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“Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”
Voice: Fictional character · Elizabeth Bennet
The advice does not erase the past; it questions repeated attention to memories that no longer help the present.
Source note: Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 58.
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“’Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.”
Love can remain worth having even when it ends in loss, because avoiding grief by avoiding attachment would also remove the relationship itself.
Source note: In Memoriam A.H.H., Canto 27.
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“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.
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“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.
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“The mind is its own place.”
Voice: Poetic speaker · Satan
The statement emphasizes how mental framing can alter the experience of circumstances, for good or ill.
Source note: Paradise Lost, Book I; the fuller sentence continues with heaven and hell as states the mind can make.
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“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.”