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Quote#Death

We hear of the dead past and the living present: we are bid (and we…

Quote byWilliam Stubbs · 1825–1901

Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Lectures on Early English History (1906), 'The Anglo-Saxon Constitution', p. 2.

English (original)

We hear of the dead past and the living present: we are bid (and we do well to remember that it is an American poet who so adapts the words) to let the dead past bury its dead. But surely the past lives in the present, the process by which we became what we are is a part of our living being; if we are cut off from what we were, we only half live.

— William Stubbs

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