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Past Quotes

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Past Quotes

“I don’t think we ever really live in the present; instead, we’re either just this side of the past or future, wavering anxiously between anticipation and recollection. That’s where I lived my life, always wanting, longing, wishing.”

Thinking Past Wish Sides Longing Anticipation Recollection Live In The Present Wavering

Book:Losing Julia

Source: Losing Julia

“It has been the resolution of mankind in all ages of the world. No people, no age, ever threw away the fruits of past wisdom, or the enjoyment of present blessings, for visionary schemes of ideal perfection. It is the knowledge of the past, the actual infliction of the present, that has produced all changes, all innovations, and all improvements - not (as is pretended) the chimerical anticipation of possible advantages, but the intolerable pressure of long-established, notorious, aggravated, and growing abuses.”

Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)

“In my photographic work I'm generally attracted to places that contain memories, history, atmospheres and stories. I'm interested in the places where people have lived, worked and played. I look for traces of the past, visual fingerprints, evidence of activities - they fire my imagination and connect into my own personal experiences. Using the analogy of the theater, I would say that I like to photograph the empty stage, before or after the performance, even in between acts. I love the atmosphere of anticipation, the feeling in the air that events have happened, or will happen soon.”

“The task of the mind is to produce future, as the poet Paul Valery once put it. A mind is fundamentally an anticipator, an expectation-generator. It mines the present for clues, which it refines with the help of the materials it has saved from the past, turning them into anticipations of the future. And then it acts, rationally, on the basis of those hard-won anticipations.”

Mind Hard Helping Past Produce Mines Poet Materials Expectations Tasks Bases Saved Anticipation Clue Generator

Author:Daniel Dennett

“A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.”

Thinking Persons Past Lying Wise Regret Source Anticipation Calamity Express Yourself No Regrets I Regret Have No Regrets Past Regrets

Author:Oliver Goldsmith

“The Past is dead, and has no resurrection; but the Future is endowed with such a life, that it lives to us even in anticipation. The Past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the Future is, in all things, our friend. In the Past is no hope; The Future is both hope and fruition. The Past is the text-book of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.”

Book Past Forever Wife Mankind All Things Tyrants Resurrection Anticipation Looking Back Incapable Foe No Hope Fruition

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)