“The past is rich in lessons from which we would greatly profit except that the present is always so full of Special Circumstances.”

“We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.”

“Even if we no longer have much in common, we would have always had the past, which, in some ways, is just as important as the present or future. It is where we come from, what makes us who we are.”

“The present is only understandable through the past, with which it forms a living continuity; and the past is always grasped from our own partial viewpoint within the present.”

“These memories, which are my life--for we possess nothing certainly except the past--were always with me.”

“Up to the present time, in experiments on diffraction there has been no instrument, except a magnifying-glass, which could be used with profit; and this may perhaps be one of the reasons why in this field of physical optics we are so backward, and why we know so little of the laws of this modification of light.”

“If evolutionary selection is the basis for a belief in profit maximization, 'then we should postulate that basis itself and not the profit maximization which it implies in certain circumstances.”

“We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.”

“A mightier force than ever followed Grant or Lee has leveled both their hosts, raised up an united Nation, and made us all partakers of a new glory. It is not for us to forget the past but to remember it, that we may profit by it. But it is gone; we can not change it. We must put our emphasis on the present and put into effect the lessons the past has taught us.”

“Draw from others the lesson that may profit yourself.”
Periclum ex aliis facito tibi quod ex usu siet.