50 Yesterday Quotes to Make the Most Out of Today

These yesterday quotes will help you move on from the past and instead rekindle your hope for a better future!

Time is a tricky thing. Sometimes, it goes by so fast that we don’t have enough time to savor the good moments, and at times, we feel like it’s so slow and we’re kept in pain for so long.

This leads us to keep going back to our yesterdays—always looking back to either reminisce or try to change something.

But, life is happening in the here and now. If we focus too much on yesterday, we’ll never be able to live our lives to the fullest. There’s also a higher chance that we’ll miss opportunities to make our future brighter.

So, to help you move on from yesterday, read through this list of quotes we’ve created.

Grab a pen and a sheet of paper and note down quotes that pushed you to change the trajectory of your life!

Keep on reading below!

And don’t forget to check out these tomorrow quotes and weekend quotes.

Best Yesterday Quotes

1. “Yesterday was not your defining moment. The calendar moved forward; why not you?” – Steve Maraboli

2. “Yesterday misspent can’t be recalled.” – Abraham Verghese

3. “If your yesterday was much better than your today, then today you will most probably walk around in your yesterday!” – Mehmet Murat İldan

4. “Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.” – Lyndon B. Johnson

5. “One of the sad things, I think, about the younger generation, quite frankly, is they have less sense of yesterday. And if you don’t know who you were, you don’t really know who you are.” – Hugh Hefner

Famous Yesterday Quotes

6. “Yesterday is gone, but not its memories.” – Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

7. “Yesterday should be the teacher of today.” – Publilius Syrus

8. “The waves of yesterday don’t need to be remembered.” – Bert McCoy

9. “Ten thousand yesterdays are not worth one today.” – S. Woodworth

10. “Life is a perpetual yesterday for us.” – Alice Sebold

Yesterday Quotes to Inspire You

11. “We can’t change yesterday, but we can change tomorrow.” – Ken Poirot

12. “If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.” – H. G. Wells

13. “Don’t regret yesterday. It is the perfect compass guiding your journey today.” – Anonymous

14. “Yesterday is yesterday. If we try to recapture it, we will only lose tomorrow.” – William J. Clinton

Powerful Yesterday Quotes to Change Your Outlook

15. “You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.” – Charles Kettering

16. “The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday.” – Anonymous

17. “I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.” – Abraham Lincoln

18. “Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.” – Don Marquis

19. “Yesterday—noun. The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past of age.” – Ambrose Bierce

Short Yesterday Quotes That’ll Power You Up

20. “Don’t ruin a good today by thinking about a bad yesterday.” – Anonymous

21. “Yesterday is just a memory.” – Bob Dylan

22. “Don’t start your day with the broken pieces of yesterday.” – Anonymous

23. “Be better than you were yesterday.” – Anonymous

24. “Be strong—stronger than yesterday.” – Anonymous

25. “How you played in yesterday’s game is all that counts.” – Jackie Robinson

Yesterday Quotes for Better Days Ahead

26. “Today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness.” – Kalidasa

27. “Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.” – Khalil Gibran

28. “Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday.” – John Wayne

Yesterday Quotes That’ll Help You Move On

29. “Why let go of yesterday? Because yesterday has let go of you.” – Steve Maraboli

30. “Shake off all those negative thoughts of yesterday. Rise and shine; it’s a new day.” – Anonymous

31. “Let go of yesterday. Let today be a new beginning and be the best that you can, and you’ll get to where God wants you to be.” – Joel Osteen

32. “Renew, release, let go. Yesterday’s gone. There’s nothing you can do to bring it back. You can’t ‘should’ve’ done something. You can only do something. Renew yourself. Release that attachment. Today is a new day!” – Steve Maraboli

Yesterday Quotes That Can Serve as Your Guide

33. “Spending today complaining about yesterday won’t make tomorrow any better.” – Anonymous

34. “If today you are a little better than you were yesterday, then that’s enough.” – David A. Bednar

35. “There’s nothing tangible of yesterday. All I can say I’ve done is agitate the air for 10 or 15 minutes, and then boom—it’s gone.” – Edward R. Murrow

Meaningful Yesterday Quotes to Keep In Your Heart

36. “The strength you have today comes from your yesterday’s pain; your success today comes from yesterday’s mistakes.” – Frank Adofoli

37. “Memories are nothing but the lash with which yesterday flogs tomorrow.” – Philip Moeller

38. “What if you woke up today with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?” – Anonymous

39. “Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, 2 golden hours, each set with 60 diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.” – Horace Mann

Yesterday Quotes and Sayings for Instagram

40. “Yesterday don’t matter if it’s gone.” – The Rolling Stones

41. “Yesterday’s a flower the wind blows away.” – Louise Driscoll

42. “It is yesterday that makes tomorrow so sad.” – Austin O’Malley

Yesterday Quotes That’ll Rekindle Your Hope for the Future

43. “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” – Albert Einstein

44. “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” – Mother Teresa

45. “The present is the ever-moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

46. “There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called Yesterday, and the other is called Tomorrow. Today is the right day to love, believe, do, and mostly, live.” – Dalai Lama

Other Yesterday Quotes You Need to Read

47. “There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday.” – Robert Nathan

48. “Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.” – Hunter S. Thompson

49. “To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday.” – John Burroughs

50. “So yesterday, you fell off the wagon? Or maybe you blew your diet? Or lost your temper and shot off your mouth? Well, that was yesterday. Today is a brand-new day with a clean slate, so forget yesterday!” – Abigail Van Buren

Did These Quotes Help You Move Past Your Yesterdays?

We are all human, and we all strive for perfection and happiness. Perhaps this is the main reason behind our constant effort to reflect on our yesterdays. We think that by looking back, we can relive the happiest days of our lives or change something in the past to improve our future.

But that’s not how life works. Once something happens—good or bad—we can’t do anything about it anymore. Striving to be happier today and tomorrow is the only thing left that we can do.

Yesterday is filled with all our memories, and those memories of the past are what shaped us to be who we are now. However, that doesn’t mean we must constantly look back to grow and improve further. Instead, we must shift our focus on things that we actually have control over—the things that are happening now.

Whenever you need a reminder of these things, reread our collection! Don’t get stuck in the past, and just let your memories of yesterday inspire you today!

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Karen Danao

Hi, I’m Karen, a content curator and writer for Quote Ambition; I’m also a marketing and advertising professional. Beyond the keyboard and the screen, I’m someone who’s out to enjoy every bit that life has to offer!

Poetry, philosophy, history, and movies are all topics I love writing about! However, my true passion is in traveling, photography, and finding common ground to which everyone from different cultures can relate.

With the many places I’ve been to, I found that love, inspiration, and happiness are some things that bring people together. No matter how different we are on the outside, I’m a true believer that our emotions don’t lie; if you dig deep into our psyche, we’re all the same inside.

This belief was further amplified when I joined Quote Ambition. Through the quotes I’ve read, collected, organized, and written about, I found that humans are resilient, creative, and compassionate.

We take from each others’ hearts and courage, and it’s through our individual experiences that we learn how to rise above our challenges and pain. In so many ways, Quote Ambition is a platform that allows people from all over the world to gain the inspiration they need anytime, anywhere!

You can find me on MuckRack and LinkedIn.