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Not to the present is our hour confined,
The great and shadowy future is assigned
To be the glorious empire of the mind.
The past was once the future, and it wrought
In the high presence of on-looking thought ;
All that we have, was by its efforts brought.
To-day creates to-morrow, and the tree
Of good or ill grows in past hours, what we
Make for the future — certain is to be.

— Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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More quotes by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Hope is a timid thing,
Fearful, and weak, and born in suffering;
At least, such Hope as human life can bring.

Love, thou hast hopes like summers, short and bright,
Moments of ecstasy, and maddening dreams,
Intense delicious throbs!

The Improvisatrice (1824)

And Love is like the lightning in its might,
Winging where least bethought its fiery flight,
Melting the blade, despite the scabbard's guard.

The Golden Violet (1827)

His heart is like a maggot-eaten nut:
There's nothing in it ; but 'tis closely shut.

Great power is almost always a great evil.

Romance and Reality (1831)

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

Sanu Sharma

You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now does always last.

Abraham Cowley Poems (1656)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Letitia Elizabeth Landon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.