Inspirational Quotes on Future

“This cult of the future is not only a weakness but a cowardice of the age.”

“What is time? Who can explain this easily and briefly? Who can comprehend this even in thought so as to articulate the answer in words? Yet what do we speak of, in our familiar everyday conversation, more than of time? We surely know what we mean when we speak of it. We also know what is meant when we hear someone else talking about it. What then is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know. But I confidently affirm myself to know that if nothing passes away, there is no past time, and if nothing arrives, there is no future time, and if nothing existed there would be no present time. Take the two tenses, past and future. How can they 'be' when the past is not now present and the future is not yet present? Yet if the present were always present, it would not pass into the past: it would not be time but eternity. If then, in order to be time at all, the present is so made that it passes into the past, how can we say that this present also 'is'? The cause of its being is that it will cease to be. So indeed we cannot truly say that time exists except in the sense that it tends toward non-existence.”

“...it is the fear of the past; a fear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past also. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind. There have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold; so many harsh heroisms that we cannot imitate; so many great efforts of monumental building or of military glory which seems to us at once sublime and pathetic. The future is a refuge from the fierce competition of our forefathers.”

“The future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past I find already sovered with scribbles, such as Plato, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Napoleon. I can make the future as narrow as myself; the past is obliged to be as broad and turbulant as humanity.”

“I who know many present things by my art," replied the Hermit with a smile, "have yet little knowledge of things future. Therefore I do not know whether any man or woman or beast in the whole world will be alive when the sun sets tonight. But be of good hope. The damsel is likely to live as long as any her age.”

“What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.”

“O, het is met de verte als met de toekomst! Een wijd, schemerachtig vergezicht ligt voor ons, onze ziel en onze ogen drinken het in, en wij haken ernaar ons er helemaal aan over te geven, om in alle gelukzaligheid van één groot, heerlijk gevoel te zijn vervuld. Maar och, als we erop afvliegen, dan is alles zoals tevoren en staan wij in onze armoede, in onze beperktheid, en onze ziel dorst naar ontglipte lafenis.”

“We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so. (Page 10)”

“If a man has not discovered something that he could die for, he’s not fit to live.”

“Dec. 31… “Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ. Leave the broken, irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him.”

“I have often been asked by young Christians "Why is it that I fail so? I did so solemnly vow with my whole heart and did desire to serve God; why have I failed?" You are trying to do in your own strength what Christ alone can do in you. You were trusting in yourself, or you would not have failed. If you had trusted Christ, He could not fail. We find the Christian life so difficult because we seek God's blessing while we live in our own will. We make our own plans and choose our own work, and then we ask Him to give us His blessing.”

“Only a few short weeks ago, we shared the glory of man's first sight of the world as God sees it, as a single sphere reflecting light in the darkness. ... In that moment of surpassing technological triumph, men turned their thoughts toward home and humanity, seeing in that far perspective that man's destiny on earth is not divisible.”

“Stop trying, & start trusting.”