Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Future; Futurity
That what will come, and must come, shall come well.
Edwin Arnold—Light of Asia. Bk. VI. L. 274.
Making all futures fruits of all the pasts.
Edwin Arnold—Light of Asia. Bk. V. L. 432.
Some day Love shall claim his own
Some day Right ascend his throne,
Some day hidden Truth be known;
Some day—some sweet day.
Lewis J. Bates—Some Sweet Day.
The year goes wrong, and tares grow strong,
Hope starves without a crumb;
But God’s time is our harvest time,
And that is sure to come.
Lewis J. Bates—Our Better Day.
Dear Land to which Desire forever flees;
Time doth no present to our grasp allow,
Say in the fixed Eternal shall we seize
At last the fleeting Now?
Bulwer-Lytton—Corn Flowers. Bk. I. The First Violets.
You can never plan the future by the past.
Burke—Letter to a Member of the National Assembly. Vol. IV. P. 55.
With mortal crisis doth portend,
My days to appropinque an end.
Butler—Hudibras. Pt I. Canto III. L. 589.
’Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
Campbell—Lochiel’s Warning.
Certis rebus certa signa præcurrunt.
Certain signs precede certain events.
Cicero—De Divinatione. I. 52.
***So often do the spirits
Of great events stride on before the events,
And in to-day already walks to-morrow.
Coleridge—Death of Wallenstein. Act V. Sc. 1.
There shall be no more snow
No weary noontide heat,
So we lift our trusting eyes
From the hills our Fathers trod:
To the quiet of the skies:
To the Sabbath of our God.
Felicia D. Hemans—Evening Song of the Tyrolese Peasants.
Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quærere: et
Quem Fors dierum cunque dabit, lucro
Appone.
Cease to inquire what the future has in store, and to take as a gift whatever the day brings forth.
Horace—Carmina. I. 9. 13.
Prudens futuri temporis exitum
Caliginosa nocte premit deus.
A wise God shrouds the future in obscure darkness.
Horace—Carmina. III. 29. 29.
You’ll see that, since our fate is ruled by chance,
Each man, unknowing, great,
Should frame life so that at some future hour
Fact and his dreamings meet.
Victor Hugo—To His Orphan Grandchildren.
With whom there is no place of toil, no burning heat, no piercing cold, nor any briars there … this place we call the Bosom of Abraham.
Josephus—Discourse to the Greeks concerning Hades. Homer—Odyssey. VI. 42.
When Earth’s last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and faith, we shall need it—lie down for an æon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew.
Kipling—When Earth’s Last Picture Is Painted.
Le présent est gros de l’avenir.
The present is big with the future.
Leibnitz.
Look not mournfully into the Past; it comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present; it is thine.
Go forth to meet the shadowy Future without fear and with a manly heart.
Longfellow—Hyperion.
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Longfellow—A Psalm of Life.
There’s a good time coming, boys;
A good time coming:
We may not live to see the day,
But earth shall glisten in the ray
Of the good time coming.
Cannon-balls may aid the truth,
But thought’s a weapon stronger;
We’ll win our battle by its aid,
Wait a little longer.
Chas. Mackay—The Good Time Coming.
The future is a world limited by ourselves; in it we discover only what concerns us and, sometimes, by chance, what interests those whom we love the most.
Maeterlinck—Joyzelle. Act I.
Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Matthew. VI. 34.
The never-ending flight
Of future days.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. II. L. 221.
There was the Door to which I found no key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see.
Omar Khayyam—Rubaiyat. St. 32. (Later ed.) FitzGerald’s trans.
Venator sequitur fugientia; capta relinquit;
Semper et inventis ulteriora petit.
The hunter follows things which flee from him; he leaves them when they are taken; and ever seeks for that which is beyond what he has found.
Ovid—Amorum. Bk. II. 9. 9.
Ludit in humanis divina potentia rebus,
Et certam præsens vix habet hora fidem.
Heaven makes sport of human affairs, and the present hour gives no sure promise of the next.
Ovid—Epistolæ Ex Ponto. IV. 3. 49.
Nos duo turba sumus.
We two [Deucalion and Pyrrha, after the deluge] form a multitude.
Ovid—Metamorphoses. I. 355.
Après nous le déluge.
After us the deluge.
Mme. Pompadour. After the battle of Rossbach. See Larousse—Fleurs Historiques. Madame de Hausset—Memoirs. (Ed. 1824). P. 19. Also attributed to Louis XV by the French. Compare Cicero—De Finibus. XI. 16.
Oh, blindness to the future! kindly giv’n,
That each may fill the circle mark’d by heaven.
Pope—Essay on Man. Ep. I. L. 85.
In adamantine chains shall Death be bound,
And Hell’s grim tyrant feel th’ eternal wound.
Pope—Messiah. L. 47.
And better skilled in dark events to come.
Pope—Odyssey. Bk. V. 219.
Etwas fürchten und hoffen und sorgen,
Muss der Mensch für den kommenden Morgen.
Man must have some fears, hopes, and cares, for the coming morrow.
Schiller—Die Braut von Messina.
But there’s a gude time coming.
Scott—Rob Roy. Ch. XXXII.
Calamitosus est animus futuri anxius.
The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.
Seneca—Epistolæ Ad Lucilium. XCVIII.
How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown.
Julius Cæsar. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 111.
God, if Thy will be so,
Enrich the time to come with smooth-faced peace,
With smiling plenty and fair prosperous days!
Richard III. Act V. Sc. 5. L. 32.
Quid crastina volveret ætas,
Scire nefas homini.
Man is not allowed to know what will happen to-morrow.
Statius—Thebais. III. 562.
Could we but know
The land that ends our dark, uncertain travel.
E. C. Stedman—Undiscovered Country.
When the Rudyards cease from Kipling
And the Haggards ride no more.
J. K. Stephen—Lapsus Calami.
When I am dead let the earth be dissolved in fire.
Suetonius. Quoting Nero. Nero. 38. Quoted by Milton from Tiberius in his Church Government. Bk. I. Ch. V. Tiberius, quoting an unknown Greek poet. See note of Leutsch, Appendix II. 56, to Proverbs LVIII. 23. Euripides—Fragment Inc. B. XXVII.
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold.
Bayard Taylor—Bedouin Song.
Istuc est sapere, non quod ante pedes modo est
Videre, sed etiam illa, quæ futura sunt
Prospicere.
That is to be wise to see not merely that which lies before your feet, but to foresee even those things which are in the womb of futurity.
Terence—Adelphi. III. 3. 32.
I hear a voice you cannot hear,
Which says, I must not stay;
I see a hand you cannot see,
Which beckons me away.
Tickell—Colin and Lucy.
Dabit deus his quoque finem.
God will put an end to these also.
Vergil—Æneid. I. 199.