Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.

The line is a compact piece of popular wisdom urging mindfulness: the past is fixed, the future uncertain, but the only time we can actually live and act in is “today.” The pun on “present” (meaning both “now” and “a gift”) reinforces the moral lesson by making it memorable and easily repeatable. Its appeal lies less in philosophical originality than in its accessible, family-friendly framing—typical of the kind of sentiment often circulated in greeting-card culture and attributed to well-known cartoonists. As a maxim, it encourages gratitude and attention to immediate experience rather than regret or anxiety.