Past

“ But the past, if we really mean to grasp it, if we want to see it close by as something that is and not merely as an abstraction, the past itself, becoming the present, made into that actuality which we call living memory, is history,—history constructed by us, meditated by us, re-created by us, in accordance with our abilities;—and with our powers of evocation we awaken the past from its slumber and breathe into it the life of the spiritual interests, of the ideas, of the sentiments that are, after all, the living substance in which the past really survives, in which it is real. ”

“ How profoundly mysterious, as yet, to ourselves, is our own individual history! If we attempt to gather up the past, and to trace the whole way along which we have journeyed, with the innumerable windings of the path, and all the dark valleys through which it has led, the rugged places it has passed over, or the many lofty hills up which it has ascended,—how endless, how perplexing does it appear! ”

“ And yet is the past nothing, even our past, but as you, quickened by its examples, instructed by its experiences, warned by its voices, assisted by its accumulated instrumentality, shall reproduce it in the life of to-day. Its once busy existence, various sensations, fiery trials, dear-bought triumphs; its dynasty of heroes, all its pulses of joy and anguish, and hope and fear, and love and praise, are with the years beyond the flood. "The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures." ”

“ The past—the infinite greatness of the past!
For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?
(As a projectile formed, impell'd, passing a certain line, still keeps on,
So the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by the past.) ”

“ There were stories they could tell, stories of generations long turned to dust, stories of the past and how, from the past, the present came, child of history, buffetted by forces it only half-understood, the helpless, passionate, living present, the moment for which, whether we admit it or not, we all live, ephemeral, hardly palpable, thrilling and then gone, dead, history, the navel for tomorrow which is today.... ”

“ Truly has it been said that the past is at work in the present, its powers reaching down through the ages, to all the race, largely molding every human life, touching and influencing every individual’s thought and will, and, more than any other force, coloring history. ”

“ The future is like a dead wall or a thick mist hiding all objects from our view: the past is alive and stirring with objects, bright or solemn, and of unfading interest. What is it in fact that we recur to oftenest? What subjects do we think or talk of? Not the ignorant future, but the well-stored past. ”

“ The spirit of meditation and retrospection seems to hover over those solemn effigies resting in their eternal sleep, guarding in inimitable and awful silence secrets of the historic past that can never be solved. ”

“ The faint and shadowy elements of past emotions, as mingling in any present feeling, it may not be easy to distinguish; but our remembrances of things without are clear and definite, and are easily recognized by us as images of the past. ”

“ But may we not go back ages and ages, and yet find Mother Earth preserving for us the story of the past? was she not busy in making the moulds, and taking off the delicate impressions of a chain of life that was not destined to reach to the period of man’s appearance on this globe? ”

“ The more we read the history of past ages, the more we observe the signs of our own times, the more do we feel our hearts filled and swelled up by a good hope for the future destinies of the human race. ”

“ When considering the past one is inclined to ask the question: “Does the history of mankind represent an unbroken line of progress, or, on the contrary, does it reflect a series of alternating periods of development and decay?” ”

“ The past gives you some idea about how other people did things, and gives you a clue of what to do in the future. The present is where we are now. We all make our own futures, which quickly, too quickly, become our pasts. ”

“ The searching, questing spirit that, age by age, lifted from the lower past toward the light of further knowledge, larger scope—and the past that, age by age, hurled its bolts and let its arrows fly and rang its iron bells against that spirit.... ”

“ Four ways there are of telling a curious world that endless story of the past which it is never tired of hearing. History, memoir, biography, and the diary run back like four smooth roads, connecting our century, our land, our life, with other centuries and lands and lives that have all served in turn to make us what we are. ”

“ But what is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past. ”

“ "what necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer—the Future so much brighter?" ”

“ Personally I find the past to be located on my left and the future on my right hand, but others inform me that the habit of mind, places the past behind and the future in front of them, while others again have the past beneath their feet and the future over their heads. ”

“ One knew that she worshipped the past, and that the instinctive wisdom the past can alone bestow had descended upon her—that wisdom to which we give the clumsy name of aristocracy. High born she might not be. ”

“ You have treasured up all that time has rendered worthless—the principles, feelings, manners, modes of being and acting, which another generation has flung aside—and you are a symbol of the past. And I, and these around me—we represent a new race of men—living no longer in the past, scarcely in the present—but projecting our lives forward into the future. ”

“ Not to the present is our hour confined,
The great and shadowy future is assigned
To be the glorious empire of the mind.
The past was once the future, and it wrought
In the high presence of on-looking thought;
All that we have, was by its efforts brought.
To-day creates to-morrow, and the tree
Of good or ill grows in past hours, what we
Make for the future—certain is to be. ”

“ Already the past life seemed a thing interesting but aloof from reality, like the fantastic exploits of a hero of fiction, and the present, the insistently active, vital present, the sole consideration of importance. ”

“ Other abodes of men rest securely upon the immemorial roots of the past, roots that lie, layer beneath layer, in rich historic continuity endowing present usages and customs with the consecration of unbroken tradition. ”

“ So Time seems to soften the horrors and sorrows of the Past as it recedes, and things which to those who lived among them were terrible and to those who had lived through them were fit only to be forgotten, become romantic to men of later generations, a theme for poets or painters, and glories for orators to recall. ”

“ The past is effaced, and the future recedes into some unformulated atmosphere. Life, a thousand lifetimes, concentrate themselves in the present. A supreme experience has always this peculiarity,—that it bars out all the past and all the future. ”

“ What is the mere fidget of the foreground, the present, the transient, compared with the huge unchanging past, where everything is secured and established under the appearance of eternity?—and how, when the obstruction is wonderfully pierced, the page restored, the earth of the present shovelled away, shall we refrain from dashing{185} headlong into the world thrown open, serenely offering itself to our exploration? ”

“ Of what value, pray, is all our study of history if we have so little realizing sense of its meaning, if we have no imagination to fill out with quivering, throbbing life this record of the past, which shows what mankind has been, and what, thank God, we have escaped? ”

“ Before trying her to indicate a direction for the future, guessed from brooding on the far past and by touching on the secret springs in the heart of the present, it may make that future seem easier of access if I point out what we have escaped and also show that we have already a freedom which, though but half recognized, is yet our most precious heritage. ”

“ Accurate biographies record narratives which no romancer's imagination could hope to rival. Researches, sufferings, labors, triumphs, agonies and disasters, the defeats of destiny, glory, which is the "sunlight of the dead," illuminating the past, whether fortunate or tragic,—such is what the lives of Great Men reveal to us, or, if the phrase be allowed, paint for us in a series of fascinating and dramatic pictures. ”

“ By comparison, the Past, though glozed beyond all semblance of truth, is a clinging heritage of canonised ignorance, brutality and baseness; a drag rather than a stimulus. And as day by day, year by year, our own fluid Present congeals into a fixed Past, we shall do well to take heed that, in time to come, our own memory may not be justly held accursed. ”

“ Looking back the little distance that our dim eyes can penetrate the past, what do we find? Civilizations, built up with infinite care, swept aside and lost. Beliefs for which men lived and died, proved to be mockeries. ”

“ Not only is there the interest of their present importance, which nobody would be likely to deny, but there is the charm of a historic past as full of romance as any chapter whatever in the annals of mankind. ”

“ "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." ”

“ Not only the present, but the past also, resounds in us; our feelings, even apparently the most novel ones, comprise the unconscious recollection and echo of the experiences of a whole series of ancestors. ”

“ What is the connection between the present and the past, between our persecutors of to-day and the men who lived in these caves in days of old and whose actions are prolonged into our own time, in a manner so impossible to understand? ”

“ The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past, troubled me, and I longed to have a future—a future with hope in it. ”

“ The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable. ”

“ The past—the present—the future crept up now and stood between them, pushing them farther and farther away from each 212 other, farther and farther, till even parting had become a fact long ago lived through and grown dim. ”

“ I leave those doubting ones to time, that brings all things to light; and turn at last to that great company of hope, to tell them the way and the course of their salvation, their rescue from the disease of history, and their own history as well, in a parable; whereby they may again become healthy enough to study history anew, and under the guidance of life make use of the past in that threefold way—monumental, antiquarian, or critical. ”

“ If the Past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the Past is the safest and the surest emancipation. And the earnest search for it is one of the signs that distinguish the four centuries of which I speak from those that went before. The middle ages, which possessed good writers of contemporary narrative, were careless and impatient of older fact. ”

“ But, then, how is it that there are the two times, past and future, when even the past is now no longer and the future is now not yet? ”

“ Almost, one can fancy them sighing over the glories of the past, the degeneracy of the present, and the uncertain future of the presumptuous young upstart so serenely sitting on the ruins of its betters. ”

“ But those novelists belong to the past—the dead and buried past. We want the present time described—the living, breathing, busy present. There never was an age, there never was a country, that afforded such scope for the novelist as this age and country. ”

“ I saw and heard, and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore. ”

“ But the past was not dead. Once in a great while the thoughts that had seemed so vital and so active, yet had been put to rest so quietly, revived again. ”