
On The Art of Making Up One's Mind
The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1915/1915-h/1915-h.htm (1898)
Source: The Sparrow
On The Art of Making Up One's Mind
The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1915/1915-h/1915-h.htm (1898)
“… the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.”
Variant: A past tense, future perfect kind of night.
Source: White Teeth (2000)
“Politics is history in the present tense.”
The Rise of Obama's Bridge Between MLK and RFK, June 6, 2008, Real Clear Politics http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/obamas_bridge_between_mlk_rfk.html,
“There is no past or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.”
“I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.”
O Do Not Love Too Long http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1549/
In The Seven Woods (1904)
Context: Sweetheart, do not love too long:
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.
All through the years of our youth
Neither could have known
Their own thought from the other's
We were so much at one.
But O, in a minute she changed--
O do not love too long,
Or you will grow out of fashion
Like an old song.
“The present tense made him nervous.”
Source: Sprawl trilogy, Neuromancer (1984), Chapter 3 (Case)
“Your holy hearsay is not evidence.
Give me the good news in the present tense.”
"Present Tense"
Context: Your holy hearsay is not evidence.
Give me the good news in the present tense.
What happened nineteen hundred years ago
May not have happened.
How am I to know?
So shut your Bibles up and show me how
The Christ you talk about
Is living now.