“Once, in the flight of ages past,
There lived a man.”
The Common Lot.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
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James Montgomery 25
British editor, hymn writer, and poet 1771–1854Related quotes

Le propre d’un grand homme est de dérouter les calculs ordinaires. Il est sublime et attendrissant, naïf et gigantesque.
Part I, ch. XV.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

Address at the Convocation of the University of Manitoba, October 28, 1952
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

Mahmud Tarzi, reflecting on King Amanullah's exile. http://www.afghan-web.com/history/quotes.html Link

"The escape", p. 309
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

“If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age.”

“For he lives twice who can at once employ
The present well, and e'en the past enjoy.”
Imitation of Martial, reported in Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence (1737), Vol. V, p. 232; The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, sixth edition (Yale University Press, 1970), p. 117. Compare: "Ampliat ætatis spatium sibi vir bonus; hoc est Vivere bis vita posse priore frui" (Translated: "The good man prolongs his life; to be able to enjoy one's past life is to live twice"), Martial, X, 237.; "Thus would I double my life's fading space; For he that runs it well, runs twice his race", Abraham Cowley, Discourse XI, Of Myself, stanza xi.

As quoted in "Babylon Nights : A David Spandau Novel" (2010) by Daniel Depp
Context: Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom.