Tomorrow

“ Sufficient is it to know that the way we lived our yesterday has determined for us our today. And, again, when the morning with its fresh beginning comes, all tomorrows should be tomorrows, with which we have nothing to do. Sufficient to know that the way we live our today determines our tomorrow. ”

“ Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time; ”

“ Look to this day, for it is life—the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence: the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty. For yesterday is already a dream and tomorrow is only a vision; but today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. ”

“ So desirous am I that all men may know our Land of Tomorrow as she really is that I have tried to set forth her advantages and her opportunities which lie on every hand only waiting to be grasped. Therefore I hope she may help some! ”

“ Those who live for the moment prefer discontinuity. Those who observe their natural environment are forced to the conclusion that life today is part of a sequence or progression which relates the life of yesterday to that of tomorrow. ”

“ Only in Alaska does one see them in all their gorgeous glory! If sentiment be a part of man's make-up (and where is he who can deny it?) , the lover of the Land of Tomorrow will not even attempt to stifle in his heart a wish that is almost a prayer. It is that when the hour shall come for him to venture forth into that undiscovered country whence no traveler returns, the Northern Lights may light him on his way! ”

“ But it is quite clear that to-day is neither past nor future, that it is neither yesterday nor to-morrow, and that if we go anywhere we must start to-day. When Sunday comes, Saturday will be yesterday. But note now the strange situation into which we have fallen—only in the future is this day ever in the past! And that is true of every day in the world's history. It becomes a past day only in its own future. ”

“ In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one -- the knowledge and the dream. ”

“ It came, that last morning, a fine morning flushed with the new life of the world that trembles hesitatingly in the spring of the year, and steeps the hearts of men and women with stronger hope and wider ambition; such a morning as draws a veil over past failures and disappointments, and floods the future with success and achievement. It seemed a pity to have to die on such a morning, and for one moment there was regret in the highwayman's soul as he took his place in the cart. ”

“ Any fanciful way of naming the days would be bad, as too sharply differentiating one day from another. What we must strive for in the Dawn is that every day shall be as nearly as possible like every other day. We must help the human units—these little pink slobbering creatures of the Future whose cradle we are rocking—to progress not in harsh jerks, but with a beautiful unconscious rhythm.... ”

“ To-day is but the asymptote of to-morrow, that curve perpetually drawing near, but never reaching the straight line flying into infinity. To-morrow, the great future, belongs to the heaven where it tends. ”

“ And all this has been done in the early morning of the country's life, for in computing the age of a world's cultivation which has a thousand years for its future, two centuries' existence is merely as the morning hour; the day lies before it as its future. What will not this people accomplish during the day? ”

“ From the forelands of the Future they are waiting
our reply!
We can face the roughest weather
If we only hold together,
Marching forward to the Future, marching shoulder-
firm together,
For the Nation yet to be.
All the greyness of the dawning, all the mists are
over-past,
In the glory of the morning we shall see Her face at
last. ”

“ And shrieking wake, and clamour for new-day.
Only Man's bygone days are truly sweet:
This day is darkened by To-morrow's threat,
To-morrow by the menace of To-day;
From out the Past is fled away for aye
The grinding doubt of possible defeat.
Ah, were we wise, our lives 'tis thus we'd spend:
Because the Past glides onward without end,
Engulfing our To-day and our Hereafter,
We'd greet This Day, or Next, with careless
laughter
As 'twere the Past, and so our fortunes mend. ”

“ If the morning wake us to no new joys, if in the evening we have no pleasures to hope for, is it worth the trouble of dressing and undressing? Does the sun shine on me to-day, that I may reflect on what happened yesterday? That I may endeavour to foresee and control, what can neither be foreseen nor controlled,—the destiny of the morrow? ”

“ The future is to-day,—there is no to-morrow! The day of a man's salvation is now—the life of the present, of to-day, lived earnestly, intently, without a forward-looking thought, is the only insurance for the future. ”

“ How vivid, how beautiful, to-morrow seems with our lordly regiment of good resolutions ready to descend upon it as upon a city seen afar off for the first time! Every day lies before us as wonderful as London lay before Blücher on the night when he exclaimed: "My God, what a city to loot!" Our life is gorgeous with to-morrows. It is all to-morrows. Good resolutions might be described, in the words in which a Cabinet Minister once described journalism, as the intelligent anticipation of events. They are, however, the intelligent anticipation of events which do not take place. ”

“ As the cycles went their upward way the heroic figures of the dawn reappear. Some have passed before us; others in the same spirit and power will follow: for the new day a rearisen sun and morning stars to herald it. When it comes let it find us, not drowsy after our night in time, but awake, prepared and ready to go forth from the house of sleep, to stretch hands to the light, to live and labor in joy, having the Gods for our guides and friends. ”

“ We despair of the future, for one reason, because we attribute to the future our own growing sense of fatigue, the feelings of evening. But the future will, for those to whom it belongs, be morning, with the vigour and buoyancy of the awakening. ”

“ The dawn of the new world is already past its breaking; already it gilds the mountain tops, and shadows forth the coming day. I wish, so far as in me lies, to catch the rays of this dawn and weave them into a mirror, in which our grief-stricken age may see itself; so that it may believe in its own existence, may perceive its real self, and, as in prophetic vision, may see pass by its own development, its coming forms. ”

“ In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment ”

“ Not for earth, but for heaven, let your forecasting gift of prophecy come into play. Fill the present with quiet faith, with patient waiting, with honest work, with wise reading of God's lessons of nature, of providence, and of grace, all of which say to us, Live in God's future, that the present may be bright: work in the present, that the future may be certain! ”

“ As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of to-day is present, so some flitting perspectives, and demi-experiences of the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside to time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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? ”

“ Looking only to the Future, you forget our ample Past that has made us what we are. Yet our Past is here and now, beside us at this very moment. Into the hollow cups of weeks and months, of years and centuries, Time pours its flood beneath our eyes. Time is our schoolroom.⁠ ⁠... ”

“ By reflecting on the past and comparing it with the present, we prophesy of the future and often our prophecies are confirmed. By day we prophesy of the night, and the night comes; at night we prophesy of the morning, and the morning comes. ”

“ Another point worthy of our consideration is, that time is as uncertain as it is short. The present moment is all that we can safely calculate upon. The future is veiled in the bosom of the great Eternal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When this realization comes, fear goes, hope attends, faith dominates,—the faith of to-day which gives place to the realization of to-morrow. We then have nothing to do with the past, nothing to do with the future; for the whole of life is determined by the ever-present to-day. As my life to-day has been determined by the way I lived my yesterday, so my to-morrow is being determined by the way I live my to-day. ”

“ I am writing a history of yesterday not because yesterday was extraordinary in any way, for it might rather be called ordinary, but because I have long wished to trace the intimate side of life through an entire day. Only God knows how many diverse and diverting impressions, together with the thoughts awakened by them, occur in a single day. ”

“ And mark the signs of this Second Coming—the consequences of this newly risen Sun. Mark how its piercing beams are dispelling the old darkness!—how they have already pervaded with their light and life nearly every department of human thought! Under their quickening influence the human intellect has everywhere burst its old swathing-bands, and leaped forth with unprecedented vigor. And on the natural plane what a magnificent harvest already begins to wave! Science, literature, philosophy, art, industry, politics, morals and religion have all begun to feel the influence of the Second Coming. ”

“ It seems easier to do right to-morrow than to-day, merely because we forget, that when to-morrow comes, then will be now. Thus life passes with many, in resolutions for the future, which the present never fulfils. ”

“ AN HOUR LADEN WITH FATE The hour is critical, laden with fate. Responsibilities numerous and varied, as well as urgent and sacred, are crowding, in quick succession, upon a community youthful and valorous in spirit, rich in experience, triumphant in the past, sensible of its future obligations, keenly aware of the sublimity of its world mission, inflexibly resolved to follow with unfaltering steps the road of its destiny. ”

“ Wasn't it certainly, for instance, no mere illusion that there is no appreciable future left for such manners--an urbanity so comprehensive, a form so transmitted, as those of such a hostess and such a host? The future is for a different conception of the graceful altogether-- so far as it's for a conception of the graceful at all. ”

“ In so far as to-morrow is contained in to-day, and all the warp of the future already laid, a deepened knowledge of the present could make possible a more or less wide-reaching and sure prognosis of the future. ”

“ And that invisible multitude of yesterday and to-morrow, whose mouths are stopped with dust or who have not yet found human embodiment, must find voice in the multitude of to-day—the multitude that inherits the yesterdays and has in it the only promise of to-morrow. ”

“ For, short as our life is, we are not mere may-flies, that are born in the morning to die at night. We have a past to look back to and a future to look forward to, and it may be that some of the riddles of the future find their solution in the wisdom of the past. ”

“ I remember the Past, the infinite, infinite Past that you forget, I foresee the Future, the endless, endless Future that is hidden from you, to which the life you know is but as a single leaf upon the tree, but as one grain of sand in the billions of the Desert. ”

“ The prospect of the young is forward and unbounded, mingling the future with the present. In the declining day the thoughts make haste to rest in darkness, and hardly look forward to the ensuing morning. ”

“ And this direction of the flow of time can only be expressed in its true necessity by saying that in case of the world’s time, as in the case of the time of our inner experience, we conceive the past as leading towards, as aiming in the direction of the future, in such wise that the future depends for its meaning upon the past, and the past in its turn has its meaning as a process expectant of the future. ”

“ Whoever says “to-morrow,” “the unknown,”
“The Future,” trusts that power alone
He dares disown.
There is no unbelief;
The heart that looks on when dear eyelids close,
And dares to live when life has only woes,
God’s comfort knows. ”

“ What was taken for granted yesterday is not tolerated to-day, and what is taken for granted to-day will not be tolerated in a to-morrow that maybe is not so distant as in our darker moments we imagine. ”

“ These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. ”

“ We think of the future, not the past, as the more glorious time in comparison with which the present is nothing. Progress, development,—those are modern words. The modern idea is to leave the past and press onward to something new. ”

“ 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. ”