Quote Origin: The Past Is History. The Future Is a Mystery. Today Is a Gift. That’s Why It’s Called the Present

Eleanor Roosevelt? Barbara De Angelis? Joan Rivers? Bill Keane? Emily Dickinson? Liz Curtis Higgs? Babatunde Olatunji? Susan Barkdoll? Nicholas L. Santowassa? Abigail Van Buren? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: A rhyming series of statements highlight the uncertainty of the future and the desirability of appreciating the present. Here are two versions: (1) The past is …

Celebrity Is the Chastisement of Merit and the Punishment of Talent

Nicolas Chamfort? Emily Dickinson? Franz Liszt? Garrison Keillor? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The dark side of celebrity is now widely recognized. Celebrity worship encourages self-absorption, arrogance, and callousness while celebrity hatred causes denouncements, calumnies, and physical endangerment. The following saying has been attributed to the eighteenth century French epigrammatist Nicolas Chamfort and the nineteenth century …

The Possible’s Slow Fuse Is Lit By the Imagination!

Emily Dickinson? Susan Gilbert Dickinson? Martha Dickinson Bianchi? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The ability to envision something novel and appealing is vital to the formulation and accomplishment of worthwhile goals. A robust imagination initiates the process. The poet Emily Dickinson employed the apt metaphor of lighting a fuse to express this notion. Would you please …

We Turn Not Older With Years, But Newer Every Day

Creator: Emily Dickinson, prominent U.S. poet Context: The quotation occurred within a letter from Dickinson dated 1874 that appeared in a collection of missives published posthumously in 1894. The letter was sent to a cousin who was not named. Emphasis added to this excerpt:[1]1894, Letters of Emily Dickinson, Edited by Mabel Loomis Todd, Volume 2 …