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Past Quotes

“Our faith in democracy, personal freedoms and human 'rights', and the other comforting prescriptions of the humanist liberal credo stem from the supremacy of maritime over territorial power. Pragmatists may deplore this as crude determinism, as another vain attempt to construct a general theory of history. They should reflect on the sort of political philosophy and structures we might now adhere to had the Habsburgs, Bourbons, Bonaparte, Hitler, Stalin or his heirs prevailed in the titanic world struggles of the past four centuries.”

Source: Maritime Supremacy & the Opening of the Western Mind: Naval Campaigns that Shaped the Modern World

“But before Derby go, would they mind telling the rest of the Premier League - the league which it has debased with its pathetically-inadequate presence for the past 12 months - where the money has gone? You know, the £30m or so in prize money that every team, even the one at the bottom of the table from August to May, automatically receives by being in the Premier League... So what happened to that money? Or put another way, why was such a meaningless fraction of it spent on recruiting new players? It's one thing not to compete; it's quite another not to even attempt to do so.”

“If the common man in the past had a grave respect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes had some of his own.”

Ifs Men May Has Beens Sometimes Wisdom Past Politics Common Economy Property Graves Liberalism Common Man

Book:The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton

Source: The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton

“Whatever may be God's future, we cannot forget His past.”

May Past Forget Atheism Positive Atheism

Author:William Hurrell Mallock

“In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgement and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility, that he may grant to us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that he may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger.”

Source: The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939

“We may never know why Joe Ellis fabricated a heroic past. But we know that the life he embellished has deeply diminished the life he'd earned.”

Knows May Past Heroic

Author:Ellen Goodman

“You walk past people in streets, or they serve you in shops, and you know nothing about the horrors they may be living with.”

People Knows May Past Walks Streets Horror Shops

Author:Paddy Considine

“Women hope that the dead love may revive; but men know that of all dead things none are so past recall as a dead passion.”

Knows Men Love May Past Passion Recalls Revive

Book:Wisdom, Wit and Pathos of Ouida

Source: Wisdom, Wit and Pathos of Ouida

“Decades have a delusive edge to them. They are not, of course, really periods at all, except as any other ten years may be. But we, looking at them, are caught by the different name each bears, and give them different attributes, and tie labels on them, as if they were flowers in a border.”

Ifs Giving Years May Different Past Time Courses Names Flower Bears Periods Ten Edges Caught Decades Labels Borders Ties Attributes Different Names

Book:Told by an Idiot

Source: Told by an Idiot

“If a friend is the one who summons us to our best, then is not Jesus Christ our best friend, and should we not think of the Communion as one of His chief appeals to us to be our best? The Lord's Supper looks not back to our past with a critical eye, but to our future, with a hopeful one. The Master appeals from what we have been to what we may be. He bids us come, not because we are better than we have been, but because He wants us to be. To stay away because our hearts are cold is to refuse to go to the fire till we are warm.”

Source: Thoughts for Every-day Living from the Spoken and Written Words of Maltbie Davenport Babcock

“Men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several centuries. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.”

Men May Past Forever Century Intellectual Every Man Features Gaps Originality Parliament Ancestry Descendants

Author:James Russell Lowell

“The first problem for all of us, men and woman, is not to learn, but to unlearn. We are filled with the popular wisdom of several centuries just past, and we are terrified to give it up. Patriotism means obedience, age means wisdom, woman means submission, black means inferior: these are preconceptions imbedded so deeply in our thinking that we honestly may not know that they are there.”

Thinking Knows Men Giving Firsts May Mean Problem Age Past Black Change Learning Century Filled Honestly Obedience Bigotry Inferiors Terrified Submission Preconceptions Unlearn

Author:Gloria Steinem

“Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and far from my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Ionia.”

Thinking Men May Littles Has Beens Philosophy Past Force Grows Virtue My Friends Gains Dignity Bravery Senses Ruins Association Indifferent Marathon Piety Envied Frigid

Author:Samuel Johnson

“Without oblivion, there is no remembrance possible. When both oblivion and memory are wise, when the general soul of man is clear, melodious, true, there may come a modern Iliad as memorial of the Past.”

Men May Soul Past Memories Clear Wise Modern Remembrance Oblivion Memorial Iliad

Book:Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: With Elucidations

Source: Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: With Elucidations

“And we need to share our story. Not with everyone but with someone. There is someone who is like you were. And he or she needs to know what God can do. Your honest portrayal of your past may be the courage for another's future.”

Knows Needs May God Stories Past Can Do Courage Share Honest Honesty Like You Future Our Past Your Past Portrayal

Book:The Lucado Inspirational Reader: Hope and Encouragement for Your Everyday Life

Source: The Lucado Inspirational Reader: Hope and Encouragement for Your Everyday Life

“Whatever advantages may have arisen, in the past, out of the existence of a specially favored and highly privileged aristocracy, it is clear to me that today no argument can stand that supports unequal opportunity or any intrinsic disqualification for sharing in the whole of life.”

May Whole Today Past Opportunity Existence Support Clear Advantage Argument Equality Privileged Aristocracy Equal Opportunity Disqualification

Book:Blkberry Winter

Source: Blkberry Winter

“But there is, I have learned, no permanent escape from the past. It may be an unrecognized law of our nature that we should be drawn back, inevitably, to the place where we have suffered most.”

Should May Past Law Permanent I Have Learned

Author:Ellen Glasgow

“Laura Alicia Deverell was born on May 10th, 1862, at precisely a quarter past one o'clock on a Thursday morning. Those interested in that pseudo-science astrology or astromancy may trace her life and character, if they wish, among the stars, where no doubt it is all written.”

Ifs May Book Character Past Wish Stars Born Morning Doubt Written Clock No Doubt Quarters Astrology Pseudo Thursday Laura

Author:Susan Ertz

“The past is our treasure. Its works, whether we know them or not, flourish in our lives with whatever strength they had. From it we draw provision for our journey, the collected wisdom whose harvests are all ours to reap and carry with us, though we may never live again in the fields that grew them.”

Knows May Past History Our Lives Journey Fields Grew Draws Treasure Harvest Provision Reap

Book:The Lycian Shore

Source: The Lycian Shore

“God must have been engaged from the beginning, and must now be engaged in progressive development, and infinite as God is, he must have been less powerful in the past than he is today.... We may be certain that, through self-effort, the inherent and innate powers of God have been developed to a God-like degree. Thus he has become God.”

May Has Beens Self Today Past Certain Powerful Effort Development Degrees Infinite Engaged Progressive Inherent Innate Power Of God

Author:John Andreas Widtsoe

“The moral government of God is a movement in a line onwards towards some grand consummation, in which the principles, indeed, are ever the same, but the developments are always new - in which, therefore, no experience of the past can indicate with certainty what new openings of truth, what hew manifestations of goodness, what new phases of the moral heaven may appear.”

May God Government Past Heaven Lines Moral Principles Movement Development Goodness Opening Certainty Manifestation Phases

Author:Mark Hopkins

“I endeavor to drink deep of philosophy, and to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy when I cannot be glad, content with what cannot be mended, and patient where there is no redress. The mighty can do no more, and the wise seldom do as much. ... I am resolved to make the best of all circumstances around me, that this short life may not be half lost in pains ... Between the periods of birth and burial, I would fain insert a little happiness, a little pleasure, a little peace: to-day is ours, yesterday is past, and to-morrow may never come.”

“For the innocent, the past may hold a reward. But for the treacherous, it's only a matter of time before the past delivers what they truly deserve.”

May Matter Past Deserve Rewards Karma Innocent Treacherous Matter Of Time

Author:Kevin McCarty

“To annihilate indigenous populations eventually paves the way to our own annihilation. They are the only people who practice sustainable living. We think they are relics of the past, but they may be the gatekeepers to our future.”

People Thinking Way May Past Practice Population Our Future Indigenous Annihilation Relics Sustainable Living Gatekeepers

Author:Arundhati Roy

“The past ... is a dim avenue down which we may walk and find the diverging paths of terror and beauty and passion.”

May Past Passion Walks Path Terror Avenues

Book:Prologue to Love

Source: Prologue to Love

“It is one of the strange facts of experience that when we try to think about the future, our thoughts jump backwards. It may well be that nature has some fundamental metaphysical law by which opening up what we call the future also opens up the past in equal degree.”

Thinking Trying Wells May Facts Past Law Strange Equal Degrees Fundamentals Opening Our Thoughts Backwards Metaphysical Opening Up

Book:Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking

Source: Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking

“From youth to middle, and often to past middle, age, most men are apt to be too closely engaged in the struggle of life to pay due attention to the strength of the body. They may take daily what they consider a sufficient amount of exercise; but the exercise is not calculated to keep the various limbs and muscles, still less the internal organs, in proper working order. Amid the ordinary concerns of life the man may appear strong, even stalwart. But when occasion arises for some special muscular exercise, or taxing the action of some organ, he finds out his weakness.”

“We are perhaps too near the age of transition to see clearly the interplay of all that made for progress. Each of us has had his own peculiar training, his own personal contact with the mighty ones of the immediate past; and this forms as it were a telescopic tube determining limits to our field of vision. No doubt we may range the whole horizon; but after all we look from our own point of vantage.”

Looks May Made Whole Age Past Form Vision Doubt Progress Fields Limits Training Contact Range No Doubt Horizon Transition Peculiar Tubes

Author:Cargill Gilston Knott

“We may scavenge the dross of the nation, we may shudder past bloody sod, But we thrill to the new revelation that we are parts of God.”

May God Past Nations Revelations Bloody Thrill Dross Sod

Author:Robert Haven Schauffler

“There may never be a baby book that offers the conclusive answer to every question, but it's possible to extract some wisdom from the suffering of past generations of parents. Does the book you're reading contradict itself repeatedly, require you to override all your parental instincts, or send you into a panic over your own inadequacy? If so, burn it.”

Ifs May Doe Book Past Suffering Reading Parent Answers Generations Baby Offers Instinct Over You Panic Parental Inadequacy Past Generations

Author:Libby Copeland

“This is a world that is much more uncertain than the past. In the past we were certain, we were certain it was us versus the Russians in the past. We were certain, and therefore we had huge nuclear arsenals aimed at each other to keep the peace. That's what we were certain of... You see, even though it's an uncertain world, we're certain of some things. We're certain that even though the "evil empire" may have passed, evil still remains.”

World May Stills Humor Past Political Certain Evil Huge Remains Nuclear Empires Uncertain Versus Arsenal Political Humor

Author:George W. Bush

“The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of national rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of substantial interest: the knowledge of the permanent benefits which may be obtained by a moderate use of conquest, and a just apprehension lest the desolation which we inflict on the enemy's country may be retaliated on our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown in the pastoral state of nations.”

Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“Aestheticism and radicalism must lead us to jettison reason, and to replace it by a desperate hope for political miracles. This irrational attitude which springs from intoxication with dreams of a beautiful world is what I call Romanticism. It may seek its heavenly city in the past or in the future; it may preach 'back to nature' or 'forward to a world of love and beauty'; but its appeal is always to our emotions rather than to reason. Even with the best intentions of making heaven on earth it only succeeds in making it a hell - that hell which man alone prepares for his fellow-men.”

Source: The Open Society and Its Enemies

“The world may disagree with the Church, but the world knows very definitely with what it is disagreeing. In the future as in the past, the Church will be intolerant about the sanctity of marriage, for what God has joined together no man shall put asunder; she will be intolerant about her creed, and be ready to die for it, for she fears not those who kill the body, but rather those who have the power to cast body and soul into hell.”

Knows Men World May Soul Body Together Past Dies Church Hell Ready Casts Disagree Creeds Fear Not Sanctity Ready To Die Sanctity Of Marriage

Author:Fulton J. Sheen

“We strain to listen to the ghosts and echoes of our inexpressibly wise past, and we have an obligation to maintain these places, to provide these sanctuaries, so that people may be in the presence of forces larger than those of the moment.”

People May Moments Past Force Wise Ghost Obligation Echoes Strain Sanctuary

Author:Ken Burns

“Recollections of the past and visions of the present come to bear me company; the meanest man to whom I have ever given alms appears, to add his mite of peace and comfort to my stock; and whenever the fire within me shall grow cold, to light my path upon this earth no more, I pray that it may be at such an hour as this, and when I love the world as well as I do now.”

Source: CHARLES DICKENS – The Complete Short Stories: 190+ Christmas Tales, Social Sketches, Tales for Children & Other Stories (Illustrated): A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man, Sketches by Boz, Mudfog Papers, Reprinted Pieces, Pearl-Fishing, Christmas Stories, Child's Dream of a Star, Holiday Romance…

“There are also flat periods in life which may well be the periods during which-before new lessons come- the past lessons of life are allowed to seep, quietly and deeply, into the marrow of the soul. These outwardly flat periods, when enduring well may not seem very purposeful,, are probably the times when needed attitudinal alignments are quietly occurring.”

Wells May Soul Seems Past Needed Periods Lessons Endure Flats Life Lesson Alignment Marrow

Author:Neal A. Maxwell

“Calms appear, when Storms are past; Love will have his Hour at last: Nature is my kindly Care; Mars destroys, and I repair; Take me, take me, while you may, Venus comes not ev'ry Day.”

Love May Care Lasts Past Hours Calm Storm Take Me Mars Venus Past Love

Book:The Poetical Works of John Dryden

Source: The Poetical Works of John Dryden

“To anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, seems to float there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as a poetic approach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads.”

Ifs May Seems Past Victory Fame Approach Nostalgia Poetic Solitary Forgiven Floats Not Alone Monument Nelson Hull Ironclads Portsmouth

Book:Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories

Source: Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories

“Studying the past may suggest new ways of going wrong.”

Way May Past Study New Ways

Author:Mason Cooley