Quotes
Quotes about Past
Whose well-taught mind the present age surpast.
And taste
The melancholy joy of evils past:
For he who much has suffer'd, much will know.
And o'er the past Oblivion stretch her wing.
Note 61.Ampliat ætatis spatium sibi vir bonus; hoc est
Vivere bis vita posse priore frui
(The good man prolongs his life; to be able to enjoy one's past life is to live twice).--Martial, x. 237.
See Cowley, Quotation 21.
And hie him home, at evening's close,
To sweet repast and calm repose.
While Resignation gently slopes away,
And all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past.
You can never plan the future by the past.
His head,
Not yet by time completely silver'd o'er,
Bespoke him past the bounds of freakish youth,
But strong for service still, and unimpair'd.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.
We will not anticipate the past; so mind, young people,--our retrospection will be all to the future.
Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good.
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction.
He spake of love, such love as spirits feel
In worlds whose course is equable and pure;
No fears to beat away, no strife to heal,--
The past unsighed for, and the future sure.
Once, in the flight of ages past,
There lived a man.
Joys too exquisite to last,
And yet more exquisite when past.
Bliss in possession will not last;
Remembered joys are never past;
At once the fountain, stream, and sea,
They were, they are, they yet shall be.
Past are three summers since she first beheld
The ocean; all around the child await
Some exclamation of amazement here.
She coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased,
Is this the mighty ocean? is this all?
That wondrous soul Charoba once possest,--
Capacious, then, as earth or heaven could hold,
Soul discontented with capacity,--
Is gone (I fear) forever. Need I say
She was enchanted by the wicked spells
Of Gebir, whom with lust of power inflamed
The western winds have landed on our coast?
I since have watcht her in lone retreat,
Have heard her sigh and soften out the name.
When Time who steals our years away
Shall steal our pleasures too,
The mem'ry of the past will stay,
And half our joys renew.
Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near, and the daylight's past.
This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas,
The past, the future,--two eternities!
I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston and Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever.
The best of prophets of the future is the past.
The light of other days is faded,
And all their glories past.
Come to the sunset tree!
The day is past and gone;
The woodman's axe lies free,
And the reaper's work is done.
Thou, silent form, doth tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
