Futurity Quotes & Sayings

I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. — Thomas Jefferson

Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity. — Henry David Thoreau

A blot in thy escutcheon to all futurity. — Miguel De Cervantes

Judge not man by his outward manifestation of faith; for some there are who tremblingly reach out shaking hands to the guidance of faith; others who stoutly venture in the dark their human confidence, their leader, which they mistake for faith; some whose hope totters upon crutches; others who stalk into futurity upon stilts. The difference is chiefly constitutional with them. — Charles Lamb

If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman. — Samuel Johnson

I quoted to him what I remembered of Charles Darwin: "'Judging by the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity ... '"
"Darwin was right," Nebogipfel said gently. — Stephen Baxter

On Portents
If strange things happen where she is,
So that men say that graves open
And the dead walk, or that futurity
Becomes a womb and the unborn are shed,
Such portents are not to be wondered at,
Being tourbillions in Time made
By the strong pulling of her bladed mind
Through that ever-reluctant element. — Robert Graves

Designedly God covers in dark night the issue of futurity. — Horace

If she had seen his face when, safe in his own room, he looked at the picture of a severe and rigid young lady, with a good deal of hair, who appeared to be gazing darkly into futurity, it might have thrown some light upon the subject, especially when he turned off the gas, and kissed the picture in the dark. — Louisa May Alcott

Strategic planning is the continuous process of making present entrepreneurial (risk-taking) decisions systematically and with the greatest knowledge of their futurity; organizing systematically the efforts needed to carry out these decisions; and measuring the results of these decisions against the expectations through organized, systematic feedback. — Peter Drucker

Though fanaticism drinks at many founts, its predisposing cause is mostly the subject of an invisible futurity. — Francis Atterbury

To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets — Samuel Johnson

Duty and to-day are ours; results and futurity belong to God. — Horace Greeley

something to be attained by special virtuous techniques, the less real it becomes. As it becomes less real, it recedes further into the distance of abstraction, futurity, unattainability. The — Thomas Merton

The whole blear world of smoke and twisted steel around my head in a railroad car, and my mind wandering past the rust into futurity: I saw the sun go down in a carnal and primeval world, leaving darkness to cover my railroad train because the other side of the world was waiting for dawn. — Allen Ginsberg

It ever is the marked propensity of restless and aspiring minds to look into the stretch of dark futurity. — Joanna Baillie

All futurity seems teeming with endless destruction never to be repelled; Desperate remorse swallows the present in a quenchless rage. — William Blake

Happiness is a mysterious concept. It seems to work best as futurity: at that point I will be happy, et cetera. I feel like I experience small pieces of joy day to day. — Rachel Kushner

We can trace back our existence almost to a point. Former time presents us with trains of thoughts gradually diminishing to nothing. But our ideas of futurity are perpetually expanding. Our desires and our hopes, even when modified by our fears, seem to grasp at immensity. This alone would be sufficient to prove the progressiveness of our nature, and that this little earth is but a point from which we start toward a perfection of being. — Humphry Davy

Futurity is impregnable to mortal ken: no prayer pierces through heaven's adamantine walls. Whether the birds fly right or left, whatever be the aspect of the stars, the book of nature is a maze, dreams are a lie, and every sign a falsehood. — Friedrich Schiller

It has been well observed that we should treat futurity as an aged friend from whom we expect a rich legacy. — Charles Caleb Colton

No person shall preach without the permission of his Superior. All preachers shall explain the Gospel according to the Fathers. They shall not explain futurity or the times of Antichrist! — Pope Leo X

I learn several great truths; as that it is impossible to see into the ways of futurity, that punishment always attends the villain, that love is the fond soother of the human breast. — Oliver Goldsmith

They who look but little into futurity, have, perhaps, the quickest sensation of the present. — Samuel Johnson

It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity. — William Samuel Johnson

All futurity wears the head of an insect. — Andrew Joron

It might be, too - doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole - it might be that another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt, there trode, the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union that, unrecognised on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I had now reached that phase of the disorder where all sense of hope had vanished, along with the idea of a futurity; my brain, in thrall to its outlaw hormones, had become less an organ of thought than an instrument registering, minute by minute, varying degrees of its own suffering. — William Styron

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Every disastrous accident alarms us, and sets us on enquiries concerning the principles whence it arose: Apprehensions spring up with regard to futurity: And the mind, sunk into diffidence, terror, and melancholy, has recourse to every method of appeasing those secret intelligent powers, on whom our fortune is supposed entirely to depend. — David Hume

To see the futurity of the species has always been the privilege of the intellectual elite, or of those who have learnt from them; to have the feelings of that futurity has been the distinction, and usually the martyrdom, of a still rare elite. Institutions, books, education, society, all go on training human beings for the old, long after the new has come; much more when it is only coming. — John Stuart Mill

Men's actions to futurity appear but as the events to which they are conjoined do give them consequence. — Joanna Baillie

Now, what I am, and what I was, I know; I see the seasons in procession go With still increasing speed; while things to come, Unknown, unthought, amid the growing gloom Of long futurity, perplex my soul, While life is posting to its final goal. Mine is the crime, who ought with clearer light To watch the winged years' incessant flight; And not to slumber on in dull delay — Francesco Petrarca

The military mind is indeed a menace. Old-fashioned futurity that sees only men fighting and dying in smoke and fire; hears nothing more civilized than a cannonade; scents nothing but the stink of battle-wounds and blood. — Sean O'Casey

Thoughts mold your features. Thoughts lift your soul heavenward or drag you toward hell. ... As nothing reveals character like the company we like and keep, so nothing foretells futurity like the thoughts over which we brood. ... To have the approval of your conscience when you are alone with your thoughts is like being in the company of true and loving friends. To merit your own self-respect gives strength to character. Conscience is the link that binds your soul to the spirit of God. — David O. McKay

Who can prophesy peace, or vow Futurity for any but armed insects — Allen Ginsberg

life is then, in sum, "constantly deciding what we are going to be."[78] As a result, our life is intrinsically a collision with the future. Thus, "life is futurity, it is what it is not yet."[79] — Oswald Sobrino

Futurity is the great concern of mankind. — Edmund Burke

Wrath to come implies both the futurity and perpetuity of this wrath ... Yea, it is not only certainly future, but when it comes it will be abiding wrath, or wrath still coming. When millions of years and ages are past and gone, this will still be wrath to come. Ever coming as a river ever flowing. — John Flavel

A general loftiness of sentiment, independence of men, consciousness of good intentions, self-oblivion in great objects, clear views of futurity; thoughts of the blessed companionship of saints and angels, trust in God as the friend of truth and virtue,
these are the states of mind in which I should live. — William Ellery Channing

[Reason tells me of the] extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capability of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. — Charles Darwin

The Earth with its scarred face is the symbol of the Past; the Air and Heaven, of Futurity. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish. — John Stuart Mill

When one illusion vanishes, another shall appear, and, still leading me forward towards an horizon that retreats as I advance, the happy prospect of futurity shall vanish only with my existence. — Maria Edgeworth

Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. — Charles Darwin

I shall venture to affirm, that there never was a popular religion, which represented the state of departed souls in such a light,as would render it eligible for human kind, that there should be such a state. These fine models of religion are the mere product of philosophy. For as death lies between the eye and the prospect of futurity, that event is so shocking to nature, that it must throw a gloom on all the regions which lie beyond it; and suggest to the generality of mankind the idea of Cerberus and Furies; devils, and torrents of fire and brimstone. — David Hume

The veil which covers the face of futurity is woven by the hand of mercy. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton