We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Who wants to understand the poem
Must go to the land of poetry;
Who wishes to understand the poet
Must go to the poet's land.

When scholars study a thing, they strive to kill it first, if it's alive; then they have the parts and they've lost the whole, for the link that's missing was the living soul.

No doubt you are right... there would be far less suffering amongst mankind if men... did not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with equanimity.