“What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”

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Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. 107
United States Supreme Court justice 1841–1935

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“What lies behind us and what lies before us are but tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 131

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“What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Attributed to Thoreau, in The Life You Were Born to Live : A Guide to Finding Your Life Purpose (1995) by Dan Millman, p. xi, and to Ralph Waldo Emerson in Promotion of Pharmaceuticals : Issues, Trends, Options (1993) by Dev S. Pathak, Alan Escovitz, and Suzan Kucukarslan, p. 74, but no occurrence of it prior to the 1990s has been located.
Disputed

Edward Bellamy photo

“Looking Backward was written in the belief that the Golden Age lies before us and not behind us.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Author's postscript.
Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/lkbak10.txt (1888)

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Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan photo

“Wealth is not money. Wealth lies in men. This is where true power lies, the power we value. This is what has convinced us to direct all our resources to build the individual, and to use the wealth which God has provided us in the service of the nation.”

Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (1918–2004) Sheikh of Abu Dhabi (1918-2004)

1 https://en.vogue.me/culture/the-most-inspirational-quotes-from-the-late-sheikh-zayed/, 3 https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/9827319.Sheikh_Zayed_Al_Nahyan

James Howard Kunstler photo
Margaret Fuller photo

“All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

"Good Sense" in a dialogue between Free Hope, Old Church, Good Sense, and Self -Poise. p. 127.
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
Context: All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. I never see any of these things but I long to get away and lie under a green tree and let the wind blow on me. There is marvel and charm enough in that for me.

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“How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Source: Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

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