This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, fully David Martyn Lloyd Jones
To dwell on the past simply causes failure in the present. While you are sitting down and bemoaning the past and regretting all the things you have not done, you are crippling yourself and preventing yourself from working in the present.
Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
What is called Nothingness is to be found only in time and in speech. In time it stands between the past and future and has no existence in the present; and thus in speech it is one of the things of which we say: They are not, or they are impossible.
The past is over and done and cannot be changed. This is the only moment we can experience.
Past |
Louis L'Amour, fully Louis Dearborn L'Amour
A mistake constantly made by those who should know better is to judge people of the past by our standards rather than their own. The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.
In the far distant past men had discovered the secrets of energy and matter. Not only in thought, but by manipulation; not only spiritually but technically.
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
Only stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what is not. They try to derive from the works of the past a code of rules with which, as they fancy, the writers and artists of the future should comply. But the genius does not cooperate with the pundit.
Helena Blavatsky, aka Helena Petrovna "H.P." Blavatsky or Madame Blavatsky, born Helena von Hahn
If coming events are said to cast their shadows before, past events cannot fall to leave their impress behind them.
Religion grows with the intelligence of man, but all religions of the past and probably all of the future will sooner or later become petrified forms instead of living helps to mankind. Until that time comes, however, if religion of any name or nature makes man more happy, comfortable, and able to live peaceably with his brothers, it is good.
Future | Intelligence | Man | Nature | Past | Religion | Time | Will |
M. C. Swabey, fully Marie Taylor Collins Swabey
While the scientist, on the one hand, is concerned with giving a faithful description of facts, on the other, he has the equally important task of construing them in relation to some explanatory conjecture. Similarly the historian has a double duty: both of reporting the past as nearly as possible as it passed or was lived through by men at the time (without doctoring up events to fit later developments or some more "enlightened reading" of them); and second, of interpreting their import in the light of a present hypothesis.
Events | Giving | Important | Light | Men | Past | Present | Time |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
The best Armour of Old Age is a well spent life preceding it; a Life employed in the Pursuit of useful Knowledge, in honourable Actions and the Practice of Virtue; in which he who labours to improve himself from his Youth, will in Age reap the happiest Fruits of them; not only because these never leave a Man, not even in the extremest Old Age; but because a Conscience bearing Witness that our Life was well-spent, together with the Remembrance of past good Actions, yields an unspeakable Comfort to the Soul.
Age | Comfort | Conscience | Good | Life | Life | Old age | Past | Practice | Will | Witness | Old |
Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
Just as there is not a single thing in the world without a dual nature (this is the law of the unity of opposites), so imperialism and all reactionaries have a dual nature - they are real tigers and paper tigers at the same time. In past history, before they won state power and for some time afterwards, the slave-owning class, the feudal landlord class and the bourgeoisie were vigorous, revolutionary and progressive--they were real tigers. But with the lapse of time, because their opposites - the slave class, the peasant class and the proletariat - grew in strength step by step, struggled against them more and more fiercely, these ruling classes changed step by step into the reverse, changed into reactionaries, changed into backward people, changed into paper tigers. Moreover, eventually they were overthrown, or will be overthrown, by the people. The reactionary, backward, decaying classes retained this dual nature even in their last life-and-death struggles against the people. On the one hand, they were real tigers; they devoured people, devoured people by the millions and tens of millions. The cause of the people's struggle went through a period of difficulties and hardships, and along the path, there were many twists and turns. To destroy the rule of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism in China took the Chinese people more than a hundred years and cost them tens of millions of lives before the victory in 1949. Look! Were these not living tigers, iron tigers, real tigers? Nevertheless, in the end they changed into paper tigers, dead tigers, and bean-curd tigers. These are historical facts. Have people not seen or heard about these facts? There have indeed been thousands and tens of thousands of them! Thousands and tens of thousands! Hence, imperialism and all reactionaries, looked at in essence, from a long-term point of view, from a strategic point of view, must be seen for what they are - paper tigers. On this, we should build our strategic thinking. On the other hand, they are also living tigers, iron tigers, real tigers that can devour people. On this, we should build our tactical thinking.
Bourgeoisie | Cause | Cost | Destroy | Imperialism | Law | Nature | Past | People | Power | Proletariat | Rule | Strength | Struggle | Time | Unity | Will | World |
The past should not be followed after,and the future not desired; what is past is dead and gone, and the future is yet to come.
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.
Past |
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
And it is because they contain thus within themselves the hours of the past that human bodies have the power to hurt so terribly those who love them, because they contain the memories of so many joys and desires already effaced for them, but still cruel for the lover who contemplates and prolongs in the dimension of Time the beloved body of which he is jealous, so jealous that he may even wish for its destruction. For after death Time withdraws from the body, and the memories, so indifferent, grown so pale, are effaced in her who no longer exists, as they soon will be in the lover whom for a while they continue to torment but in whom before long they will perish, once the desire that owed their inspiration to a living body is no longer there to sustain them.
Body | Death | Desire | Inspiration | Love | Past | Power | Time | Will |
Mario Vargas Llosa, fully Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa
Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.
Past |