Future quotes

“The future is yet to come”

The brief phrase anchors Hazlitt’s argument that the future does not possess greater reality merely because it has not happened yet; he compares its status with the already completed past.

Source note: Table-Talk, essay III, “On the Past and Future.” This is a short excerpt from Hazlitt’s comparison of past, present and future, not a standalone prediction about what the future will contain.

“We make the coming age our own.”

Youth is portrayed as imaginatively possessing the future before experience has imposed clear limits, turning coming time into a field of possibility rather than scarcity.

Source note: On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth, first published March 1827. The sentence belongs to Hazlitt’s account of expansive youthful expectation and should not be treated as a literal claim of control over the future.

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast.”

Hope is portrayed as a recurring human tendency that persists even when one expectation fails.

Source note: Epistle I.

“What is now proved was once only imagined.”

Blake’s proverb compresses a recurring imaginative pattern: possibilities can exist first as conceived ideas before later work, discovery or demonstration makes some of them real or provable.

Source note: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “Proverbs of Hell,” represented by Project Gutenberg #45315 at printed page 16. Gutenberg regularizes the line to “imagined”; Blake’s engraved text is often transcribed with historical spelling and punctuation. The proverb is part of Blake’s deliberately paradoxical infernal-wisdom sequence, not a literal claim that every imagined thing will eventually be proved.

“The hope of the righteous shall be gladness.”

Hope is connected with gladness because a worthy expectation can give present direction before the hoped-for outcome arrives.

Source note: Proverbs 10:28 in the King James Version; opening clause of the verse.

“The future is no more uncertain than the present.”

Whitman refuses to treat the future as uniquely unknowable: within the poem's larger meditation on what endures, present conditions are themselves unstable and changing, so uncertainty belongs to both horizons.

Source note: Leaves of Grass (1882), “Song of the Broad-Axe,” section 4; Wikisource 1882 transcription. The line appears after “And the dead advance as much as the living advance” and before Whitman turns from institutions and structures toward the personal qualities he says endure.

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”

The line leaves room between present identity and future possibility, making it useful for reflection on change and potential.

Source note: Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5; Ophelia speaks during her disrupted state, so the line remains dramatic dialogue rather than Shakespearean autobiography.

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.”

A small beginning can contain enormous future possibility, making the acorn a compact metaphor for growth, potential, and development.

Source note: Essay “History,” in Essays: First Series; the image appears in a passage about latent possibility.

“It works for to-day, but also provides for to-morrow.”

Good stewardship balances present needs with future obligations instead of treating either immediate enjoyment or distant security as the only concern.

Source note: Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. The sentence occurs in the same definition of thrift as an acquired principle of conduct: present enjoyment is subordinated to forethought so that action serves today while providing for tomorrow.

“In a world where all is fleeting, change alone endures.”

Stability is temporary, so practical judgment requires expecting change rather than treating present arrangements as permanent.

Source note: Counsels and Maxims, T. Bailey Saunders translation, in a discussion of fortune and apparent stability.

“Not knowing when the Dawn will come, I open every Door.”

Because opportunity and renewal cannot always be predicted, openness becomes a practical response to uncertainty rather than passive waiting.

Source note: Poem 1619; uncertainty about dawn becomes a reason to remain open to possibility.

“No one is so old as to think that he may not live a year.”

Even late in life people naturally continue to imagine a future, which helps explain why worthwhile work and planning do not simply stop with age.

Source note: Cato on Old Age, Shuckburgh translation, in a passage about older people planting for those who come after them.

“But what a mockery our life would be, without a greater future!”

Hope for a larger future gives present life direction, even though the surrounding parable also cautions against pretending to know exactly what that future will be.

Source note: The Madman, parable of the pomegranate; one voice insists that life without future possibility would feel diminished.

“Why dispute what we shall be, when we know not even what we are.”

Speculation about future identity becomes less certain when present self-knowledge is incomplete, making humility a reasonable response to confident predictions about becoming.

Source note: The Madman, parable of the pomegranate; the line closes a dispute among voices imagining different futures.

“Always have we been our own forerunners, and always shall we be.”

Gibran treats identity as an unfinished process: each present version of a person prepares the ground for what follows rather than serving as a final fixed self.

Source note: The Forerunner, opening meditation; the sentence belongs to Gibran’s recurring image of the self as the beginning of another self.

“Upon the wreckage of thy yesterday design the structure of to-morrow.”

Past failure is treated as material for reconstruction rather than a final verdict, making tomorrow a project that can be designed from what has already been learned.

Source note: Poems of Progress and New Thought Pastels, “The Structure”; Project Gutenberg #3228. The following lines emphasize purpose, wisdom, resolve and patience, which anchors the rebuilding metaphor.

“The direction in which education starts a man, will determine his future life.”

Early education shapes habits of attention and judgment, so its direction can influence the kind of person someone later becomes.

Source note: The Republic, Book IV in Benjamin Jowett’s translation; the line appears during discussion of education and civic character.

“For the safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.”

Lowering unrealistic expectations can reduce avoidable disappointment, though the maxim deliberately sets a restrained rather than exuberant ideal of happiness.

Source note: Counsels and Maxims, opening general rules on happiness and avoiding unnecessary suffering.

“Always taking out of the meal-tub, and never putting in, soon comes to the bottom.”

Resources decline when withdrawals are not matched by replenishment, turning a household image into a warning about spending down finite savings.

Source note: The Way to Wealth, frugality section; Project Gutenberg #43855. The meal-tub is Franklin’s domestic metaphor for continual consumption without replacement.

“my imagination “paints yet more glorious triumphs on the cloud-curtain of the future.””

The closing image makes imagination a creative way of envisioning a better future, using painterly language to express hope rather than prediction.

Source note: Optimism: An Essay (1903), Project Gutenberg #31622. The quotation marks are Keller’s; the image belongs to the essay’s concluding vision of optimism.

“A penny here, and a dollar there, placed at interest, goes on accumulating, and in this way the desired result is attained.”

Small repeated savings are presented as meaningful because accumulation depends on consistency over time rather than only on occasional large financial gains.

Source note: The Art of Money Getting, opening economy section; Project Gutenberg #8581. The passage reflects nineteenth-century saving-at-interest advice and is not a promised rate of return.