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Mere by-blows are the world and we,
And time within eternity
A sheer anachronism.

— John Davidson

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More quotes by John Davidson

One must become
Fanatic – be a wedge – a thunder-bolt
To smite a passage through the close-grained world.

Unwilling friend, let not your spite abate;
Help me with scorn, and strengthen me with hate.

Ballads and Songs (1894)

Business – the world's work – is the sale of lies:
Not goods, but trade-marks; and still more and more
In every branch becomes the sale of money.

From fear in every guise,
From sloth, from love of pelf,
By war's great sacrifice
The world redeems itself.

War Song. Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

Jewellery?—Baubles; bad for the soul;
Desire of the heart and lust of the eye!

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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: John Davidson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.