Great Throughts Treasury

"One day is worth two tomorrows; never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today. What I am to be, I am now becoming." - Benjamin Franklin

"Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry, all things easy. He that rises late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night, while laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him." - Benjamin Franklin

"Most of us think ourselves as standing wearily and helplessly at the center of a circle bristling with tasks, burdens, problems, annoyance, and responsibilities which are rushing in upon us. At every moment we have a dozen different things to do, a dozen problems to solve, a dozen strains to endure. We see ourselves as overdriven, overburdened, overtired. This is a common mental picture and it is totally false. No one of us, however crowded his life, has such an existence. What is the true picture of your life? Imagine that there is an hour glass on your desk. Connecting the bowl at the top with the bowl at the bottom is a tube so thin that only one grain of sand can pass through it at a time. That is the true picture of your life, even on a super busy day. The crowded hours come to you always one moment at a time. That is the only way they can come. The day may bring many tasks, many problems, strains, but invariably they come in single file. You want to gain emotional poise? Remember the hourglass, the grains of sand dropping one by one." - James Gordon Gilkey

"It is familiarity with life that makes time speed quickly. When every day is a step in the unknown, as for children, the days are long with gathering of experience." - George Gissing, fully George Robert Gissing

"A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Devote each day to the object then in time, and every evening will find something done." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Duty is carrying on promptly and faithfully the affairs now before you. It is to fulfill the claims of to-day." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words... Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonplace; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead. It is only because they are not used to taste of what is excellent that take generality of people take delight in silly and insipid things, provided they are new." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"One should only celebrate a happy ending; celebrations at the outset exhaust the joy and energy needed to urge us forward and sustain us in the long struggle. And of all celebrations a wedding is the worst; no day should be kept more quietly and humbly." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The other day a man asked me what I thought was the best time of life. "Why," I answered without a thought, "now."" -

"Four out of five potential litigants will settle their disputes the first day they come together, if you will put the idea of arbitration in their heads." - Moses H. Grossman

"A people’s literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can." - Edith Hamilton

"He that acts unjustly is the worst rebel to himself; and though now ambition’s trumpet and drum of power may drown the sound, yet conscience with one day speak loudly to him." - William Havard

"The Kaddish is not a prayer for the dead, but a mandate for the living... It bids man rise above his sorrow... and fixes his view upon the welfare of mankind. It lifts his hope and vision to a day... when mankind shall at last inhabit the earth as children of the one God and Father, and justice reign supreme in peace." - R. Hertz, fully Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz

"Art is a staple of mankind - never a by-product of elitism. So urgent, so utterly linked with the pulse of feeling that it becomes the singular sing of life when every other aspect of civilization fails... Like hunger and sex, it is a disposition of the human cell - a marvelous fiction of the brain which recreates itself as something as mysterious as mind. Art is consistent with every aspect of every day in the life of every people." - Jamake Highwater

"The sweetest type of heaven is home - nay, heaven is the home for whose acquisition we are to strive the most strongly. Home, in one form and another, is the great object of life. It stands at the end of every day’s labor, and beckons us to its bosom; and life would be cheerless and meaningless, did we not discern across the river that divides us from the life beyond, glimpses of the pleasant mansion prepared for us." -

"Let this be understood, then, at starting; that the patient conquest of difficulties which rise in the regular and legitimate channels of business and enterprise is not only essential in securing the success which you seek but it is essential to that preparation of your mind, requisite for the enjoyment of your successes, and for retaining them when gained. So, day by day, and week by week; so month after month, and year after year, work on, and in that progress gain in strength and symmetry, and nerve and knowledge, that when success, patiently and bravely worked for, shall come, it may find you prepared to receive it and keep it." -

"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." -

"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch, nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

"Believe that each day which shines upon you is the last." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"Enjoy the present day, trusting very little to the morrow." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"Even as we speak, jealous time flees - seize this day, and put little faith in tomorrow." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"Seize the present; trust the future as little as you may... or... Sieze the day, with little trust in tomorrow (Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.)" - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"Our life’s pattern is not built on a few grand metaphysical themes but on the day-to-day, real-life decisions that we make - and that is also where our life’s meaning will be found." - Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

"Things as they are are changed when we demonstrate a new reality. A very small change in perception can result in a change in behavior and, cumulatively, in a very large change in cultural patterns. Our purpose and destiny are encoded within us. But they do not automatically propel us to the next act in our day, let alone the next stage in our evolution. Our Fourth Instinct allows us to see that next stage, and our free will enables us to act on it so that it can become a reality." - Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

"When I go down to the grave I can say I have finished my day's work. But I cannot say I have finished my life. My day's work will begin again the next morning." - Victor Hugo

"After an eight hour day, workers require three overtime hours to produce two regular hours of results." -

"The same space of time seems shorter as we grow older - that is, the days, the months, and the years do so; whether the hours do so is doubtful, and the minutes and seconds to all appearance remain about the same... In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollection of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous, and long-drawn-out. But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly notice at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse." - William James

"There are a good many pious people who are as careful of their religion as of their best service of china, only using it on holy occasions, for fear it should get chipped or flawed in working-day wear." -

"Great words are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. He that shall walk, with vigor, three hours a day will pass, in seven years, a space equal to the circumference of the globe." -

"It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for tomorrow." -

"The business of life is to go forward; he who sees evil in prospect meets it in his way, and he who catches it by retrospection turns back to find it. That which is feared may sometimes be avoided, but that which is regretted to-day may be regretted again to-morrow." -

"Every day give yourself a good mental shampoo." - Sara Jordan, fully Sara Claudia Murray Jordan

"One precedent creates another. They soon accumulate, and constitute law. What yesterday was fact, to-day is doctrine. Examples are supposed to justify the most dangerous measures; and where they; do not suit exactly the defect is supplied by analogy." -

"One day, we will reach the conclusion, perhaps, that the meaning of life lies in humankind’s creative power." - Yashar Kemal, also Yaşar Kemal

"Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; -'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the people's injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The choice today is not between violence and non-violence. It is either non-violence or non-existence...Segregation is the offspring of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"What right has any free, reasonable soul on earth to sell himself for a shilling a day to murder any man, right or wrong?" - Charles Kingsley

"My friend, there will come one day to you a Messenger, whom you cannot treat with contempt. He will say, “Come with me;” and all your pleas of business cares and earthly loves will be of no avail. When his cold hand touches yours, the key of the counting-room will drop forever, and he will lead you away from all your investments, your speculations, your bank-notes and real estate, and with him you will pass into eternity, up to the bar of God. You will not be too busy to die." - Abbott Elliot Kittredge

"Life does not stand still. Where there is no progress there is disintegration... Today is the day in which to attempt and achieve something worth while." -

"Old age likes to dwell in the recollections of the past, and, mistaking the speedy march of years, often is inclined to take the prudence of the winter time for a fit wisdom of midsummer days. Manhood is bent to the passing cares of the passing moment, and holds so closely to his eyes the sheet of “to-day,” that it screens the “to-morrow” from his sight." - Louis Kossuth, also Lajos Kossuth, fully Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva

"The first day the man is a guest, the second a burden, the third a pest." -

"Be avaricious of time; do not give any moment without receiving it in value; only allow hours to go from you with as much regret as you give to your gold; do not allow a single day to pass without increasing the treasure of your knowledge and virtue." - Nicolas Le Letourneux

"Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour." - Stephen Leacock, fully Stephen Butler Leacock

"Somebody asked me the other day, "What do you do?" "I amuse myself by growing old," I replied, "It's a full-time job."" - Paul Léautaud

"I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day." - Abraham Lincoln

"The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time." - Abraham Lincoln

"To disdain to-day is to prove that yesterday has been misunderstood." - Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck

"You do well to have visions of a better life than of every day, but it is the life of every day from which the elements of a better life must come." - Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck

"Every day sees humanity more victorious in the struggle with space and time." - Guglielmo Marconi