"Past tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are sinners by nature and training, none could change, not even by punishment—to say nothing of doing it by pity." Dickens' Pecksniff "always said of what was very bad that it was very natural." But it has been the glory of the Gospel that it could speak in the past tense of some at least of the sins of its adherents: "such were some of you." Individual regeneration will ever remain a large part of God's work through His Church. Unless we can raise the dead in sin to life in Christ, we have lost the quickening Spirit of God; ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... been talking in the past tense of heroes and of knight-errants, but surely their day is not yet passed. When the earth has all been explored, when the last savage has been tamed, when the final cannon has been scrapped, and the world has settled down into unbroken virtue and unutterable dulness, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... been told in the past tense, because Pardee's is no more. But Okoochee, Oklahoma, is full of paradoxes like Pardee's. Before you understand Maxine Pardee and her mother in the kitchen (dishing up) you have to know Okoochee. And before you know Okoochee you have to know ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... "No; we came with the assistance of the coffee-pot" (rein). The guesser is allowed to make three guesses aloud, but after that he must meditate on the word in silence or put questions to test his theories. If the word is a verb and a past tense or present tense has to be used in an answer, the player says "coffee-potted" ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... time Laura learned the difference between the present and past tense of the verb. And here her simplicity rebukes the clumsy irregularities of our language. She learned jump, jumped—walk, walked, etc., until she had an idea of the mode of forming the imperfect tense of regular verbs; but when she came to the word see, she insisted that ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... to convey the idea of past tense, the ending "ed" is popularly employed, but when he may he drops the "e." While he will properly use the present tense of a verb he goes out of his way to add the "(e)d." So he says "know-d," "see-d." But he is not always consistent. He prefers ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... needs its past tense and participle to be securely fixed before it will be used. It is perhaps wholly the uncertainty of these that has made the word to be avoided. Chid and chidden should be taught, and chode and chided ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... crushed, expressing the action as assumed, is, as you have already learned, a participle; and, as the action is completed, we call it a past participle. Now notice that ed was added to crush, the verb in the present tense, to form the verb in the past tense, and to form the past participle. Most verbs form their past tense and their past participle by adding ed, and so we call ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... society and advice were necessary to Mr. Strange's life. That life was, it appeared, held by this suffering gentleman on a precarious tenure. It was ebbing away fast with each passing hour. The servant already spoke of his master in the past tense, describing him to me as a young gentleman not more than five-and-thirty years of age, with a young face, as far as the features and build of it went, but with an expression which had nothing of youth about it. ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... nominations from the lowest office up to that of governor, and elected judges and legislators. The extent to which this was done differed according as the railroads had large or small interests within the state. These statements can with approximate truth now be made in the past tense, as was not possible a few years ago. A better code of business morality has developed, and the railroad management's relationship of private trusteeship toward the shareholders and of public trusteeship toward the patrons of the road is now much more fully ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... ought to have married a clever woman. She wasn't clever, thank God! Yet somehow she had a sort of originality—I don't know what it was." (Tyson had lately fallen into the habit of talking about his wife in the past tense, as if she were dead.) "It was something that no clever woman ever has. I know them! Upon my soul I do believe I loved her." He paused, pondering. "I wonder how it would have answered though if I'd married ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... talk like that," thought Green, as he went off, followed by his two men. "Everybody speaks of poor Tom in the past tense, from the colonel to Gubbins. I won't believe that he is dead till I see it; as for the ambulance, they have had plenty of work, and might easily miss him, if he is senseless, and ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... grazing-grounds, but still more from the ravages of small-pox and other epidemics, which ships touching on their way from the East Indies brought into the country. In A.D. 1713 whole tribes perished in this way. I speak of the Hottentots in the past tense, for they are now, as a distinct race, almost extinct in the Colony, although a good deal of their blood has passed into the mixed coloured population of Cape Town and its neighbourhood—a population the other elements of which are Malays from ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... which the Maestro has marked "con passione" nothing can exceed the elegance of his attitudes, and the pleasing dignity of his gestures. After, par exemple, the recitativi, what a pretty empressement he gave (alas! that we must now speak in the past tense!) to the tonic or key-note, by locking his arms in each other over his poitrine—by that after expansion of them—that clever alto movement of the toes—that apparent embracing of the fumes des lampes—how ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... exhortations. The word [Hebrew: ntN] in ver. 14 is especially opposed to such a view. "And thou (shalt) not (do) so, Jehovah thy God gave thee." J. D. Michaelis says: "What He gave to the Israelites is specified in vers. 15 and 18." The past tense suggests the idea of a gift which had already taken its beginning in the present.—The promise stands in a different connection in ver. 18. Moses had already given it in his own name in ver. 15. In order to give it greater ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... were altogether in the past tense! No knowing what the Duke might do—a widower and completely subjugated. It makes my bosom bound. The man tempts me to the wickedest Frenchy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... who often misrepresent it for their own partisan and prejudiced plans. It is strong and steadfast, though, and in time is always victorious over its menial opposition, for what is history but the past tense of truth, and it is justly said that veritas numquam perit, truth ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... may as well commence With quiet cruising o'er the ocean, Woman; While those who are not beginners should have sense Enough to make for port, ere Time shall summon With his grey signal-flag; and the past tense, The dreary Fuimus of all things human, Must be declined, while Life's thin thread's spun out Between the gaping heir ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... presumed, had no conception of that extent; or of the weight of the objection which is implied in the second. With respect to a vast number of our most common verbs, he himself never knew, nor does the greatest grammarian now living know, in what way he ought to form the simple past tense in the second person singular, otherwise than by the mere uninflected preterit with the pronoun thou. Is thou sleepedst or thou sleptest, thou leavedst or thou leftest, thou feeledst or thou feltest, thou dealedst or thou dealtest, thou tossedst or thou tostest, thou ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... that rack "is merely the past tense, and therefore past participle, [reac] or [rec], of the Anglo-Saxon verb Recan, exhalare, to reek;" and although the advocates of its being a particular description of light cloud refer to him as an authority for their reading, he treats it throughout generally as "a vapour, a steam, or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... know them to be sincere, Zara? I spoke in the past tense, and only of what might have been were the disparity of our years less, and if the environment by which we are respectively surrounded could ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... Verbs.—The use of the infinitive and the participle with the past tense of verbs is also a cause of frequent error. Our English rule regarding these parts of the verb is mainly a matter of usage, accuracy in which may be attained only by habits of correct speech. But if the reporter will bear in mind that the infinitive and the participle have no finite tense ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... have spoken sincerely; and, further, we may take it for granted that he used the past tense, 'loved,' merely because Ophelia was dead, and not to imply that he had once loved her ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... vowel characters, and declined like nouns. When a nominative immediately follows the verb, the pronominal suffix is generally dropped, unless required by euphony. Thus, "a man strikes" is dak klaftas, but in the past tense, dakny klaftas, the verb without the suffix being unpronounceable. The past tense is formed by the insertion of n (avna: "I have been"), the future by m: avma. The imperative, avsa; which in the first person is used to convey determination ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... remained as colorless as when Wallace had first revealed his identity; while he stood regarding the young man with a sad, pitying look, for he saw that Wallace did not suspect what they yet had to tell him—had not even noticed that they spoke of her in the past tense or that Mrs. Mencke was clad ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... that some American poet will one day be able to write in the past tense similar verses of the barbarity of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... where, lost in the crowd, I might waste my days unnoticed until such time as I could summon up sufficient resolution to put an end to my dead life. I had been ambitious—dwelling again amid the bitterness of the months that followed my return, I write in the past tense. I had been eager to make a name, a position for myself. But were I to claim no higher aim, I should be doing injustice to my blood—to the great-souled gentleman whose whole life had been an ode to honour, to her of simple faith who had known no other prayer to teach me than the childish cry, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... the conviction grew in Zara's brain that he was torturing her on purpose, overdoing the part when the servants were looking; for had he not told her but three hours before that he had loved her—using the past tense—and no man regretted a thing more! Perhaps—was it possible—he had seen when he kissed her that she loved him! And he was just punishing her, and laughing at his dominion over her in his heart; so her pride took fire at once. Well, she would not be played ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... 178: The past tense for the future: implying that the hour of retribution is so certain, that it may be considered ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... alligators, and at rare intervals they came to human aggregations in the waste of trees, and stayed for a day or so, and drank and sat about, and, one night, danced with Creole girls, who found Holroyd's poor elements of Spanish, without either past tense or future, amply sufficient for their purposes. But these were mere luminous chinks in the long grey passage of the streaming river, up which the throbbing engines beat. A certain liberal heathen deity, in the shape ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... felt everywhere." Mr. MASEFIELD however soon abandoned this manner and made the rest of his way in a good solid pedestrian style. But he did not disdain to go so far in flattery of the Americans, his audience, as to use the word "gotten" for the past tense of the verb ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various
... passion in his heart, but that neither he nor any other mortal could "look into the seeds of time" and say what would be and what would not be. The event was on the knees of the gods. Those who spoke with responsibility adhered strictly to the tense of the verb, the past tense: "kept." None rashly used, explicitly or by implication, the future tense: "will keep." In strictest truth they recited what had been, and, from their knowledge of the President's character and convictions, said that ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... in the past tense, not because she is dead, but because times and circumstances have changed since the period when we both had to do with the Uninhabited House, and she has altered in consequence—one of the most original people who ever crossed ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... of these different words was produced by habit, to avoid the monotony which the frequent recurrence of one word, so necessary in the expression of thought, would occasion: the same as the past tense of go is made by the substitution of another word radically different, went, the past tense of wend or wind. "O'er hills and dales they wend their way." "The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea." Go and wend ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... from recent Italian collections, and are given exactly as they were taken down from the mouths of the people, and it is in this sense, belonging to the people, that the word popular is used in the title of this work. I have occasionally changed the present to the past tense, and slightly condensed by the omission of tiresome repetitions;[A] but otherwise my versions follow the original closely, too closely perhaps in the case of the Sicilian tales, which, when recited, are very dramatic, but seem disjointed and abrupt ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... the same date believed to be perfect, but whether either or both have now disappeared I cannot say. Nor have I been able to verify the existence or non-existence of the other examples of which I am able to give illustrations. I shall therefore write of them all in the past tense, retaining the hope that some are ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... carried peppermint drops in that bag," said Amy. The use of the past tense was such an unconscious admission of fearing the worst, that the girls looked at one another aghast. And then Peggy, with a desperate realization that something must be done, and that immediately, seized the worsted shawl, and knelt down before Hobo. "Find her, good ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... these phrases, most unexpected words, which come out all of a sudden when you least expect them. She spoke lately about a pine-tree, for instance: there used to be a pine-tree standing in our garden in her early childhood. Very likely it's standing there still; so there's no need to speak in the past tense. Pine-trees are not like people, Alexey Fyodorovitch, they don't change quickly. 'Mamma,' she said, 'I remember this pine-tree as in a dream,' only she said something so original about it that I can't repeat it. Besides, I've ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... from his tomb to ask the news of Florence, Dante spoke, observing in the mean time a shade that, on hearing the Tuscan tongue, rose next Uberti, questioning, "Where is my son, my Guido?" Fancying from the poet's delay in answering, and his use of the past tense, that his beloved child no longer enjoyed the sweet light, Cavalcante fell ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... has always been a possible past tense in poetry, and living poets continue its use. There is an ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... have sent it up to the printer, and Wills is to send you a proof. Will you look carefully at all the earlier part, where the use of the past tense instead of the present a little hurts the picturesque effect? I understand each phase of the thing to be always a thing present before the mind's eye—a shadow passing before it. Whatever is done, must be doing. Is it not so? For example, if I did the Shadow of Robinson ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... was any one back there in England?" He put it in the past tense, so to speak, as if there could be no question ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... German scholar the two latter words only require explanation. Infrid for Unfried, discord, disturbance, any thing in opposition to Frieden or peace. The Frid-stools at Beverley, Ripon, and Hexham, still bear the old theotise stamp. Wart, or ward, may be either the past tense of werden, to be (our was), or an old form of waehren, to endure, to last: our English wear is the same word. The sense is pretty much the same in both readings alluding to Eve. In ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... in the past tense, but conditions in D—— are not greatly changed to-day. An old marquise, impoverished by the war, darns the pathetic socks of the wounded men and mends their uniforms. At the last report I received, the corridors and schoolrooms were still filled—every inch of space—with a motley collection ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... two tenses,—the present tense, which represented present and future time; and the past tense. We still use the present for the future in such expressions as, "I go away to-morrow;" "If he comes, tell him ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... this book was completed over four months ago. Since then many important changes have occurred in the international situation. Chapters in which we dealt with the then still existing Dual Monarchy must of course be read in the past tense, since Austria exists no more. And again, many things which we anticipated and hoped for in the future have already become accomplished facts. However, I trust that the story itself has not only lost ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... more than the general association of human experience in the periods of sickness and the close of life. If there was a closer association of these two characters in the later Georgian era, it is, at least, a satisfaction to be able to write of such things entirely in the past tense. At a time when even to maintain the decencies and comforts of domestic life was often a struggle with untoward surroundings, it may seem to show a desire to load the past times with more than their share of trials and misfortunes, to suggest that the most painful of all experiences ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... of the new illusion we wake to is seen in the exclamation that so often follows retrospection: "Oh, what a fool I was!" As a rule, nothing can be more conceited than this use of the past tense. A few people, perhaps, can look back complacently upon "a well-spent life" (wherein all the years have been laid out to advantage, and every hour has been made to go as far as seventy-five minutes, and every odd second has been worth a row of pins at least); but I should not care to meet ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... an idea,) as one that briefly and energetically conveyed his meaning to those whom he was addressing. 'Oh, foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?' That is, literally, who has fascinated your senses by the evil eye? For the Greek is, tis umas ebaskanen? Now the word ebaskanen is a past tense of the verb baskaino, which was the technical term for the action of the evil eye. Without having written a treatise on the Æolic digamma, probably the reader is aware that F is V, and that, in many ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... either—was more prosperous three months ago than Tipperary. The centre of a rich and prosperous part of the country, surrounded by splendid land, it had an enormous trade in butter and all agricultural produce, and a large monthly pig and cattle fair was held there. It possessed (I use the past tense advisedly) a number of excellent shops, doing a splendid business, and to the eyes of those who could look back a few years it was making rapid progress in prosperity ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... Chrysophrasia. She enjoys it after her own fashion. It is a little disconnected. The relation between cause and effect is a little obscure. She is fragmentary. She is a series of unfinished sketches in various manners. She has her being in the past tense, and her future, if she could have it after her taste, would be the past made present. She has many aspirations, and few of them are realized, but all of them are sketched in faint hues upon the mist of her mediaeval atmosphere. She is, in the ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... Greek tenses do not coincide, and cannot be expected to coincide with those of the English verb; that—except in narrative—the aorist as a rule is more exactly represented in English by our perfect with "have" than by our simple past tense; and that in this particular the A.V. is in scores of instances more correct than the R.V.; the present Translator has contended (with arguments which some of the best scholars in Britain and in America hold to be "unanswerable" and "indisputable") in a pamphlet On the ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... beautiful place, indeed," and then straightway returned to the house. Edgecomb, slack grammarian though he was, made note of the fact that he spoke of the house in the past tense, quite as if it were a thing that had ceased ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... traditional idea of Indian scenery, nor when once Bengal is left behind is there any of that luxuriant vegetation which one instinctively associates with hot countries. In bars in the United States, any one wishing for whisky and water was (I advisedly use the past tense) accustomed to drain a small tumbler of neat whisky, and then to swallow a glass of water. In India everything is arranged on this principle; the whisky and the water are kept quite separate. The dead-flat expanse of the Northern plains is unbroken by the most insignificant ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton |
