C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Retrospect
By our remembrances of days foregone.
And oft a retrospect delights the mind.
Pleasure is the flower that fades; remembrance is the lasting perfume.
It is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven.
Of no day can the retrospect cause pain to a good man.
In our lonely hours we awake those sleeping images with which our memories are stored, and vitalize them again.
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind.
A lively retrospect summons back to us once more our youth, with vivid reflex of its early joys and unstained pleasures.
If our past actions reproach us, they cannot be atoned for by our own severe reflections so effectually as by a contrary behavior.
Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey, and place and time are subject to thy sway.
The greatest comfort of my old age, and that which gives me the highest satisfaction, is the pleasing remembrance of the many benefits and friendly offices I have done to others.
A man advanced in years, that thinks fit to look back upon his former life, and call that only life which was passed with satisfaction and enjoyment, excluding all parts which were not pleasant to him, will find himself very young, if not in his infancy.
He possesses dominion over himself and is happy, who can every day say, “I have lived.” To-morrow the Heavenly Father may either involve the world in dark clouds or cheer it with clear sunshine; he will not, however, render ineffectual the things which have already taken place.
Had we a privilege of calling up by the power of memory only such passages as were pleasing, unmixed with such as were disagreeable, we might then excite at pleasure an ideal happiness, perhaps more poignant than actual sensation.