Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.

Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.

To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice.

To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the read more

You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live read more

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.

O God! Put back Thy universe and give me yesterday.

O God! Put back Thy universe and give me yesterday.

Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is read more

Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.

Listen to the Water-Mill:
Through the live-long day
How the clicking of its wheel
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Listen to the Water-Mill:
Through the live-long day
How the clicking of its wheel
Wears the hours away!
Languidly the Autumn wind
Stirs the forest leaves,
From the field the reapers sing
Binding up their sheaves:
And a proverb haunts my mind
As a spell is cast,
"The mill cannot grind
With the water that is past."

We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.

We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.