Quotes
Quotes about Past
Old age doth in sharp pains abound; We are belabored by the gout, Our blindness is a dark profound, Our deafness each one laughs about. Then reason's light with falling ray Doth but a trembling flicker cast. Honor to age, ye children pay! Alas! my fifty years are past!
In old age we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.
It spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in a small way. -Edith Wharton.
A relationship is like a rose, How long it lasts, no one knows; Love can erase an awful past, Love can be yours, you'll see at last; To feel that love, it makes you sigh, To have it leave, you'd rather die; You hope you've found that special rose, 'Cause you love and care for the one you chose.
Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition.
The choirs left the main tune and soared two octaves past heaven in a descant to rattle the bones and surge the heart.
Art need no longer be an account of past sensations. It can become the direct organization of more highly evolved sensations. It is a question of producing ourselves, not things that enslave us.
What visionary tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair!
Life a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of the future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.
Tell me, shepherds, have you seen My Flora pass this way? In shape and feature Beauty's queen, In pastoral array.
Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being. -Ken Burns.
The years of slavery are past, The Belgian rejoices once more; Courage restores to him at last The rights he held of yore. Strong and firm his grasp will be-- Keeping the ancient flag unfurled To fling its message on the watchful world: For king, for right, for liberty. [Fr., Apres des siecles d'esclavage, Le Belge sortant du tombeau, A reconquis par son courage, Son nom, ses droits et son drapeau, Et ta main souveraine et fiere, Peuple desormais indompte, Grava sur ta vieille banniere, Le Roi, la loi, la liberte.
That which prevents disagreeable flies from feeding on your repast, was once the proud tail of a splendid bird.
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast, But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.
Faintly as tolls the evening chime, Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time, Soon as the woods on shore dim, We'll sing at St. Ann's our parting hymn; Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast, The rapids are near and the daylight's past.
Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret room Piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning's dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books! At last, because the time was ripe, I chanced upon the poets.
For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.
Writers are the main landmarks of the past.
The more thou dam'st it up, the more it burns. The current that with gentle murmur glides, Thou know'st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage; But when his fair course is not hindered, He makes sweet music with th' enameled stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge, He overtaketh in his pilgrimage. And so by many winding nooks he strays With willing sport to the wild ocean. Then let me go and hinder not my course. I'll be as patient as a gentle stream And make a pastime of each weary step, Till the last step have brought me to my love; And there I'll rest, as after much turmoil A blessed soul doth in Elysium.
To control your cow, give it a bigger pasture. -Suzuki Roshi.
I don't think anybody yet has invented a pastime that's as much fun, or keeps you as young, as a good job.
Children have neither past nor future; and that which seldom happens to us, they rejoice in the present.
As for what the Church thinks and says, what influence does that have on the handling of American politics, the conduct of American education, the regulation of marriage and divorce, on sex and drink, on how industrial disputes are settled, on how we carry on business? As a plain matter of fact, religion in this country is generally regarded as a tolerated pastime for such people as happen to like to indulge in occasional godly exercisesâas a strictly private matter in an increasingly close-knit and socially acting societyâin other words, as something that does not count. I should like to see the Church recognize that it has been pushed into the realm of the non-essentials, and to persuade it to fight like fury for the right and the duty to bring every act of America and Americans before the bar of God's judgment. [Christian leaders] are making valiant claim to such a right and duty; but the great mass of Church members are content to regard the Church as a conglomerate of private culture clubs, nice for christenings, weddings and funerals. Most Church members readily agree with the unchurched majority that it is not the proper business of the Church to criticize America or Americans.
In the twentieth century, the secularists, still living off the spiritual capital of Christianity, often pretended to chide Christians for having invented the term "secularist," a term which, they said, was devoid of meaning. Their leaders knew very well, however, that secularism, like any other parasite, derives its sustenance from the object on which it feeds, and so they were rather pleased when milquetoast Christians timidly offered, as a definition of secularism, "living as though God did not exist." What Christians should have called it was, rather, "a contemptibly fraudulent way of living on the cheap, by reaping the maximum fruits of Christian effort, while contributing the minimum effort of your own." When secularists accused Christians of "living in the past," the Christians ought to have retaliated by pointing out that secularists were "living off the past." By the time they got around to doing so, however, the majority of secularists had become morally incapable of seeing the point.
Institutions can never conserve without betraying the movements from which they proceed. The institution is static, whereas its parent movement has been dynamic; it confines men within its limits, while the movement had liberated them from the bondage of institutions; it looks to the past, [although] the movement had pointed forward. Though in content the institution resembles the dynamic epoch whence it proceeded, in spirit it is like the [state] before the revolution. So the Christian church, after the early period, often seemed more closely related in attitude to the Jewish synagogue and the Roman state than to the age of Christ and his apostles; its creed was often more like a system of philosophy than like the living gospel.
