Future

“ I firmly believe that the future holds in store a civilization, social status, human achievement, intellectual and moral attainment on this planet, as far above the present as this is above that of the Cave Man; and as inconceivable to us now as this was to him; and all this will be but the product, result, fruit of this eternal, never-ending process of inspiration and revelation that has brought mankind to where he is today. ”

“ Our future with all its limitless possibilities—this future which is to warm the great breast of the business world toward us, this future which shall shower upon us the fullness of earth—is all with you. ”

“ The future is in our hands now,—pliant and impressible as wax, and we are moulding it into form day by day. Will that form shed a cheering beam on our path, or will it cast around us a web of despondency? ”

“ The present moment is illuminated and made significant, is controlled and dominated, by experience of the past and by expectation of the future. Without any idea of the future our existence would be purely mechanical and meaningless: with too little eye to the future—a mere living from hand to mouth—it becomes monotonous and dull. ”

“ The future is like a dead wall or a thick mist hiding all objects from our view: the past is alive and stirring with objects, bright or solemn, and of unfading interest. What is it in fact that we recur to oftenest? What subjects do we think or talk of? Not the ignorant future, but the well-stored past. ”

“ Perhaps we are at the top of the tree of development, and for them may be the future, for us the annihilation. Who knows? There, fly away, and make the most of the present, for nothing else is certain. ”

“ It is difficult for anyone to foresee the Future— that word of wonderful depth which is the most awesome in the English language—into which men may cast the biggest venturings of experiment in the world; and generations watch them rise and flourish if they be right, or flounder and go under if they be wrong. ”

“ Past, present, and future—all are divine—all are parts of a celestial scheme—none to be scorned, all to be loved and improved. But the past is under the sod; the future is behind the clouds; the present alone has its foot upon the green sward. ”

“ So revolves the luminous orb of Life! Generations follow generations; and the Present becomes the matrix of the Future, as the Past was of the Present: the Life of one epoch forming the prelude to a higher Life. ”

“ It will to me unfold. [Pg 32]
“O man why seekest thou to know
The future, or the past?
The present is enough for you,
If not with clouds o’er cast.”
The mountains seemed to pity me,
The clouds shed showers of tears,
The sun looked down in reverence,
And said: “Allay your fears,”
“For there’s a power that rules mankind,
E’er has and ever will.
The future, and the past, are His,
Are governed by His will.” ”

“ The assurance that the future is no arbitrary and changeable thing, but that like futures will invariably follow like presents, is the groundwork on which we lay all our plans—the faith on which we do every conscious action of our lives. ”

“ But just so the future, not, indeed, when viewed as to its unknown details, but when conceived as the region into which the present is passing away, when regarded as containing the goal of all our hopes, and the decision of all our cherished interests and destinies, — is not this future so bound up in one world of Being with the present, that, if we could indeed abstract from future Being, present Being would again lose not only all of its practical interest, but also a large part of its theoretical meaning? ”

“ Our destiny rules over us, even when we are not yet aware of it ; it is the future that makes laws for our to-day. ”

“ And now, at last, we have reached a point, where, in thinking of the future and the hope for coming generations, we may turn our gaze in a new direction and enter the realm of conjecture and prophecy. ”

“ With a dark and shifting near future, and a bright and fixed ultimate destiny, what is the true, the only wisdom? Not to pry into the fogs and thickets round about, or to stand still for fear of what may next occur in the path ”

“ Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite. ”

“ Your future is the not yet temporally expressed region wherein you, as finite being, seek your own further expression. That future is still, in one aspect, as we shall see, causally undetermined, precisely in so far as therein something unique, that is yours and yours only, is to appear in the form of various individually designed expressions of your life-purpose, — various individual deeds. ”

“ What is really momentous and all-important with us is the present, by which the future is shaped and colored. ”

“ I look back into the past, forget the present, and, as I do everywhere else, laugh at what worldlings call the future. The future is heaven. It seems to me that I am nearer to it here than in Europe. May God grant us grace to gain it one day or another! ”

“ "what necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer—the Future so much brighter?" ”

“ Every one of us may command the future—may, in a measure, prophesy and weigh the consequences, and calculate the issues of our own life; and every one of us can live a far larger, fuller and richer life, in the years that are to be than we can live in the past or in the time that is now. ”

“ Before trying her to indicate a direction for the future, guessed from brooding on the far past and by touching on the secret springs in the heart of the present, it may make that future seem easier of access if I point out what we have escaped and also show that we have already a freedom which, though but half recognized, is yet our most precious heritage. ”

“ For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time. ”

“ Are we simply separating and contrasting two sides of everybody’s opinion? To which one replies that we are not discussing what we know and believe about the relations of past, present, and future, or of the relation of cause and effect to each other in time. [11] We all know the present depends for its causes on the past, and the future depends for its causes upon the present. ”

“ If all these ideals have been realized, is it not a promise, or a prophecy, that our ideals of to-day, will be realized in the future? And if from the constitution of the human mind we could presage the ideals of the future, we could in a general way predict what the civilization of distant ages will develop. ”

“ Some of you, perhaps, have seen a man who can read the past life of others and foretell the future. How is it possible for any one to see what the future will be, unless there is a regulated future? Effects of the past will recur in the future, and we see that it is so. ”

“ I own that the future, to which we are often referred for the “stuff that dreams are made of,” is more difficult for the fancy than the past, that the airy amplitude of its possibilities is somewhat chilly, and that we naturally long for the snug quarters of old, made warm by many generations of life. ”

“ The past preaches to the present, and from its marvellous discourses we venture to infer something of the yet unveiled future. The forces which have worked still labour: the phenomena which they have produced will be repeated. ”

“ To a thoughtful man watching the signs of the times, it may well have seemed that the hope for the future of civilization--the hope for any future, whether of art, science, or religion-lay in the steady growth of the towns. ”

“ It determines him to ideas, to facts for the ideas they cover, not so much to the past as the future, to the past only that he may [Pg 371] guide the present and construct the future. He is to take his run in the past to acquire the momentum of history, his stand in the present and leap into the future. ”

“ Gradually he spoke of himself, his aspirations, his plans for the future with its seemingly infinite possibilities all gone now. “There is no use in longer deceiving myself. My future in this world lies in the past.” ”

“ The future, the immediate future, will bring us squarely face to face with many great and exacting problems which will search us through and through whether we be able and ready to play the part in the world that we mean to play. ”

“ We see certain tendencies and believe they will advance unhindered, but there may be other tendencies to counteract, change, even defeat these. No future can be predicted! And yet I was so sure of the future—so sure of what we are to build—that future which we keep modifying so persistently the moment it hits To-day. ”

“ And everything is brought into closest relation with “that which is the foundation of all our hopes and of all our fears; all our hopes and fears which are of any consideration; I mean a Future Life.” ”

“ If I were an institution possessing a guaranty of continued existence I might value the present lightly, knowing a future would come when these matters will be fully understood. Being a creature of the present, however, which may be turned into the past—especially at my time of life—at almost any moment, these matters should become known at the earliest opportunity ”

“ Turn we now from the lateral distribution of notions as to a future life, to their lineal development. We have seen that the development of belief as to the locality of our future destination has been a chase of places, over the earth, under the earth, through the sky, as fast as the unknown was brought within the known, until it has stopped at the verge of the unknowable. ”

“ Let us observe this closely. The future is composed of the past—​that is to say, that the route that man traverses in time, and that he modifies by means of the power of his will, he has already traversed and modified ”

“ We hope, plan, execute; will it be vain?
Or will the future be the past again? ”

“ It overlooks the loud, omnipresent hints which tell us that the present state is incomplete and dependent, the part of a great whole, the visible segment of a circle whose complement overarches the invisible world to come, where future correspondences and fulnesses will satisfy and complete present claims and deficiencies. ”

“ The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past, troubled me, and I longed to have a future—a future with hope in it. ”

“ It was necessary that we should meet not on the plane of the past, nor even of the present, but on the plane of the future, and thus find ourselves again, and discover what now, in this new world, we wanted, and would be able, to do together. ”

“ For us mankind was a distant future, to which we were all on the way. ”

“ This unquestioning love of the Earth and the children of it is perhaps the most hopeful element for future progress. In a century of doubts and scepticisms it may serve to bridge the gulf between the old and the new. ”

“ What will people think?—What will happen in the future?—and so on, and so forth.’
‘And what about the vital considerations?’
‘What do you call vital?’ I asked in my turn. ”

“ So that Activity which is at the source of all life, and is keeping living things together in an interconnected whole, not only forces them upward in the scale of being, but is also driving them to look forward into the future, to provide for the future—and, indeed, to make the future better than the present. ”

“ The latter type of mind I might for contrast call the legislative, creative, organizing, or masterful type, because it is perpetually attacking and altering the established order of things, perpetually falling away from respect for what the past has given us. It sees the world as one great workshop, and the present is no more than material for the future, for the thing that is yet destined to be. ”

“ Moreover, we must look upon what is to occur as having already occurred, and see nothing but the present in the future, for the future is but the present a little farther on." ”