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I have small patience with the antiquarian habit which magnifies the past and belittles the present. It is a vicious business to look backward unless the feet are set steadfastly on a forward road. Change is inevitable, at once a penalty and a privilege.—JOHN BUCHAN, Memory Hold-the-Door
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The "good old times"—all times when old are good.—BYRON, The Age of Bronze
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I reject the monstrous theory that while a man may redeem the past a woman never can.—HALL CAINE, The Eternal City
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Not heaven itself upon the past has power;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.—DRYDEN, Imitation of Horace
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The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages.—HORACE GREELEY, The American Conflict
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What is to come we know not. But we know
That what has been was good.—W. E. HENLEY, What Is To Come
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I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days,
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.—CHARLES LAMB, Old Familiar Faces
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Things bygone are the only things that last:
The present is mere grass, quick-mown away;
The past is stone, and stands for ever fast.—E. LEE-HAMILTON, Roman Baths
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Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.—LONGFELLOW, Hyperion
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From the days of the first grandfather, everybody has remembered a golden age behind him!—LOWELL, Carlyle
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Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to make a morose or desponding view of the present.—MACAULAY, History of England
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The mill cannot grind with water that's past.—Proverb
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I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.—CARL SANDBURG, Prairie
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Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.—SANTAYANA
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There was—and O! how many sorrows crowd
Into these two brief words!—SCOTT, The Lord of the Isles
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Still linger, in our northern clime,
Some remnants of the good old time.—SCOTT, Marmion
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True is it that we have seen better days.—SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It
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Let us not burden our remembrances
With a heaviness that's gone.—SHAKESPEARE, The Tempest
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Through the centuries the people have dreamed of a Golden Age and longed for its return, unconscious that they dreamed of a day that had never been.—DR. GUY E. SHIPLER
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The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memoried glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past.—MARY WEBB, Precious Bane
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The past and the present are in deadly grapple and the peoples of the world are being done to death between them.—WOODROW WILSON
