Quotes about yesterday
page 2

“Each day I love you more. Today more than yesterday but less than tomorrow. ”

Роземонд Жерар (1871–1953)

“Friendship is not a game to play, It is not a word to say, It doesn't start on March and ends on May, It is tomorrow, yesterday, today and everyday.”

Ed Westwick (1987) English actor and musician

Friendship, Game

“Today you feel uplifted. Do not let yesterday and tomorrow bring you down.”

Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810) Ukrainian rabbi

היום אתה חש מרומם. אל תתן לימות האתמול והמחר להשפיל את רוחך
Hayom ata hash m'romam. Al titen l'ymot ha'etmol v'hamahar lehashpil at ruhekha.
Attributed

Feeling

“This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations — the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. Even now, after the lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me, and I hope never will.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Ch. XXXVIII http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5811/5811-h/5811-h.htm <br class="br">Following the Equator (1897)

Men, God, Religion, Dreams

“I go to restaurants and the groups always play "Yesterday." I even signed a guy's violin in Spain after he played us "Yesterday."”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

He couldn't understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't have gone from table to table playing "I Am The Walrus."
On the song "Yesterday", written by Paul McCartney
Playboy interview (1980)

Guy

“The 'kingdom of God' is not something one waits for; it has no yesterday or tomorrow, it does not come 'in a thousand years”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

it is an experience within a heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere...
Sec. 34
The Antichrist (1888)

God, Waiting

“How you succeeded yesterday is water under the bridge, you have to reinvent yourself and look ahead for new accomplishments.”

Vladimer Botsvadze

Water

“Die to everything of yesterday so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigor and passion.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Passion

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the World. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

https://twitter.com/wise_chimp/status/1488946174321205253?s=21

World, Change

“She took me to a mall yesterday"' Lachlain sounded as if he'd just stifled a shudder. "And she pointed to a boy and said, 'I think I want one.' So naturally, I start thinking, But she meant a bairn—”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Pleasure of a Dark Prince

Boy, Nature, Thinking

“The sun has already set on the days we made those choices. We must concentrate on what we can do tomorrow; we can't relive yesterday.”

Terry Goodkind (1948) American novelist

Sun

“What worked yesterday doesn't always work today.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“Ends are for yesterday, not tomorrows.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Friendship, Good Night, Goodbye, For Friend

“You'd be surprised how little I knew even up to yesterday”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

“How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

“Not only are selves conditional but they die. Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Source: Self-Consciousness

Death, Time, Personality, Dead

“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

2010s
Context: The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.

World, Suffering

“Look forward, not back. Correct your course and go on. You cannot undo yesterday's journey.”

Robin Hobb book Ship of Magic

Source: Ship of Magic

“You ate something yesterday. You sure?"asked Simon
Jace shrugged."Well, I wouldnt swear on a stack of Bibles. I think it was yesterday, though.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Thinking

“Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don't rent them out to tomorrow.”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

“I wake up thinking of yesterday. The joy is in remembering; the pain is in knowing it was yesterday.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Pain, Thinking, Joy

“This is how fast your life can turn around. How the future you have tomorrow won't be the same future you had yesterday.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Variant: The future you have, tomorrow, won't be the same future you had, yesterday.
Source: Rant

Life, Future

“If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Search, Understanding

“It's amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.”

John Guare Landscape of the Body

Source: Landscape of the Body

Hope

“You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it's made out of. Nothin else.”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

Source: No Country for Old Men (2005)
Context: You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it's made out of. Nothin else. You might think you could run away and change your name and I dont know what all. Start over. And then one mornin you wake up and look at the ceilin and guess who's layin there?

Life, Thinking

“Yesterday when we went over the plan again and again, I never thought about Grandad showing up. Because I'm an idiot, basically--an idiot with poor planning skills. Of course he's here. Where else would he be?

Seriously, what else could go wrong?”

Holly Black book White Cat

Source: White Cat

“Yesterday and tomorrow cross and mix on the skyline. The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets, one waits.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

Waiting, Forgetting

“When we put things off until some future-probably mythical-Laterland, we drag the past into the future. The burden of yesterday's incompletions is a heavy load to carry. Don't carry it.”

Peter McWilliams (1949–2000) American author and civil liberties advocate

Past, Future

“Yesterday was a closed book, tomorrow, however, was another story.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Book of Tomorrow

Books

“Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

Source: The Name of the Rose

“To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Learning

“Yesterday, the president met with a group he calls the coalition of the willing. Or, as the rest of the world calls them, Britain and Spain”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

World

“Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Misattributed

“Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night

“Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.”

Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American playwright and novelist

As quoted in "The Notation of the Heart" by Edmund Fuller, in The American Scholar Reader (1960) edited by Hiram Hayden and Betsy Saunders

Love, Dogs

“Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night.”

Elena Ferrante book My Brilliant Friend

Source: My Brilliant Friend

Children, Night

“So I left my wonderfully intelligent family and soaked myself in the bath and considered drowning myself. Then I remembered I still had chocolate cake left over from yesterday so I came back up for air. Some things are worth living for.”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Source: Love, Rosie

Family, Intelligence

“In my house there's this light switch that doesn't do anything. Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Madagascar. She said”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Light, Housing

“Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Motivational, Missing You, Positive, Good Night

“Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Glory Road

Glory Road (1963)
Context: Logic is a feeble reed, friend. "Logic" proved that airplanes can't fly and that H-bombs won't work and that stones don't fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow.

Way

“You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Alexander Pope, Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727), Published in Swift's Miscellanies (1727)
Misattributed
Variant: A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

“I am not afraid of tomorrow
for I have seen yesterday
and I love today”

William Allen White (1868–1944) American newspaper editor and politician

Love, Inspirational

“One more dance along the razor's edge finished. Almost dead yesterday, maybe dead tomorrow, but alive, gloriously alive, today.”

Robert Jordan Lord of Chaos

Variant: Almost dead yesterday, maybe dead tomorrow, but alive, gloriously alive, today.
Source: Lord of Chaos

Dance, Dead

“Yesterday is another world. I want to go back there.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

World

“Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday.”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

“Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved

“Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: Nature and Selected Essays

Color, Nature, Holiday

“Yesterday is skin on snake, to be shed many times.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Beyond The Highland Mist

Time

“Yesterday I wanted to turn inside out.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Tree of Codes

Source: Tree of Codes

“Yesterday I did not want to be borrowed but this is the typewriter that sits before me and love is where yesterday is at.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: Love Poems

Love

“Remember this your lifetime through:
Tomorrow there will be more to do.
And failure waits for all who stay
With some success made yesterday.
Tomorrow you must try once more,
And even harder than before.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Failure, Waiting, Success

“As of yesterday, my son became engaged to be married to his partner, Magnus Bane”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“He believed in himself, believed in his quixotic ambition, letting the failures of the previous day disappear as each new day dawned. Yesterday was not today. The past did not predict the future if he could learn from his mistakes.”

Daniel Wallace (1959) American author

Source: The Kings and Queens of Roam

Failure, Learning, Past, Future

“Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday's unrecollected sins.”

Hilary Mantel book Wolf Hall

Source: Wolf Hall

“Excuse our appearances. We are taking apart yesterday, to make way for tomorrow”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Perfect Fifths

Way, Appearance

“In terms of evolutionary history, it was only yesterday that men learned to walk around on two legs and get in trouble thinking complicated thoughts. So don't worry, you'll burn out.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Men, History, Thinking, Learning

“How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Combien de choses nous servoyent hier d’articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd’huy?
Book I, Ch. 27
Essais (1595), Book I
Source: The Complete Essays

Faith

“Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into the nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.”

Thomas Wolfe book Look Homeward, Angel

Source: Look Homeward, Angel

Love, Night

“A poem by Margot Bickel

A little peace
within the last hours of the almost bygone day
a little silence
between the days
so that the nascent yesterday does not get in the past
and tomorrow is lived for today”

Margot Bickel (1958) German poet

Peace, Silence, Past

“Life is a perpetual yesterday for us.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

Life

“yesterday someone sent a message that was signed GOD! bernard said.
really? dap said. i didn't know he was signed onto the system”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

God

“I can remember my first one-night stand like it was yesterday. Well, maybe not the first. Or the second… or the fifth. I'll just begin with what I can remember and not concern myself with order.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

Night

“Day before yesterday I saw a rabbit, and yesterday a deer, and today, you.”

Robert F. Young book The Dandelion Girl

Source: The Dandelion Girl

“you are
yesterday's
bouquet so sadly
raided”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

“Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools!”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Age, Parting

“I lay back and tried not to think of the minutes passing. Just yesterday we had a wealth of them. Now each was a drop of heartsblood lost.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Thinking, Wealth

“Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut, that held its ground.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

Variant: Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut, that held its ground.
Source: Davidicke.com

“It's all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won't be over until tomorrow.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“Love isn't about what we did yesterday; it's about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after”

Grace Lee Boggs (1915–2015) social activist and feminist

Source: The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century

Love

“There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people were trapped on the escalators.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

People

“There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and there was the day before…”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“In our relationships, how much can we allow them to become new, and how much do we cling to what they used to be yesterday?”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

“‎No people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for 'tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip on the time.”

Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children

Source: Midnight's Children

People, Time

“Only yesterday a young woman came to me wanting a trap set for a man with a sweet smile and lithe arms. She was a fool, not for wanting him, but for wanting more of him than that.”

Patricia A. McKillip (1948) American fantasy writer

Smile, Fools

“But until a person can say deeply and honestly, "I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Personality

“If I have not read a book before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Reading New Books" (1825)
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)

Books, Reading

“Don't let yesterday take up too much of today.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Source: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court

Motivational

“I love you more than songs can say, but I can't keep running after yesterday…”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Source: John Mayer - Battle Studies

Love, Goodbye

“Remember this also: it’s always easy to look back and see what we were, yesterday, ten years ago. It is hard to see what we are. If you can master that trick, you’ll get along.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

“I am not so naïve as to believe that this slim volume will change the course of history or shake the conscience of the world. Books no longer have the power they once did. Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night

Books, World, History, Change

“procrastination is the
art of keeping
up with yesterday”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

certain maxims of archy
archy and mehitabel (1927)

Art, Funny

“To quote the Tsalagi, you should never allow your yesterday to use up too much of today. The past is gone and tomorrow is at best a maybe. Live for this moment because it may be all you'll ever have.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Retribution

Quotes, Past

“A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

“Yesterday's gone on down the river and you can't get it back.”

Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove

Source: Lonesome Dove

“Yesterday was a memory. Tomorrow was a hope. Today was another day to live and do one's best to love”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Into the Dreaming

Love, Hope, Memory

“Part of the function of memory is to forget; the omni-retentive mind will break down and produce at best an idiot savant who can recite a telephone book, and at worst a person to whom every grudge and slight is as yesterday's.”

Christopher Hitchens book Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

Source: Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

Books, Memory, Parting, Personality

“In a way, looking back, it seemed a long, long time since she had been eighteen, but in another way her memories were so clear and vivid that it seemed like yesterday.”

Helen Hooven Santmyer (1895–1986) American novelist

Way, Memory, Time

“For the yesterdays and todays, and the tomorrows I can hardly wait for - Thank you.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Book of Tomorrow

Waiting

“hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
-fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Source: Complete Poems, 1904-1962

Hate, World, Fear, Universe

“CALVIN:
When I grow up I want to be an inventor. First I will invent a time machine. Then I'll come back to yesterday and take myself to tomorrow and skip this dumb assignment.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Time

“I thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it turns out today is.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Life

“If you don't feel as close to God today as you did yesterday, who moved?”

Chris Heimerdinger (1963) American writer

Source: Feathered Serpent, Part 1

God, Feeling

“Today's worries are yesterday's fears and tomorrow's stories.”

Alyson Nöel book Evermore

Source: Evermore

Fear

“That's what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

Sense

“Oh, seek, my love, your newer way;
I'll not be left in sorrow.
So long as I have yesterday,
Go take your damned tomorrow!”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Love, Way

“The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.”

E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread

Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread

Happiness

“You live your life today,
Not tomorrow,
and certainly not yesterday.”

John Grisham (1955) American lawyer, politician, and author

Life

“I am delighted to inform you that in yesterday's sitting of the Cabinet it was unanimously agreed that your application of last August for authority to return to Germany should be sanctioned in principle…While acquainting Your Imperial Highness of the Cabinet's decision, I cannot forbear expressing my own personal pleasure that this decision was given by the Cabinet on my proposal, and, as I may permit myself to add, as reached unanimously and without objection or criticism, after my statement had been heard.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Letter to the ex-Crown Prince (24 October 1923), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), pp. 328-329
1920s

Pleasure, Decision, Personality

“The visionaries of yesterday are the realists of today.”

Helmut Kohl (1930–2017) former chancellor of West Germany (1982-1990) and then the united Germany (1990-1998)

Discussion with his predecessor Helmut Schmidt in 'Die Zeit' (1998)

“I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will—"the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts"—need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present—until next year—that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Diary entry (April 30, 1870) as quoted in Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, vol. 1, p. 323; Letters of William James, vol. I, p. 147.
1870s

Life, Thinking, Parting

Quotes about yesterday page 2

Quotes about yesterday
page 2