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