Echoes

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time.

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.

Even as we speak, envious time is running away from us. Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in tomorrow.

Do not, my soul, seek immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.

If a man take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.

There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment. Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else.

Life is a journey, not a destination.

Life is too short to waste The critic bite or cynic bark, Quarrel, or reprimand; ’Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!

I am endeavouring to live every day as if it were a complete life.

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

What I urge is that you so learn to control the machinery as to live with 'day-tight compartments' as the most certain way to ensure safety on the voyage. Touch a button and hear, at every level of your life, the iron doors shutting out the dead yesterdays and the unborn to-morrows.

Do the duty which lies nearest thee, which thou knowest to be a duty! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

Lost Time is never found again.

What doth care about future events bring thee, save sorrow upon sorrow? Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. It is vain and useless to be disturbed or lifted up about future things which perhaps will never come.

To-morrow's action! Can that hoary wisdom, Borne down with years, still doat upon tomorrow! That fatal mistress of the young, the lazy, The coward, and the fool, condemn'd to lose A useless life in waiting for to-morrow, To gaze with longing eyes upon to-morrow, Till interposing death destroys the prospect Strange! that this general fraud from day to day Should fill the world with wretches undetected. The soldier, labouring through a winter's march, Still sees to-morrow drest in robes of triumph; Still to the lover's long-expecting arms To-morrow brings the visionary bride. But thou, too old to hear another cheat, Learn, that the present hour alone is man's.

The present moment contains past and future. The secret of transformation, is in the way we handle this very moment.

The man who has the largest capacity for work and thought is the man who is bound to succeed.

I have had three personal ideals: One to do the day's work well and not to bother about tomorrow. You may say that is not a satisfactory ideal. It is; and there is not one which the student can carry with him into practice with greater effect. To it more than anything else I owe whatever success I have had — to this power of settling down to the day's work and trying to do it well to the best of my ability, and letting the future take care of itself. The second ideal has been to act the Golden Rule, as far as in me lay, toward my professional brethren and toward the patients committed to my care. And the third has been to cultivate such a measure of equanimity as would enable me to bear success with humility, the affection of my friends without pride, and to be ready when the day of sorrow and grief came, to meet it with the courage befitting a man. What the future has in store for me, I cannot tell — you cannot tell. Nor do I care much, so long as I carry with me, as I shall, the memory of the past you have given me. Nothing can take that away.