“When I consider life, 't is all a cheat.
Yet fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay.
To-morrow 's falser than the former day;
Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.
Strange cozenage! none would live past years again,
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;
And from the dregs of life think to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give.”

Aureng-Zebe (1676), Act IV, scene i.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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John Dryden196

English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century 1631–1700

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“To-morrow comes, true copy of to-day,
And empty shadow of what is to be;
Yet cheated Hope on future still depends,
And ends but only when our being ends.”

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“Kennaston could find in the past — even he, who was privileged to view the past in its actuality, rather than through the distorting media of books and national pride — no suggestion as to what, if anything, he was expected to do while his physical life lasted, or to what, if anything, this life was a prelude. Yet that to-day was only a dull overture to to-morrow seemed in mankind an instinctive belief. All life everywhere, as all people spent it, was in preparation for something that was to happen to-morrow.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 27 : Evolution of a Vestryman

“Whate’er there be of Sorrow
I’ll put off till To-morrow,
And when To-morrow comes, why then
’T will be To-day and Joy again.”

John Kendrick Bangs (1862–1922) American author, editor and satirist

The Word.

“But now suppose the soul, when separate,
Could live, and think, in a divided state:
Yet what is that to us, who are the whole,
A frame composed of body, joined with soul?
Nay, grant the scattered ashes of our urn,
Be joined again, and life and sense return:
Yet how can that concern us, when 'tis done,
Since all the memory of past life is gone?
Now we ne'er joy, nor grieve, to think that we
Were heretofore, nor what those things will be,
Which framed from us, the following age shall see.
When we revolve, how numerous years have run,
How oft the east beheld the rising sun
E'er we began, and how the atoms move,
How the unthinking seed forever strove;
'Tis probable, and reason's laws allow,
These seeds of ours were once combined as now;
Yet now who minds, who knows his former state?
The interim of death, the hand of fate,
Or stopped the seeds, or made them all commence
Such motions, as destroyed the former sense.”

Thomas Creech (1659–1700) English translator

T. Lucretius Carus the Epicurean Philosopher, His Six Books De Natura Rerum Done into English Verse (1682), Book III, lines 820–840

“Why, alas! is life decreed
Full of pain and full of sorrow?
All uncertain as it is,
Can we rest upon to-morrow?
Why should blessings yet in store,
Hold us still in expectation?
Leading thro' succeeding sorrows,
By some fond anticipation:
'Tis to give a tender interest
To the scenes in which we're moving:
While those hopes so often blasted,
Sensual pleasures are reproving.”

Elizabeth Bath (1776–1844) English poet

"An Effusion", from Poems, on Various Occasions (1806)

“Farewell, and when to-morrow
Seems little, like to-day,
And we find life's deepest sorrow
Melts gradual away;
Yet do not quite forget me.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(1837 1) (Vol. 49) Songs - I.
The Monthly Magazine

“We change, and others change, while recollection
Fain would renew what it can but recall :
Dark are life's dreams, and weary its affection,
And cold its hopes, — and yet I felt them all,
A long while ago.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(1838 1) (Vol 52) A Long While Ago
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“And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press
End in what All begins and ends in — Yes;
Think then you are To-day what Yesterday
You were — To-morrow You shall not be less.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

“We would all say that deep down, all we want is to be happy. Yet we don’t have a realistic understanding of what happiness really is. Happiness is closer to the experience of acceptance and contentment than it is to pleasure.”

Noah Levine (1971) American Buddhist teacher

Refuge Recovery (2014)

“These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

Source: The Mill on the Floss (1860)

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John Dryden196

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