Quotes Potpourri

Potpourri

Humility is a virtue, and it is a virtue innate in guests. Max Beerbohm

As brevity is the soul of wit, form, it seems to me, is the heart of humor and the salvation of comedy. James Thurber

When the bad imitate the good, there is no knowing what mischief is intended. Syrus

Just as dumb creatures are snared by food, human beings would not be caught unless they had a nibble of hope. Petronius

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.  Charles Brower

That character in conversation which commonly passes for agreeable is made up of civility and falsehood. Alexander Pope

Imitation is a necessity of nature; when young, we imitate others; when old, ourselves. Joseph Roux

Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted. William Hazlitt  

Man’s life is short; and therefore an honorable death is his immortality. Syrus

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, who never to himself has said, this is my own, my native land.  Sir Walter Scott

Isn't it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good. Denis Diderot

Hope is a risk that must be run.  George Bernanos

Our bodies can be mobilized by law and police and men with guns, if necessary; but where shall we find that which will make us believe in what we must do, so that we can fight through to victory. Pearl S. Buck  

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life. Emerson

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it: this is knowledge. Confucius

Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them. Frank Moore Colby

A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them. Charles Caleb Colton

Knowledge and timber shouldn’t be much used till they are seasoned. Oliver Wendell Holmes

Absolute frustration is a dangerous emotion to run a world with. Russell Baker

If all alms were given only from pity, all beggars would have starved long ago. Nietzsche

Black are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the sea of thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its dead. Charles Dickens

The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous and mutually beget each other. Charles Caleb Colton

The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests. Agnes Repplier  

Justice is impartiality. Only strangers are impartial. George Bernard Shaw

I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all. Emerson  

Not one of us can lie or pretend. We’re all fixed in good faith in a certain concept of ourselves. Luigi Pirandello

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger? Thomas Henry Huxley

A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation. Moliere

He that lives upon hope will die fasting. Benjamin Franklin

Woe to the man who tries to stretch the imagination of man. He shall be mocked, he shall be scourged by the blinkered guardians of morality. Peter Weiss

Fun is a good thing, but only when it spoils nothing better. Santayana

We play make believe, pretend to take ourselves and each other seriously, to love each other, hate each other; but then it isn’t true! It isn’t true, we don’t care at all! Ugo Betti  

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. Emerson

Man is not weak, knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength. Samuel Johnson

Human altruism which is not egoism, is sterile. Marcel Proust

In the mouths of many men soft words are like roses that soldiers put into the muzzles of their muskets on holidays. Longfellow

He that judges without informing himself to the utmost that he is capable, cannot acquit himself of judging amiss. John Locke

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom. Thomas Fuller

We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history. Emerson

Every man with an idea has at least two or three followers. Brooks Atkinson

Uncultivated minds are not full of wildflowers, like uncultivated fields. Villainous weeds grow in them and they are the haunt of toads. Logan Pearsall

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it. Dostoevsky

We are now again in an epoch of wars of religion, but a religion is now called an “ideology” Bertrand Russell

Most people affirm pleasure to be the good, but the finer sort of wits say it is knowledge. Plato

Say “Yes” to seedlings and a giant forest cleaves the sky. Say “Yes” to the universe and the planets become your neighbors. Say “yes” to dreams of love and freedom. It is the password to utopia. Brooks Atkinson  

 

Anybody who is any good is different from anybody else. Felix Frankfurter

He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open. Tagore

Humility is not renunciation of pride but the substitution of one pride for another. Eric Hoffer

One can know a man from his laugh, and if like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man. Dostoevsky

Hope is a great falsifier of truth. Baltasar Gracian

To say that an idea is fashionable is to say, I think, that it has been adulterated to a point where it is hardly an idea at all.  Murray Kempton

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one. Voltaire

Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all. Andre Gide

Life finds its wealth by the claims of the world, and its worth by the claims of love. Tagore

Men are admitted into heaven not because they have curbed and governed their passions, or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings. William Blake

The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature. William Hazlitt

It is equally offensive to speed a guest who would like to stay and to detain one who is anxious to leave. Homer

Pain is deeper than all thought; laughter is higher than all pain. Elbert Hubbard

Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others. La Rochefoucauld

It is sweet to think that wherever we rove we are sure to find something blissful and dear, and that, when we are far from the lips we love, we have but to make love to the lips we are near. Thomas Moore

The free mind must have one policeman, Irony.  Elbert Hubbard

Murderers, in general, are people who are consistent, people who are obsessed with one idea and nothing else. Ugo Betti

Meekness is an uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worthwhile. Ambrose Bierce

People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced. T. S. Eliot

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one. Henry Miller

  

Though all men are made of one metal, yet they be not cast all in one mold. John Lyly

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. Eric Hoffer

Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope. William Hazlitt

A superior man may be made to go to the well, but he cannot be made to go down into it. He may be imposed upon, but he cannot be fooled. Confucius

Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense. Mark Twain

Nature, in giving tears to man, confessed that he had a tender heart: this is our noblest quality. Juvenal

Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble. La Rochefoucauld

Whoever acquires knowledge and does not practice it resembles him who ploughs his land and leaves it unsown. Sadi

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess. Samuel Johnson

The short span of life forbids us to take on far-reaching hopes. Horace

There’s no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth. Jean Giraudoux  

That which we know is but little; that which we have a presentiment of is immense; it is in this direction that the poet outruns the learned man. Joseph Roux

Hope has as many lives as a cat or a king. Longfellow

Influence is neither good nor bad in an absolute manner, but only in relation to the one who experiences it. Andre Gide

General and abstract ideas are the source of the greatest errors of mankind. Rousseau

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door. Charles Lamb  

We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility. Tagore

Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realized joy could be. Nietzsche

To give reason for fancy were to weigh the fire, and measure the wind. John Lyly

Genuine victories, the sole conquests yielding no remorse, are those gained over ignorance. Napoleon  

We are mistaken in believing the mind and the judgment two separate things; judgment is only the extent of the mind’s illumination. La Rochefoucauld

The secret of living is to find a pivot, the pivot of a concept on which you can make your stand. Luigi Pirandello

There is much virtue in a window. It is to a human being as a frame is to a painting, as a proscenium to a play, as "form" to literature. It strongly defines its content. Max Beerbohm

An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult. Lord Chesterfield

Humility has its origin in an awareness of unworthiness, and sometimes too in a dazzled awareness of saintliness. Colette

We must laugh before we are happy from fear of dying without ever having laughed at all. La Bruyere

Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence, and if he knew this he would no longer be ignorant. Sadi

At first we hope too much, later on, not enough. Joseph Roux

Most people have seen worse things in private than they pretend to be shocked at in public. Edgar Watson Howe

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. F. Scott Fitzgerald

Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it. Leonardo Da Vinci

Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones. Denis Diderot

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing. Rousseau

A young man must let his ideas grow, and not be continually rooting them up to see how they are getting on. William McFee

Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them. Herman Hesse

When hospitality becomes an art, it loses its very soul. Max Beerbohm

A king is he who has laid fear aside and the base longings of an evil heart; whom ambition unrestrained and the fickle favor of the reckless mob move not. Seneca

Defeat is a fact and victory can be a fact. If the idea is good, it will survive defeat, it may even survive the victory. Stephen Vincent Benet

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears. Marcus Aurelius  

Imagination is that deceitful part in man, that mistress of error and falsity, the more deceptive that she is not always so; for she would be an infallible rule of truth, if she were an infallible rule of falsehood. Pascal

Seven days is the length of a guest's life.  Proverb

In all the ills which befall us, we look more at the intention than the effect. A tile which falls from the house may hurt more, but does not vex us so much as a stone thrown designedly by an ill-natured hand. Rousseau

The idealist is incorrigible; if he is thrown out of heaven, he makes himself a suitable ideal out of hell. Nietzsche  

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive. Nicolas Malebranche

Nothing is absolutely unjust. There is no real equity, no total grandeur, no pure vice, no absolute crime. Julien Offroy De La Mettrie  

Humility is often only feigned submission which people use to render others submissive. It is a subterfuge of pride which lowers itself in order to rise. La Rochefoucauld

Shall I tell you the opinion of a famous economist on jealousy? Jealousy is just the fact of being deprived. Nothing more. Henry Becque

The hater of property and of government takes care to have his warranty deed recorded; and the book written against fame and learning has the author’s name on the title-page. Emerson  

From ignorance our comfort flows; the only wretched are the wise. Matthew Prior

It’s unpleasant to be able to turn certain ideas over in your mind that nobody suspects you of having. Ugo Betti

In laughter all that is evil comes together, but is pronounced holy and absolved by its own bliss. Nietzsche

It is common to forget a man and slight him if his goodwill cannot help you. Plautus

One can always legislate against specific acts of human wickedness; but one can never legislate against the irrational itself. Morton Irving Seiden  

We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we put in place of reality. Daniel J. Boorstin

Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the subject is new. Pascal

There is no social evil, no form of injustice whether of the feudal or the capitalist order which has not been sanctified in some way or another by religious sentiment and thereby rendered more impervious to change. Reinhold Niebuhr  

A man who can be entertaining for a full day will be in his grave by nightfall. Edward Dahlberg

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer. Charles Caleb Colton

Our judgement about things varies according to the time left us to live; that we think is left us to live. Andre Gide

The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us  to be interested properly in any of them. G. K. Chesterton

We are in the world to laugh. In purgatory or in hell we shall no longer be able to do so. And in heaven it would not be proper. Jules Renard

We do not get good laws to restrain bad people. We get good people to restrain bad laws. G. K. Chesterton

Quotes about Employment

If the building of a bridge does not enrich the awareness of those who work on it, then that bridge ought not to be built.  Frantz Fanon

An “acceptable” level of unemployment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job. Unknown

To crush, to annihilate a man utterly, to inflict on him the most terrible of punishments so that the most ferocious murderer would shudder at it and dread it beforehand, one need only give him work of an absolutely, completely useless and irrational character. Dostoevsky  

Don’t condescend to unskilled labor. Try it for half a day first. Brooks Atkinson  

If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary qualifications, that field’s employment market is glutted. Marguerite Emmons

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. Emerson 

We seldom break our leg so long as life continues a toilsome upward climb. The danger comes when we begin to take things easily and choose the convenient paths. Nietzsche 

I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me; the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart. Jerome K. Jerome 

Constant labor of one uniform kind destroys the intensity and flow of a man’s animal spirits, which find recreation and delight in mere change of activity.  Karl Marx

Honest labor bears a lovely face. Thomas Dekker

Work is not the curse, but drudgery is. Henry Ward Beecher 

The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.  William Shakespeare

Most people spend most of their days doing what they do not want to do in order to earn the right, at times, to do what they may desire. John Mason Brown

Few things are of themselves impossible, and we lack the application to make them a success rather than the means. La. Rochefoucauld 

Employment is my right my destiny. James Baldwin  

A great many people who spend their time mourning over the brevity of life could make it seem longer if they did a little more work. Don Marquis  

The ant is knowing and wise; but he doesn’t know enough to take a vacation. Clarence Day 

Greater is he who enjoys the fruits of his labor than he who fears heaven. The Haggadah 

Every man who does not teach his son a trade, it is as though he teaches him to rob. The Haggadah 

A man’s work is rather the needful supplement to himself than the outcome of it. Max Beerbohm 

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor. Victor Hugo

He is idle that might be better employed. Thomas Fuller

Why, since we are always complaining of our ills, are we constantly employed in redoubling them? Voltaire

Whether our work is art or science or the daily work of society, it is only the form in which we explore our experience which is different. Jacob Bronowski 

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory. Pascal

He who does nothing renders himself incapable of doing anything; but while we are executing any work, we are preparing and qualifying ourselves to undertake another. William Hazlitt 

It is weariness to keep toiling at the same things so that one becomes ruled by them. Heraclitus 

If you direct your whole thought to work itself, none of the things which invade eyes or ears will reach the mind. Quintilian 

Where there is most labor there is not always most life. Havelock Ellis 

One of the saddest things is the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hour a day nor drink for eight hours nor make love for eight hours. William Faulkner 

He who considers his work beneath him will be above doing it well. Alexander Chase 

Let us be grateful to Adam our benefactor. He cut us out of the “blessing” of idleness and won for us the curse of labor. Mark Twain

No mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments. Samuel Johnson

Serious occupation is labor that has reference to some want. Hegel 

Love labor: for if thou dost not want it for food, thou may for physic. It is wholesome for thy body and good for thy mind. William Penn 

Most people work the greater part of their time for a mere living; and the little freedom which remains to them so troubles them that they use every means of getting rid of it.  Goethe 

No race can prosper until it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. Booker T. Washington 

What is work? And what is not work? Are questions that perplex the wisest of men. Unknown 

Every calling is great when greatly pursued. Olive Wendell Holmes 

Life has not taught me to expect nothing, but she has taught me not to expect success to be the inevitable result of my endeavors. She taught me to seek sustenance from the endeavor itself, but to leave the result to God. Alan Paton  

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Samuel Johnson 

Human service is the highest form of self-interest for the person who serves. Elbert Hubbard 

There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow. Samuel Johnson

Originality and the feeling of one’s own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle. Dostoevsky 

No one gains from fair employment law and legislation if there is no employment to be had. John F. Kennedy

He that will not work according to his faculty; let him perish according to his necessity: there is no law more just than that. Thomas Carlyle  

He that would have the fruit must climb the tree. Thomas Fuller 

To work is to pray. St. Benedict

Quotes about Poverty and the Poor

The possession of gold has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises have been checked and what fine souls have been blighted in the gloom of poverty the world will never know. Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances; it is often concealed in splendor, and often in extravagance. Samuel Johnson 

We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us. Lionel Trilling 

Poverty is very good in poems, but it is very bad in a house. It is very good in maxims and in sermons, but it is very bad in practical life. Henry Ward Beecher 

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man’s starving. O. Henry 

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune’s inequality exhibits under this sun. Thomas Carlyle 

Poverty with joy is not poverty at all. The poor man is not one who has little, but one who hankers after more. Seneca 

Unhappiness doesn't grow on the chest like leprosy. Poverty won't fall off the roof like a loose tile, no; poverty and unhappiness are man’s doing. Bertolt Brecht 

An empty stomach will not listen to anything. Proverb 

For the poor of this world, two major ways of expiring are available; either by the absolute indifference of your fellow men in peacetime, or by the homicidal passion of these same when war breaks out. Louis Ferdinand Celine 

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. W. E. B. Du Bois 

The strong demand, contend, prevail; the beggar is a fool. Georgia Douglas Johnson

Moral principle is a looser bond than pecuniary interest. Abraham Lincoln 

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it to be evidently a great evil. You never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful fortune. Samuel Johnson

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. Bertrand Russell 

Those who have not, and live in want, are a menace. Ridden with envy and fooled by demagogues. Euripides 

An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain the equality of all men. Ignazio Silone 

For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred. John W. Gardner 

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity. Jean Paul Sartre 

You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost happy. Jean Anouilh 

Three were the fates. Poverty that chains; gray drudgery that grinds the hope away, and gaping ignorance that starves the soul. Edwin Markham 

Hunger is the teacher of the arts and bestows invention. Persius 

There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher. Victor Hugo

It is extraordinary how many emotional storms one may weather in safety if one is ballasted with ever so little gold. William MC Fee 

In a change of government, the poor change nothing beyond the change of their master. Phaedrus 

God gives almonds to those who have no teeth. Proverb

It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man; the struggle between a proud man and an empty purse; the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end. Washington Irving 

A hungry man is not a free man. Adlai Stevenson 

It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No; if it were, men wouldn't be ashamed of it. It’s a blunder, though, and is punished as such. Jerome K. Jerome 

We know well only what we are deprived of. Francois Mauriac 

Some men make money not for the sake of living; but ache in the blindness of greed and live just for their fortunes sake. Juvenal 

Poverty is no disgrace, but no honor either. Proverb 

If you would know what the Lord God thinks of money, you have only to look at those to whom he gives it.  Maurice Baring 

To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death. Pearl S. Buck 

Beggars should be abolished entirely. Verily, it is annoying to give to them and it is annoying not to give to them. Nietzsche 

Short of genius, a rich man cannot imagine poverty. Charles Peguy 

Pearls around the neck; stones upon the heart. Proverb

Quotes about Antiquity

The Old Man of Stoer is 60 metres high and found in Sutherland, Scotland UK

Mad is the man who is forever gritting his teeth against that granite block, complete and changeless, of the past. Saint Exupery 

If we look backwards to antiquity, it should be as those that are winning a race. Charles Caleb Colton 

To excel the past we must not allow ourselves to lose contact with it; on the contrary, we must feel it under our feet because we raised ourselves upon it. Jose Ortega Y Gasset 

History is the witness of the times, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity. Cicero 

Books that have become classics; books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal, always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay. Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

Nothing is improbable until it moves into the past tense George Ade 

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time. Francis Bacon

The passing minute is every man’s equal possession, but what has once gone by is not ours. Marcus Aurelius

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past. Eric Hoffer

The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life. Samuel Butler

Antiquity cannot privilege an error, nor do novelties prejudice a truth. Thomas Fuller

Why doesn’t the past decently bury itself, instead of sitting waiting to be admired by the present? D. H. Lawrence

Antiquity is full of the praises of another antiquity still more remote. Voltaire  

Do we not all spend the greater part of our lives under the shadow of an event that has not yet come to pass? Maurice Maeterlinck  

I would not fear nor wish my fate, but boldly say each night; tomorrow let my sun his beams display, or in clouds hide them; I have lived today. Abraham Cowley 

What’s said is said and goes upon its way. Like it or not, repent as you may. Chaucer 

Respect the past in the full measure of its deserts, but do not make the mistake of confusing it with the present nor seek in it the ideals of the future. Jose Ingenieros 

The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too. We all try to lie out of that but life won't let us. Eugene O’Neill 

Antiquity was perhaps created to provide professors with their bread and butter. Edmund and Jules De Concourt 

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it. George Santayana 

Here at least the spirit of the ancient builders was at one with the spirit of the modern beholder. Standing before this abraded pile, the eye regarded its present usage, the mind dwelt upon its past history, with a satisfied sense of functional continuity throughout. … For once medievalism and modernism had a common standpoint. Thomas Hardy

To what a degree the same past can leave different marks; and especially admit of different interpretations. Andre Gide

The mill cannot grind with water that’s past. George Herbert 

We are not free to use today, or to promise tomorrow, because we are already mortgaged to yesterday. Emerson

The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face. Jim Bishop 

Happy the man, and happy he alone, he can call today his own; he who, secure within, can say, tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today. John Dryden 

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. Unknown

One can return to their place of birth, but one cannot go back to your youth. John Burroughs

Remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment. Marcus Aurelius 

What we look for does not come to pass; god finds a way for what none foresaw. Euripides  

With the past, as past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future as future. I live now, and will verify all past history in my own moments. Emerson 

All things are taken from us, and become portions and parcels of the dreadful past. Alfred Lord Tennyson 

People are what they are because they have come out of what was. Therefore they should bow down before what was, and take it and say it’s good; or should they? Carl Sandburg 

Remember that the future is neither ours nor wholly not ours, so that we may neither count on it as sure to come, nor abandon hope of it as certain not to be. Epicurus 

What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance? Djuna Barnes 

We live between two dense clouds; the forgetting of what was and the uncertainty of what will be. Anatole France 

Man is a history making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind him. W. H. Auden 

Had the Greeks held novelty in such disdain as we, what work of ancient date would now exist?  Horace 

Nostalgia: Praising what is lost, makes the remembrance dear. Shakespeare  

All our yesterdays are summarized in our now, and all our tomorrows are ours to shape. Hal Borland 

Every situation and every moment is of infinite worth, for it is the representative of a whole eternity. Goethe  

How the past perishes is how the future becomes. Alfred Lord Whitehead 

I believe the future is only the past again, entered through another gate. Sir Arthur Wing Pinero 

Obligations, hatreds, injuries; what did I expect my memories to be? I was forgetting remorse. Now I have a complete past. Jean Anouilh

The past not merely is not fugitive, it remains present. Marcel Proust

The present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come. Walter Savage Landor 

It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden, too, can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits. Marcus Aurelius 

The mind which renounces, once and for ever, a futile hope, has its compensation in ever-growing calm. George Gissing 

Necessity is the theme and the inventress, the eternal curb and law of nature. Leonardo DA Vinci