Joseph Addison Quotes

Events are as much the parents of the future as they were the children of the past.

The past,' he thought, 'is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another.' And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain; that when he touched one end the other quivered.

Everything present is included in the past somewhere; nobody's present pops out of nowhere.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

What happened yesterday affects today; what happens today will affect tomorrow/

The cause of today is the effect of the past and the cause for the future.

The future is embedded in the present.

Events do not really have beginnings or ends. Behind every event is the previous one, causing, or helping to cause, what follows.

The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.

In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects.

Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.

What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.

The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today.

The past is the present and the future too.

What happens today can affect what happens tomorrow, but it cannot affect what happened yesterday.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect is already in the cause.

There can be neither today without yesterday nor tomorrow without today.

You are caught in the current of unceasing change. Your life is a ripple in it. Every moment of your conscious life links the infinite past with the infinite future. Take part in both and you will not find the present empty.

Everything which is done in the present, affects the future by consequence, and the past by redemption.

The past is what makes now like now makes tomorrow.

There is no luck in life, everything happens for a reason. Every little thing that you do... leads up to a bigger thing. And that's the story of my life.

...one opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death.

The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.

There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition.

Every event in this world is the effect of some precedent cause, and also the cause of some subsequent effect.