Quotes to inspire and reflect

We live in reference to past experience and not to future events, however inevitable.

All the past is here, present to be tried; let it approve itself if it can.

Mad is the man who is forever gritting his teeth against that granite block, complete and changeless, of the past.

The past not merely is not fugitive, it remains present.

To excel the past we must not allow ourselves to lose contact with it; on the contrary, we must feel it under our feet because we raised ourselves upon it.

The past is immortalized; that is to say, it is dead; and death is the root of all godliness and all abiding significance.

It was like the good gone times when we still believed in summer hotels and the philosophies of . popular songs.

To what a degree the same past can leave different marks—and especially admit of different interpretations.

We are not free to use today or to promise tomorrow, because we are already mortgaged to yesterday.

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.

The Past is such a curious Creature / To look her in the Face / A Transport may receipt us / Or a Disgrace—.

The Things that never can come back, are several— / Childhood—some forms of Hope—the Dead— / Though Joys—like Men—may sometimes make a Journey— / And still abide---.

The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

The passing minute is every man’s equal possession, but what has once gone by is not ours.

What to ourselves in passion we propose, / The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.

Passion is like genius: a miracle.

All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate.

When the passions become masters, they are vices.

Serving one’s own passions is the greatest slavery.

Passions are spiritual rebels and raise sedition against the understanding.

One declaims endlessly against the passions; one imputes all of man's suffering to them. One forgets that they are also the source of all his pleasures.

Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

There is no greater hindrance to the progress of thought than an attitude of irritated party-spirit.

A man doesn't save a century, or a civilization, but a militant party wedded to a principle can.

The less reasonable a cult is, the more men seek to establish it by force.

No new sect ever had humor; no disciples either, even the disciples of Christ.

Party loyalty lowers the greatest men to the petty level of the masses.

We shall not come again. We never shall come back again.

He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan.

The return makes one love the farewell.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

Going away: I can generally bear the separation, but I don't like the leave-taking.

A father is very miserable who has no other hold on his children’s affection than the need they have of his assistance, if that can be called affection.

To make the child in your own image is a capital crime, for your image is not worth repeating. The child knows this and you know it. Consequently you hate each other.

There are some extraordinary fathers, who seenl, during the whole course of their lives, to be giving their children reasons for being consoled at their death.

The greatest reverence is due to a child! If you are contemplating a disgraceful act, despise not your child's tender years.

I perceive affection makes a fool / Of any man too much the father.

The most ferocious animals are disarmed by caresses to their young.

The new-come stepmother hates the children born / to a first wife.

There is not so much comfort in the having of children as there is sorrow in parting with them.

Here all mankind is equal: / rich and poor alike, they love their children.

Oh, what a power is motherhood, possessing / A potent spell. All women alike / Fight fiercely for a child.

One of the most visible effects of a child’s presence in the household is to turn the worthy parents into complete idiots when, without him, they would perhaps have remained mere imbeciles.

All men know their children / Mean more than life. If childless people sneer—/Well, they’ve less sorrow. But what lonesome luck!

We are the buffoons of our children.

This is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own.