Echoes

Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.

Human nature being what it is, events which happened in the past will at some time or other and in much the same ways be repeated in the future.

Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.

The present moment contains past and future. The secret of transformation, is in the way we handle this very moment.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature.

It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.

All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer sight to almost everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.

Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying "there are only facts," I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations...

Nothing is permanent in all the world. All things are fluid; every image forms, wandering through change. Time itself flows on in constant motion, just like a river, for neither the river nor the swift hour can stop its course; but as wave impels wave, and as each wave comes, the one before is both impelled by the next and impels the one ahead, so time both flees and follows and is always new.

It is said that what is called the spirit of an age is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. In the same way, a single year does not have just spring or summer. A single day, too, is the same.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

It is not things that disturb us, but our judgments about things. For example, death is nothing terrible, for if it were, it would have appeared so to Socrates; but the judgment that death is terrible — that is the terrible thing.

Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.

You've got to have models in your head. And you've got to array your experience — both vicarious and direct — on this latticework of models.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

The scenes of life are like the pictures in a magic lantern: we see them, one after another, with vivid distinctness; but as soon as one vanishes, it is utterly forgotten; and then the next appears, completely different from what went before — though at bottom it is always the same story.

Nor less I deem that there are Powers / Which of themselves our minds impress; / That we can feed this mind of ours / In a wise passiveness.

He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.

Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.

I don't know whether Napoleon did or did not try to get across there and I don't care. I don't know much about history, and I wouldn't give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

It is not truth that makes man great, but man that makes truth great.