
“Memory creates a hallucination of the past, desire creates a hallucination of the future.”
Pebbles of Wisdom
Source: The Mill on the Floss
“Memory creates a hallucination of the past, desire creates a hallucination of the future.”
Pebbles of Wisdom
Source: Sanitary Economy (1850), p. 29-30
Context: The rise of each generation gives new ties towards the future, which insensibly dissolves those which bind us to the past; and the natural old age of the human race seems to have adjusted itself to that period beyond which the human being would feel isolated and desolate in the midst of the new objects of attachment which the progress of time brings into existence.
Source: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
“5120. 'Tis the last Feather, that breaks the Horse’s Back.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude.”
As quoted in History of the Anti-Corn Law League (1853), by Archibald Prentice, p. 54; around 1876 this began to began to be cited to W. Scott, and then around 1880 sometimes to Walter Scott, but without citations of source, including a variant: "Selfish ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude" in a publication of 1907.
“Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude.”
The earliest attributions of this yet found are to it being a saying of William Scott, 1st Baron Stowell, in History of the Anti-Corn Law League (1853), by Archibald Prentice, p. 54; around 1876 it began to began to be cited to W. Scott, and then around 1880 sometimes to Walter Scott, but without citations of source, including a variant: "Selfish ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude" in a publication of 1907. It seems to only recently to have begun to be attributed to Sallust, on the internet.
Misattributed
“It is obvious: The past was once the future and the future will become the past.”
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)