Future Quotes - Page 20

• But my future is a secret. / It is as shy as a mole.

  Anne Sexton

  Secret, Moles, Shy

  Anne Sexton (1978). “Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

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• Oh, blindness to the future! kindly giv'n, That each may fill the circle mark'd by heaven.

  Alexander Pope

  Circles, Heaven, May

  Alexander Pope (1820). “An Essay on Man: In Four Epistles to H. St. John Lord Bolinbroke. To which are Added the Universal Prayer, Messiah, and Elegy”, p.7

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• Mindfulness was experienced as not holding onto the past, the future, or 'nowness:' but relaxing into the immediacy of whatever was happening.

  B. Alan Wallace

  Past, Mindfulness, Holding On

  B. Alan Wallace (2014). “Mind in the Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity”, p.30, Columbia University Press

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• advance money is really a delusion, that is to say, I get no more until it is paid out in sales, but still, living from hand to mouth and day to day as I do, a nickel in the hand is more useful than the same nickel next year. What do I know about next year? I've never been there. I don't know any one who has.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Hands, Years, Mouths

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.370, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• I am dead already. Physical death will make no difference in my case. I am timeless being. I am free of desire or fear, because I do not remember the past or imagine the future. Where there are no names and shapes, how can there be desire and fear? With desirelessness comes timelessness. I am safe, because what is not, cannot touch what is. You feel unsafe, because you imagine danger. Of course, your body as such is complex and vulnerable and needs protection. But not you. Once you realize your own unassailable being, you will be at peace.

  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

  Death, Peace, Fear

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• Let us be such as help the life of the future.

  Zoroaster

  Helping

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• What is Zen? Simple, simple, so simple. Infinite gratitude toward all things past; infinite service to all things present; infinite responsibility to all things future.

  Huston Smith

  Gratitude, Responsibility, Past

  Huston Smith, Jeffery Paine (2012). “The Huston Smith Reader”, p.87, Univ of California Press

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• The things of another world being distant, operate but faintly upon us: to remedy this inconvenience, we must frequently revolve their certainty and importance.

  Francis Atterbury

  World, Importance, Certainty

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• Nothing can be reckoned good or bad to us in this life, any further than it indisposes us for the enjoyment of another.

  Francis Atterbury

  This Life, Enjoyment

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• Don't hurry anything. Don't worry about the future. Don't worry about what progress you're making. Just be entirely content to be aware of what is.

  Alan Watts

  Worry, Progress

  Alan Watts (1977). “The essence of Alan Watts”, Celestial Arts Publishing Company

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• Nobody can live in the past or the future without being something of a nut.

  Evelyn Nesbit

  Past, Nuts

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• Mindfulness develops attention, concentration and the ability to simply be present with little or no future orientation, past orientation or goal orientation—choosing to be a human being rather than a human doing.

  Ian Gawler

  Past, Goal, Mindfulness

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• The past has been given to us. The future must be built, as others have built our past.

  Gladys Hasty Carroll

  Past, Given, Built

  Gladys Hasty Carroll (1957). “Sing Out the Glory”

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• When I am dead let the earth be dissolved in fire.

  Suetonius

  Fire, Earth

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• The only way I can endure the future is to ignore it.

  Helen Jacobs

  Way, Endure, I Can

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• O heaven! that one might read the book of fate, and see the revolution of the times.

  William Shakespeare

  Book, Fate, Heaven

  'Henry IV, Part 2' (1597) act 3, sc. 1, l. 45

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• To practice Zen means to realize one's existence in the beauty and clarity of this present moment, rather than letting life unravel in useless daydreaming of the past and future.

  John Daishin Buksbazen

  Beauty, Mean, Past

  John Daishin Buksbazen (2010). “Zen Meditation in Plain English”, p.5, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Somewhere inside we do know everything about ourselves. There is no real forgetting. Perhaps we know somewhere, too, about all there is to come.

  Jane Gardam

  Real, Forget, Knows

  Jane Gardam (1986). “Crusoe's Daughter”, Atheneum Books

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• When worse may yet befall, there's room for prayer,
  But when our fortune's at its lowest ebb,
  We trample fear beneath our feet, and live
  Without a fear of evil yet to come.

  Ovid

  Prayer, Feet, Evil

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• The most significant change wrought by adolescence is the taming of the ideals by which a person measures himself. . . . Love of oneself becomes love of the species. Conscience is pointed to the future, whispering permission to reach beyond the safety net of our ordinary and finite human existence.

  Louise J. Kaplan

  Significant Change, Safety, Self Love

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• Look before, or you'll find yourself behind.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Finding Yourself, Looks, Poor Richard

  Benjamin Franklin (2008). “The Way to Wealth and Poor Richard's Almanac”, p.28, Nayika Publishing

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• There are two processes which we adopt consciously or unconsciously when we try to prophesy. We can seek a period in the past whose conditions resemble as closely as possible those of our day, and presume that the sequel to that period will, save for some minor alterations, be similar. Secondly, we can survey the general course of development in our immediate past, and endeavor to prolong it into the near future. The first is the method the historian; the second that of the scientist. Only the second is open to us now, and this only in a partial sphere.

  Winston Churchill

  Past, Two, Trying

  Sir Winston Churchill, Jack Fishman (1974). “If I lived my life again”, W.H. Allen

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• No soul is bad enough for a fixed "hell," or good enough for a fixed "heaven," however useful the words may be as pointing to opposite states.

  Hugh Reginald Haweis

  Opposites, Heaven, Soul

  Hugh Reginald Haweis (1875). “Speech in Season”, p.292

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• If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.

  Alan Watts

  Happiness, Death, Elude

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

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• Tomorrow gives a beck'ning hand-- I turn my face away; I'll not invite her to my home-- I only love Today.

  Phil Jackson

  Home, Hands, Giving

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