Past, n. That part of ...

Past, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy.... Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one-the knowledge and the dream.
Past, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy.... Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one-the knowledge and the dream.
 Ambrose Bierce

Quotes from the same author

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
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 Ambrose Bierce
Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
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 Ambrose Bierce
MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.
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 Ambrose Bierce
MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
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 Ambrose Bierce
An auctioneer is a man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.
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 Ambrose Bierce