PRESENT QUOTES II

quotations about the present

Tomorrows were full of awful things. Today, now, was the essential.

ARIANA FRANKLIN

Mistress of the Art of Death

Tags: Ariana Franklin


The present is our only life.

ABI USRIN

attributed, Day's Collacon


In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagined past.

ALAN MOORE

Watchmen


He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.

GEORGE ORWELL

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Tags: George Orwell


With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can't start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It's like quicksand ... hopeless from the start.

SYLVIA PLATH

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Tags: Sylvia Plath


The only saving grace of the present is that it's too damned stupid to question the past very closely.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"Pickman's Model"

Tags: H. P. Lovecraft


In basketball -- as in life -- true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way.

PHIL JACKSON

Sacred Hoops

Tags: Phil Jackson


Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It's been that way all this year. It's been that way so many times.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Tags: Ernest Hemingway


The future and the past are equally meaningless because they are nebulous entities, times that do not exist, containing events which have no echo because they are gone, or which hold no import because they are yet to happen. What is important is the here and now, and now, and now, and the spaces between the nows.

TIM LEBBON

Face

Tags: Tim Lebbon


The present is a beautiful medium to knit every bond closer, and to make every dear remembrance still more precious.

FRIEDRICH DANIEL ERNST SCHLEIERMACHER

attributed, Day's Collacon


The past lies like a nightmare upon the present.

KARL MARX

The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Tags: Karl Marx


Enjoy the present, whatsoever it be, and be not solicitous about the future.

JEREMY TAYLOR

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Jeremy Taylor


Be reverent towards each day. Love it, respect it, do not sully it, do not hinder it from coming to flower.

ROMAIN ROLLAND

Jean-Christophe

Tags: Romain Rolland


Tomorrow gives a beck'ning hand--
I turn my face away;
I'll not invite her to my home--
I only love Today.

ARDELIA COTTON BARTON

"Today"

Tags: Ardelia Cotton Barton


The shadow by my finger cast
Divides the future from the past:
Before it, sleeps the unborn hour,
In darkness, and beyond thy power:
Behind its unreturning line,
The vanished hour, no longer thine:
One hour alone is in thy hands--
The NOW on which the shadow stands.

HENRY VAN DYKE

"The Sun-Dial at Wells College"

Tags: Henry Van Dyke


But we look ahead to the far off skies,
For the years are flying fast,
And we know that the present that round us lies
Ere the light of a few more moments dies,
Will with many loved and severed ties
Fade into the mist-veiled past.

MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN

"The Beautiful Past"

Tags: Martha Lavinia Hoffman


I don't want a future, I want a present. To me this appears of greater value. You have a future only when you have no present, and when you have a present, you forget to even think about the future.

ROBERT WALSER

The Tanners


The days of life are consumed, one by one, without an object beyond the present moment; ever flying from the ennui of that, yet carrying it with us; eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally before us. If death or bankruptcy happen to trip us out of the circle, it is matter for the buzz of the evening, and is completely forgotten by the next morning.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

letter to Mrs. Bingham, February 7, 1787

Tags: Thomas Jefferson


We might realize that the present moment may be one of an eternal or sempiternal series of moments, all of which will resemble it because, in some ways, they are the present, and won't in other ways, because the present will be the past by that time.

JOHN ASHBERY

The Paris Review, winter 1983

Tags: John Ashbery


If I did not love what is present, if I could not cling to this enormous, safe parachute, I would long since have fallen into the abyss.

CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN

Levels

Tags: Christian Morgenstern