God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
quote by Samuel Butler
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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God cannot alter the past, but historians can.
quote by Samuel Butler
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The difference between God and the historians consists above all in the fact that God cannot alter the past.
quote by Samuel Butler
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Our American past always speaks to us with two voices the voice of the past, and the voice of the present. We are always asking two quite different questions. Historians reading the words of John Winthrop usually ask, What did they mean to him Citizens ask, What do they mean to us Historians are trained to seek the original meaning all of us want to know the present meaning.
quote by Daniel J. Boorstin
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Little Altar Boy
Little alter boy, I wonder could you pray for me?
Little alter boy, for I have gone astray
What must I do to be holy like you?
Little alter boy ,oh, let me hear you pray
Little alter boy, I wonder could you ask your lord
Ask him, alter boy, to take my sins away
What must I do to be holy like you?
Little alter boy, oh, let me hear you pray
Lift up your voice and send a pray above
Help me rejoice and fill that prayer with love
Now I know my life has been all wrong
Lift my your voice and help a sinner be strong
Little alter boy, I wonder could you pry for me?
Could you tell our lord Im gonna change my ways today?
What must I do to be holy like you?
Little alter boy, oh, let me hear you pray
Little alter boy please let me hear you pray!
song performed by by Carpenters
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.
quote by Eric Hobsbawm
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Flos Lunae
I would not alter thy cold eyes,
Nor trouble the calm fount of speech
With aught of passion or surprise.
The heart of thee I cannot reach:
I would not alter thy cold eyes!
I would not alter thy cold eyes;
Nor have thee smile, nor make thee weep:
Though all my life droops down and dies,
Desiring thee, desiring sleep,
I would not alter thy cold eyes.
I would not alter thy cold eyes;
I would not change thee if I might,
To whom my prayers for incense rise,
Daughter of dreams! my moon of night!
I would not alter thy cold eyes.
I would not alter thy cold eyes,
With trouble of the human heart:
Within their glance my spirit lies,
A frozen thing, alone, apart;
I would not alter thy cold eyes.
poem by Ernest Christopher Dowson
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I think there's a tide that tends to carry historians back to the past.
quote by Ron Chernow
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History Is A Story
Hunters write history;
Tigers have no historians.
Winners write history;
Losers have no historians.
Read the history as a story.
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.
quote by Simone Weil
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Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.
quote by Edmond de Goncourt
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Indiscriminate Green
And does the heart grow old? You know
In the indiscriminate green
Of summer or in earliest snow
A landscape is another scene,
Inchoate and anonymous,
And every rock and bush and drift
As our affections alter us
Will alter with the season's shift.
So love by love we come at last,
As through the exclusions of a rhyme,
Or the exaction of a past,
To the simplicity of time,
The antiquity of grace, where yet
We live in terror and delight
With love as quiet as regret
And love like anger in the night.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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From An Indiscriminate Green Author
And does the heart grow old? You know
In the indiscriminate green
Of summer or in earliest snow
A landscape is another scene,
Inchoate and anonymous,
And every rock and bush and drift
As our affections alter us
Will alter with the season's shift.
So love by love we come at last,
As through the exclusions of a rhyme,
Or the exaction of a past,
To the simplicity of time,
The antiquity of grace, where yet
We live in terror and delight
With love as quiet as regret
And love like anger in the night.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.
quote by William Law
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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There are two ways of meeting difficulties. You alter the difficulities or you alter yourself to meet them.
quote by Phyllis Battone
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So often we try to alter circumstances to suit ourselves, instead of letting them alter us, which is what they are meant to do.
quote by Mother Maribel
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You know, there are many alter egos and Gorillaz is a collective of alter egos, really. I think anyone who gets involved in it has to sort of accept that nothing is really as it seems.
quote by Damon Albarn
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Wie alt sind Sie?
Wie alt sind Sie?
Zwischen uns;
Wenn du mich nicht nimmst,
Wird es jemand anders tun.
Die Frauen!
Von Alter her zwischen 20 und 40;
Aber, Therapie von Rüchenschmerzen ist Bewegung!
Der gesunde Weg,
Die Männer!
Von Alter her zwischen 40 und 60;
Aber, Therapie von Rüchenschmerzen ist Bewegung!
Du bist 14 Jahre älter als ich,
Vormarsch!
Verheißung,
Eindeutig,
Ein gesetzt;
Aber, der Vater meine Kinder sollte mein Ehemann sein.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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Defining History
DEFINING HISTORY *
History is neither for us nor against us;
It is a record of our accumulating past!
That past which we humans had once made,
And we can learn from our mistakes, it is often
said!
A wit had once put things together, saying; -
'History dose not repeat itself, only historians
repeat each other! ! '
'Civilization is a movement and not a condition,
a voyage, not a harbour, ' said Arnold Toynbee;
'It has the right and the capacity to choose its destiny! '
But many others did not seem to agree!
The early Mayans said that History repeats itself in
every 260 cyclic years,
History is not cyclic said Tonybee, to allay our fears!
The Greek Plato had felt that History was rather cynical;
While Oswald Spengler the German, had similar
views held!
Spengler said that all things that grow, must mature,
decay and decline;
The Western Civilization was no exception of any
kind!
But Carrol Quigley, a scientist by training, could not
accept any of the above views!
And in his 'The Evolution of Civilisation ', he pays
History its dues!
Quigley attempts to create an acceptable synthesis,
Which the critics praised with positive comments!
Quigley advocated that systems come into being
adapted to their environment;
Which changes and evolves with a gradual motion,
While he has laid down the seven stages of this
evolution! **
And he concludes by declaring with some flourish,
That those civilizations which cannot adapt to such
changes, -
Will one day perish!
- Raj Nandy
New Delhi
31 Aug 08
(* I tried to pay my tribute to three of our greatest Historians, -
being an old student of History. Spengler is unpopular in the
West.
** Mixture, Gestation, Expansion, Age of Conflict, Universal Empire,
Decay and Invasion.)
Memory Of Absences
Memory of absences can sear
the unforgetting mind far more
than presences of power we revere,
and images we can ignore.
Inspired by the phrase “memory of absences” which Robert Alter used in a talk to the Association of Jewish Studies in which he spoke about the collective memory of the Israelites that the Deuteronomist inspired. Alter used the phrase “memory of absences” and highlighted the importance of the Deuteronomist’s rhetoric used to advance his program to purge Israel of all images.
Robert Alter’s response to the poem was as follows:
Dear Gershon,
Your poem is the highest compliment that could be paid to a lecture. One question: is 'that' at the beginning of the third line a typo for 'than'?
Cordially,
Bob Alter
He had picked up a typo that I had missed, signs of a great textual scholar!
12/16/02
poem by Gershon Hepner
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What If
Such a tiny word, that word if, helps to ignore the present gift,
God’s gift to us of life today, when we put the past in the way,
Today’s a gift to all of us, from the Author of life Christ Jesus,
Yesterday’s past is already gone, and He’d like us to carry on.
What if, only moves us to cast, present thoughts into the past,
Tainting concerns now at hand, with those we can’t understand,
It may even cause us to resent, past issues, in view of present,
What God wants left behind, to give us present peace of mind.
We cannot physically, go back, to alter what we presently lack,
For with the past said and done, we have a present race to run.
Old issues we should not spurn, using all them instead to learn,
As we go forward in this life, following the lead of Jesus Christ.
Allow His Spirit only to retrace, those past issues by His Grace,
As Christ helps you not to repeat, what was in your past defeat.
Christ, has a plan for all of us, and in Him we must simply trust,
And God’s plan for you and me, is not more defeat, but victory.
Believers, God will not forsake, regardless of any past mistake,
God wants us to move ahead, not be filled with regret or dread,
As God takes us by the hand, past issues we can’t understand,
Avoiding that small word if, to focus on Christ our greatest gift.
(Copyright ©07/2009)