“You cannot, you must not, judge the past by the present; you must try to see it in its own terms and values, if you are to have any inkling of it. You may not like what you see, but do not on that account fall into the error of trying to adjust it to suit your own vision of what it ought to have been.”
Source: Quartered Safe Out Here (1992), p. xxiv.
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George MacDonald Fraser 39
English-born author of Scottish descent 1925–2008Related quotes

As quoted in A Galaxy Not So Far Away : Writers and Artists on Twenty-five Years of Star Wars (2002) by Glenn Kenny, p. 99
Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

"Walking to Sleep" (1969)
Context: Try to remember this: what you project
Is what you will perceive; what you perceive
With any passion, be it love or terror,
May take on whims and powers of its own.
Therefore a numb and grudging circumspection
Will serve you best — unless you overdo it,
Watching your step too narrowly, refusing
To specify a world, shrinking your purview
To a tight vision of your inching shoes,
Which may, as soon as you come to think, be crossing
An unseen gorge upon a rotten trestle.

Rodger Bumpass is Squidward Tentacles http://georgiastatesignal.com/rodger-bumpass-is-squidward-tentacles/ (September 8, 2013)