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Past Quotes

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Past Quotes

“Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices; whoever saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times?”

Age Past Saws Periods Prejudice Old Age Peculiar Present Time

Author:Michel de Montaigne

“I myself believe that there is in every painter's life a period of making absurdities. In my case I think that period is already long past.”

Thinking Believe Long Past Cases Progress Periods Painter Absurdity

Author:Vincent Van Gogh

“Every new generation believes its own period to be absolutely superior intellectually - greater than all past cultures yet equal among its modern cultures.”

Believe Past Culture Greater Generations Modern Periods Equal Superiors New Generation Modern Culture

Book:Healology

Source: Healology

“When I look over my past, I see that the stages in my life are like the phases of the moon. I've had periods where I was the waxing gibbous: fat with wealth and success. There have been other seasons when my happiness was like the waning crescent and I watched my joy fade away slowly, merging with the atmosphere around me as if it never existed. Then I felt as if I was left with nothing more than an illusion, but happiness returns in time and glows once more in corpulent fullness. It's time that makes the difference.”

“The apartments of the rich are cabinets of curiosities: a conglomeration of classical antiquity, gothic, renaissance; Louis XIII... Something from every century but our own, a predicament that has arisen in no other period... so that we seem to be subsisting on the ruins of the past, as if the end of the world were near.”

Ifs World Ends Seems Past Rich Century Periods Curiosity Ruins Apartment End Of The World Gothic Renaissance Cabinets Antiquity Predicaments

Author:Alfred de Musset

“To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn't know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.”

Ifs Knows Giving Long Book Past Asks Given Answers Written Periods Ask Me This Day Given Up

Author:V. S. Naipaul

“The historian is looked upon as objective when he measures the past by the popular opinions of his own time, as subjective when he does not take these opinions for models. That man is thought best fitted to depict a period of the past, who is not in the least affected by that period. But only he who has a share in building up the future can grasp what the past has been, and only when transformed into a work of art can history arouse or even sustain instincts.”

Men Doe Has Beens Art Past Opinion Share Building Periods Models Instinct Objectives Affected Works Of Art Historian Transformed Subjective Building Up Popular Opinion

Author:Georg Brandes

“Over the past few years, the Supreme Court was six times more likely to accept cases from an elite group of 66 lawyers than it was from more than 99 percent of those who petitioned the court. That's the finding of a recent Reuters special report called "The Echo Chamber." It illustrates how almost half the appeals accepted by the court over a nine-year period came from this cadre of elite lawyers--many of whom have personal connections to the nine justices.”

“Art of all periods teaches us that humanity changes, and that a period, once past, never returns.”

Art Past Humanity Teach Return Periods

Author:Philipp Otto Runge

“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

“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.”

“Ressentiment is always to some degree a determinant of the romantic type of mind. At least this is so when the romantic nostalgia for some past era (Hellas, the Middle Ages, etc.) is not primarily based on the values of that period, but on the wish to escape from the present. Then all praise of the “past” has the implied purpose of downgrading present-day reality.”

Mind Reality Age Past Purpose Values Wish Middle Type Periods Degrees Praise Nostalgia Eras Etc Middle Ages Present Day Implied Downgrading

Book:On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing: Selected Writings

Source: On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing: Selected Writings

“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

“There are two processes which we adopt consciously or unconsciously when we try to prophesy. We can seek a period in the past whose conditions resemble as closely as possible those of our day, and presume that the sequel to that period will, save for some minor alterations, be similar. Secondly, we can survey the general course of development in our immediate past, and endeavor to prolong it into the near future. The first is the method the historian; the second that of the scientist. Only the second is open to us now, and this only in a partial sphere.”

Trying Firsts Two Past Courses Process Conditions Development Periods Future Scientist Method Endeavor Historian Spheres Minors Surveys Sequels Alterations

Book:If I lived my life again

Source: If I lived my life again

“A period of high civilization is one in which thoughts fly freely from mind to mind, from one country to another-yes, from the past into the present.”

Mind Country Past Periods Civilization

Book:The migration of ideas: three lectures delivered on the North Foundation at Franklin and Marshall College on 18 and 19 March 1954

Source: The migration of ideas: three lectures delivered on the North Foundation at Franklin and Marshall College on 18 and 19 March 1954