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That awful independent on to-morrow!
Whose work is done; who triumphs in the past;
Whose yesterdays look backward with a smile
Nor, like the Parthian, wound him as they fly.

— Edward Young

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Time

More quotes by Edward Young

The blood will follow where the knife is driven,
The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear.

In youth, what disappointments of our own making: in age, what disappointments from the nature of things.

The man that makes a character makes foes.

Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.

Night-Thoughts (1742)

By night an atheist half believes in God.

Night Thoughts (1743)

All Edward Young quotes →

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

Sanu Sharma

You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now does always last.

Abraham Cowley Poems (1656)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Edward Young (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.