Source identified
“To mourn a mischief that is past and gone is the next way to draw new mischief on.”
Voice: Fictional character · Duke of Venice
Grief over what cannot be changed can become a second injury when it prevents attention to what can still be done.
Source note: Othello, Act 1, Scene 3; the Duke urges Brabantio not to compound an irreversible loss by continuing to feed it with fresh grief.
Source identified
“For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.”
Life continues forward despite attachment to what has already happened, so care for the past cannot make the present remain there.
Source note: The Prophet, “On Children”; Gibran contrasts parents’ memory of yesterday with children belonging to a life that moves forward.
Source identified
“A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.”
Revenge can keep an injury psychologically active long after the original event, making resentment a way of repeatedly reopening the hurt.
Source note: Bacon, “Of Revenge”; the sentence continues by contrasting revenge with wounds that would otherwise heal.
Source identified
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
The verse places change inside a larger rhythm of seasons and purposes, making it useful for thinking about acceptance when one phase of life gives way to another.
Source note: Ecclesiastes 3:1 in the King James Version, opening the sequence of contrasting times and seasons.
Source identified
“Let the dead Past bury its dead!”
The poem rejects living backward and immediately redirects attention toward action available in the present.
Source note: A Psalm of Life, in the stanza beginning “Trust no Future.”
Source identified
“We need never be ashamed of our tears.”
Voice: Fictional narrator · Pip
Tears are treated as an honest human response rather than evidence of weakness or failure of self-control.
Source note: Great Expectations, Chapter 19.