Idea 10 of 12 23 BCE to 1997
Deal with today only; tomorrow’s troubles are not yours to carry yet.
Said again in 10 books. 3 credit a source by name. 1 argues against it.
Live one day at a time: deal with today only, because tomorrow’s troubles are not yours to carry yet. The idea is about 2,000 years old, and the earliest source we can find is Horace’s Odes, 23 BCE, where a god hides what is to come and the advice is to “manage duly that which is present”. It kept coming back, in the Gospel of Matthew (c. 80-90 CE), Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations (c. 175), Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948) and Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now (1997), and we find none of them naming Horace. One book on this page argues against it, and it is older: Aesop’s Fables, c. 550 BCE (attributed), about 530 years earlier, where the one who sang all summer must “dance supperless to bed in the winter”.
Older hints exist: Proverbs 27:1 warns against boasting of tomorrow, a character in Euripides’s Alcestis (438 BCE) says to drink and count each day your own, and Epicurus, as Cicero reports him in 45 BCE, calls it “folly to ruminate on evils to come”, but none pairs dropping tomorrow’s troubles with dealing with today. Odes 3.29 is the earliest source we can find that does.
about 530 years earlier
The fable holds the opposite: provide today for tomorrow. The one who sang all summer and stored no food must “dance supperless to bed in the winter”. Its target is idleness, not worry.
“If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter.”
Full text read.
Aesop’s Fables, ‘The Ants and the Grasshopper’, tr. George Fyler Townsend (1867).
Project Gutenberg eBook #21, gutenberg.org/
Earliest we can find
“A wise deity shrouds in obscure darkness the events of the time to come, and smiles if a mortal is solicitous beyond the law of nature. Be mindful to manage duly that which is present.”
Full text read.
Horace, Odes 3.29, lines 29–33, tr. C. Smart, rev. Theodore Alois Buckley (1863).
Project Gutenberg eBook #14020, gutenberg.org/
Seneca says to “begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life”, and credits no one. Maecenas is named only for a different point, a prayer to prolong life.
“For he only is anxious about the future, to whom the present is unprofitable.”
Full text read.
Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 101 ‘On the futility of planning ahead’, tr. Richard Mott Gummere (1917).
Wikisource, en.wikisource.org/
The verse says to take “no thought for the morrow”, because “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”. It states the idea in its own words and credits no earlier source.
“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
Full text read.
Gospel of Matthew, 6:34 (Sermon on the Mount), tr. King James Version translators (1611).
Project Gutenberg eBook #30, gutenberg.org/
Echoes
Marcus writes not to let your thoughts “embrace all the various troubles” you may expect, since only the present pains. He credits no one for it; Monimus is named for a different point.
“For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived”
Full text read.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, tr. George Long (1862).
Project Gutenberg eBook #15877, gutenberg.org/
About 950 years with nothing from our reading list. The gap is ours, not history’s.
Echoes
The stanzas, in FitzGerald’s 1859 edition, ask why anyone should fret about “Unborn TO-MORROW and dead YESTERDAY” if today is sweet. They credit no one.
“Unborn TO-MORROW and dead YESTERDAY, Why fret about them if TO-DAY be sweet!”
Full text read.
Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (FitzGerald’s first edition, 1859), stanzas XX and XXXVII, tr. Edward FitzGerald (1859).
Project Gutenberg eBook #246, gutenberg.org/
Echoes
Care about future events brings only “sorrow upon sorrow”, the chapter says, quoting “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof” with a footnote mark. It names no source that we can find.
“What doth care about future events bring thee, save sorrow upon sorrow? Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.”
Full text read.
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book III ch. 30, tr. William Benham (1909).
Project Gutenberg eBook #1653, gutenberg.org/
Cites Seneca
Montaigne says fear, desire and hope keep pushing people towards the future, and attaches a line credited to Seneca, Epist. 98: “The mind anxious about the future is unhappy.”
“We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves: fear, desire, hope, still push us on towards the future”
Full text read.
Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Book I ch. 3 ‘That our affections carry themselves beyond us’, tr. Charles Cotton (ed. W. C. Hazlitt) (1877).
Project Gutenberg eBook #3600, gutenberg.org/
Echoes
Hilty’s rule is to do your work “for each day”, since the morrow brings its own strength. He quotes “Take no thought for the morrow” as “the law” and names no source.
“Do your work, then, as a rule, for each day. The morrow will come in its own time, and with it will come the strength for the morrow.”
Full text read.
Carl Hilty, Happiness (Glück, first series), Essay I ‘The Art of Work’, tr. Francis Greenwood Peabody (1903).
Project Gutenberg eBook #68817, gutenberg.org/
Cites Christ and Horace
Osler preaches “living for the day only” and credits Christ’s “take no thought for the morrow”. He also quotes Horace’s ode for it: “He who can call to-day his own”.
“only for this day are we to ask for our daily bread, and we are expressly bidden to take no thought for the morrow.”
Full text read.
William Osler, A Way of Life (address at Yale).
Project Gutenberg eBook #73116, gutenberg.org/
Cites Sibyl F. Partridge, per a summary
Quote Investigator has Carnegie including a programme called “Just for Today”, to “live through this day only”, and crediting it to Sibyl F. Partridge, a credit Quote Investigator doubts.
Secondhand, from Quote Investigator. Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948).
This book is still in copyright, so we read an account of it, not the book.
Quote Investigator: quoteinvestigator.com/
Echoes, per a summary
Wikiquote has Tolle asking what “problem” you have right now, “not next year, tomorrow, or five minutes from now”. It is the moment rather than the day, and no one is credited.
“Ask yourself what ‘problem’ you have right now, not next year, tomorrow, or five minutes from now. What is wrong with this moment?”
Secondhand, from Wikiquote. Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (1997).
This book is still in copyright, so we read an account of it, not the book.
Wikiquote: en.wikiquote.org/
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11 The obstacle is the wayHow this page was made. AI agents did the reading. Each link was judged by two readers from different AI models, working blind; a third settled their splits (9 of 11 links on this page needed no tiebreak). Every quote was checked word for word against its source. “Full text read” means the agents read the book itself; “Author’s own words” means the author’s free writing elsewhere; “Secondhand” means a free summary or article about the book.
One idea a week, followed across time.
No. 1Small steps add up