Charles Caleb Colton Quotes About Past
-
Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.
→ -
There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise. There is one signal instance on record where this kind of prejudice was overcome by a miracle; but the age of miracles is past, while that of prejudice remains.
→ -
Reform is a good replete with paradox; it is a cathartic which our political quacks, like our medical, recommend to others, but will not take themselves; it is admired by all who cannot effect it, and abused by all who can; it is thought pregnant with danger, for all time that is present, but would have been extremely profitable for that which is past, and will be highly salutary for that which is to come.
→ -
To look back to antiquity is one thing, to go back to it is another.
→ -
Custom looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present, but both of them are somewhat purblind as to things that are to come.
→ -
Men spend their lives in anticipations,—in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.
→ -
Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash--for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last. Custom, therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present.
→ -
How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backward to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.
→ -
How strange it is that we of the present day are constantly praising that past age which our fathers abused, and as constantly abusing that present age, which our children will praise.
→
Related Authors
-
Soren Kierkegaard Philosopher -
George William Curtis Writer -
Katharine Whitehorn Journalist -
Thomas Carlyle Philosopher -
Sun Tzu Strategist -
James Ramsey Ullman Writer -
Francois de La Rochefoucauld Author -
William Hazlitt Writer -
Percy Bysshe Shelley Poet -
Walter Bagehot Journalist -
David Viscott Author -
O. Henry Writer -
-
John Churton Collins Literary critic -
Clarence Budington Kelland Film writer -
Jean de La Fontaine Poet -
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Philosopher -
Jackie Mason Comedian -
Spike Milligan Comedian -
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Physician