“The way we understand both our present and our future depends on what we have lived through.”

“True happiness is to understand our duties toward God and man; to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence on the future; not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is abundantly sufficient.”

“Often the deep valleys of our PRESENT will be UNDERSTOOD only by LOOKING BACK on them from the mountains of our FUTURE experience. Often we can’t see the LORD’S HAND in our lives until long after the trials have passed. Often the most difficult times of our lives are ESSENTIAL building blocks that form the FOUNDATION of our CHARACTER and pave the way to FUTURE opportunity, understanding, and happiness.”

“Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light is throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.”

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”

“What are we if we are not products of our history? History is not in our past but forms us in the present. And how histories are written or interpreted depends on what we do today.”