out the past in this manner, life for them would lose all dignity and they could never resist the fatal familiarities to which they once submitted.

  Honore de Balzac

  Icy, Snuff, Lovers

  4 Copy quote

• Love is the only passion which suffers neither past nor future.

  Honore de Balzac

  Love, Passion, Suffering

  5 Copy quote

• Decades have a delusive edge to them. They are not, of course, really periods at all, except as any other ten years may be. But we, looking at them, are caught by the different name each bears, and give them different attributes, and tie labels on them, as if they were flowers in a border.

  Rose Macaulay

  Time, Flower, Names

  Rose Macaulay (2011). “Told by an Idiot”, p.66, A&C Black

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Filing is concerned with the past; anything you actually need to see again has to do with the future.

  Katharine Whitehorn

  Order, Office, Needs

  7 Copy quote

• If a friend is the one who summons us to our best, then is not Jesus Christ our best friend, and should we not think of the Communion as one of His chief appeals to us to be our best? The Lord's Supper looks not back to our past with a critical eye, but to our future, with a hopeful one. The Master appeals from what we have been to what we may be. He bids us come, not because we are better than we have been, but because He wants us to be. To stay away because our hearts are cold is to refuse to go to the fire till we are warm.

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock

  Jesus, Eye, Heart

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1901). “Thoughts for Every-day Living from the Spoken and Written Words of Maltbie Davenport Babcock”

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise. There is one signal instance on record where this kind of prejudice was overcome by a miracle; but the age of miracles is past, while that of prejudice remains.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Miracle, Age

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.63

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Reform is a good replete with paradox; it is a cathartic which our political quacks, like our medical, recommend to others, but will not take themselves; it is admired by all who cannot effect it, and abused by all who can; it is thought pregnant with danger, for all time that is present, but would have been extremely profitable for that which is past, and will be highly salutary for that which is to come.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Political, Reform, Medical

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.76

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For the past several generations we've forgotten what the psychologists call our archaic understanding, a willingness to know things in their deepest, most mythic sense. We're all born with archaic understanding, and I'd guess that the loss of it goes directly along with the loss of ourselves as creators.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Loss, Understanding, Generations

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.75, Convergent Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• We need the rock of the past under our feet in order to spring forward into the future.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Spring, Rocks, Order

  5 Copy quote

• Every unfulfilled aspiration of humanity in the past; all partial representation of perfect character; all sacrifices, nay, even those of idolatry, point to the fulfillment of what want, the answer to every longing--the type of perfect humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Jesus, Character, Sacrifice

  Frederick William Robertson (1863). “Sermons Preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton”, p.350, Boston : Fields, Osgood

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Enjoy the present hour, be mindful of the past; And neither fear nor wish the Approaches of the last. Learn of the skillful: He that teaches himself, hath a fool for his master.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Wish, Lasts, Fool

  Benjamin Franklin (2004). “Poor Richard's Almanack”, p.86, Barnes & Noble Publishing

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• O thou, whose days are yet all spring,
  Faith, blighted once, is past retrieving;
  Experience is a dumb, dead thing;
  The victory's in believing.

  James Russell Lowell

  Spring, Believe, Dumb

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.98

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The true historical genius, to our thinking, is that which can see the nobler meaning of events that are near him, as the true poet is he who detects the divine in the casual; and we somewhat suspect the depth of his insight into the past who cannot recognize the godlike of to-day under that disguise in which it always visits us.

  James Russell Lowell

  Thinking, Historical, Depth

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “My Study Windows”, p.109

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several centuries. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.

  James Russell Lowell

  Men, Forever, Intellectual

  "The poetical works of John Keats. With a memoir, by James Russell Lowell" by John Keats, James Russell Lowell, New York: J. Miller, 1871.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source