Timelines

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. ~~ E.B. White

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. ~~ Albert Einstein

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. ~~ Paul Valery

The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here. ~~ Finley Peter Dunne

Real generosity toward the future consists in giving all to what is present. ~~ Albert Camus

God has no power over the past except to cover it with oblivion. ~~ Pliny the ElderThe past is but the beginning of a beginning. ~~ H. G. Wells

There's a moment coming. It's not here yet. It's still on the way. It's in the future. It hasn't arrived. Here it comes. Here it is …! It's gone. ~~ George Carlin

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: And this, too, shall pass away. ~~ Abraham Lincoln

To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust. ~~ John F. Kennedy

It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago. ~~ Jim Bishop

Such prosperity as we have known up to the present is the consequence of rapidly spending the planet's irreplaceable capital. ~~ Aldous Huxley

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past. ~~ Lewis Mumford

Most of the problems a President has to face have their roots in the past. ~~ Harry S. Truman

To mourn a mischief that is past and gone
Is the next way to draw new mischief on. ~~ William Shakespeare

Life is eating us up. We shall be fables presently. Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future. ~~ Joseph Joubert

Remember your past mistakes just long enough to profit by them. ~~ Dan McKinnon

You don't just stumble into the future. You create your own future. ~~ Roger Smith

There is always something rather absurd about the past. ~~ Sir Max Beerbohm

Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones. ~~ Seneca

The first recipe for happiness is: Avoid too lengthy meditation on the past. ~~ Andre Maurois

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. ~~ Charles Dickens

The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good; and thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burdens of the past. ~~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present. ~~ George Santayana

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. ~~ C. S. LewisThe future is much like the present, only longer. ~~ Dan Quisenberry

One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past or in complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the essence of life. ~~ Anatole France

We live in the present, we dream of the future, but we learn eternal truths from the past. ~~ Madame Chiang Kai-shek

Living in the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causes you to bump into people not going your way. ~~ Edna Ferber

The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post. ~~ L. Thomas Holdcroft

The past is the tomorrow that got away. ~~ Leonard L. Levinson

Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us. ~~ Jean de La Bruyere

The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future. ~~ Robert G.Ingersoll

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is, but often prompts us to rearrange the past. ~~ Eric Hoffer

When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind, and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. ~~ Hugh White

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it. ~~ Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows. ~~ Sir William Osler

In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future. ~~ Andre Gide

People move forward into the future out of the way they comprehend the past. When we don't understand something in our past, we are therefore crippled. ~~ Norman Mailer

Don't lay any certain plans for the future; it is like planting toads and expecting to raise toadstools. ~~ John Billings

Those who foresee the future and recognize it as tragic are often seized by a madness which forces them to commit the very acts which made it certain that what they dread shall happen. ~~ Dame Rebecca West

The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memorized glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past. ~~ Mary Webb

In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. ~~ Andy Warhol

… that our nature and purpose is … to love and to make love, to take joy from the beauty of the world, to live with an awareness that the future is not as real a place for any one of us as are the present and the past. ~~ Dean Koontz [Fear Nothing]

Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future. ~~ Charles F. Kettering

Our destiny rules over us, even when we are not yet aware of it; it is the future that makes laws for us today. ~~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

If we were logical, the future would be bleak, indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work. ~~ Jacques Cousteau

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. ~~ Thomas Jefferson

I don't fly any awards at the house. Any award you get is usually for something you've done in the past. And I like to keep looking forward. ~~ Garth Brooks

We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell on them. ~~ Lillian Hellman

The future is the past returning through another gate. ~~ Arnold H. Glasow

To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. ~~ Robert M. Pirsig

There has never been an age that did not applaud the past and lament the present. ~~ Lillian Eichler Watson

You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present. ~~ Jan Glidewell