Past and Future

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,

O lente lente currite noctis equi .

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

I do not know which makes a man more conservative—to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.

Then on the shore

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

A stand can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea.

I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

Some say the world will end in fire,

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

Time present and time past

The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent.

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

Ah, but I was so much older then,

Not Heaven itself upon the past has power;

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

There’s milestones on the Dover Road!

Oh, no man knows

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,