„Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.“
Characters, Ch. 2 : A Christmas Dinner
Sketches by Boz (1836-1837)
Kontext: Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused — in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened — by the recurrence of Christmas. There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it used to be; that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope, or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed away; that the present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and straitened incomes — of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and of the cold looks that meet them now, in adversity and misfortune. Never heed such dismal reminiscences. There are few men who have lived long enough in the world, who cannot call up such thoughts any day in the year. Then do not select the merriest of the three hundred and sixty-five for your doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire — fill the glass and send round the song — and if your room be smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled with reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter, and empty it off-hand, and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God it’s no worse. Look on the merry faces of your children (if you have any) as they sit round the fire. One little seat may be empty; one slight form that gladdened the father’s heart, and roused the mother’s pride to look upon, may not be there. Dwell not upon the past; think not that one short year ago, the fair child now resolving into dust, sat before you, with the bloom of health upon its cheek, and the gaiety of infancy in its joyous eye. Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. Fill your glass again, with a merry face and contented heart. Our life on it, but your Christmas shall be merry, and your new year a happy one!
Charles Dickens13
anglický spisovateľ a spoločenský kritik 1812 - 1870Podobné citáty
— Theodore Roosevelt American politician, 26th president of the United States 1858 - 1919
1900s, Letter to Winfield T. Durbin (1903)
— J. Howard Moore 1862 - 1916
"The Genealogy of Animals", p. 85
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Physical Kinship
— James Burgh British politician 1714 - 1775
The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)
— Dugald Stewart Scottish philosopher and mathematician 1753 - 1828
Dugald Stewart; reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 581
„The present enshrines the past—and in the past all history has been made by men.“
— Simone de Beauvoir, kniha The Second Sex
Introduction : Woman as Other http://books.google.com/books?id=kUW0AAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+present+enshrines+the+past+and+in+the+past+all+history+has+been+made+by+men%22&pg=PA122#v=onepage
The Second Sex (1949)
— Richard Maurice Bucke prominent Canadian psychiatrist in the late 19th century 1837 - 1902
Dedication
Man's Moral Nature (1879)
— Robert M. Pirsig, kniha Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Zdroj: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 7
Kontext: When you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he's insane, which is not to see him at all. To see him you must see what he saw and when you are trying to see the vision of an insane man, an oblique route is the only way to come at it.
„Men are slower to recognise blessings than misfortunes.“
— Livy Roman historian -59 - 17 pred n. l.
Book XXX, sec. 21
History of Rome
„A chorus of voices, the past alive in everything, that sea upon which the present tossed and rode.“
— William Gibson, kniha All Tomorrow's Parties
Zdroj: All Tomorrow's Parties (2003), Ch. 38 : Vincent Black Lightning, p. 191
Kontext: If Skinner couldn't tell Fontaine a story about something, Fontaine would make up his own story, read function in the shape of something, read use in the way it was worn down. It seemed to comfort him.
Everything to Fontaine, had a story. Each object, each fragment comprising the built world. A chorus of voices, the past alive in everything, that sea upon which the present tossed and rode. When he'd built Skinner's funicular, the elevator that crawled like a small cable car up the angled iron of the tower, when they old man's hip had gotten too bad to allow him to easily climb, Fontaine had a story about the derivation of each piece. He wove their stories together, applied electricity: the thing rose, clicking, to the hatch in the floor of Skinner's room.
— Voltaire French writer, historian, and philosopher 1694 - 1778
Tous les hommes seraient donc nécessairement égaux, s’ils étaient sans besoins. La misère attachée à notre espèce subordonne un homme à un autre homme: ce n’est pas l’inégalité qui est un malheur réel, c’est la dépendance.
"Equality" (1764)
Citas, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)
— Winston S. Churchill, kniha The Second World War
Speech to the crowd from the balcony of the Ministry of Health in Whitehall, London (8 May 1945), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941-1945 (London: Heinemann, 1986), p. 1347
The Second World War (1939–1945)
— Joseph Addison politician, writer and playwright 1672 - 1719
No. 162 (5 September 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)
— John McCain politician from the United States 1936 - 2018
1990s, Speech at Ohio Wesleyan University (1997)
— David Hume, kniha A Treatise of Human Nature
Part 3, Section 8
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding
— Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802), kniha Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
Zdroj: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 20