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There are those who want to get away from all their past; who if they could, would fain begin all over again. Their life seems one long failure. But you must learn, you must let God teach you, that the only way to get rid of your past is to get a future out of it.

There are those who want to get away from all their past; who if they could, would fain begin all over again. Their life seems one long failure. But you must learn, you must let God teach you, that the only way to get rid of your past is to get a future out of it.

Approximate author period: c. 1864 AD · industrial

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Phillips Brooks
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1864 AD · industrial
Approximate author-period evidence for Phillips Brooks: life dates 1835 to 1893. Wikidata Q974734, inspected 2026-10-08. Not a quotation composition date or independent verification of attribution. Source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q974734 (accessed 2026-10-08).
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
The Optimist’s Good Morning (1911) (1911 AD)

Complete signed selection 301; printed byline: Phillips Brooks; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1911; printed copyright 1907

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.