Quotes to inspire and reflect

They also serve who only stand wait for the two-fif- teen [train].

Sad patience, too near neighbor to despair.

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.

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

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

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

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.

When the passions become masters, they are vices.

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

Passions are spiritual rebels and raise sedition against the understanding.

Serving one’s own passions is the greatest slavery.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The return makes one love the farewell.

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

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.

All the critics in the world may say it’s good but a man’s own mother will know.

Now, we’ve made the revolutionary discovery that children have two parents. A decade ago even the kindly Dr. Spock held mothers solely responsible for children.

The father who raises a son to have a profession he once dreamed of, and the mother who uses her daughter as the adult companion her husband is not; the parents who urge their children into accomplishments as status symbols—all these and many more are ways of subordinating a child’s authentic self to a parent’s needs.

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.

Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.

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.

If you and your child were going to be lulled tomorrow/would you not give him to eat today?

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.

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

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