quotations about the present
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
Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/p/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 37
"The Sun-Dial at Wells College"
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
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
The past was gone and the future had yet to unfold, and he knew he should focus his life on the present ... yet his day-to-day existence suddenly struck him as endless and unbearable.
NICHOLAS SPARKS
The Choice
In order to enjoy the present, it is necessary to be intent on the present; to be doing one thing and thinking of another is a very unsatisfactory mode of spending life. Some people are always wishing themselves somewhere but where they are, or thinking of something else than what they are doing, or of somebody else than to whom they are speaking; this is the way to enjoy nothing well, and to please nobody. It is better to be interested with inferior persons and inferior things, than to be indifferent with the best.
GEORGE MOGRIDGE
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.
TONI MORRISON
interview, Time, January 21, 1998
When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better.
ANDREW SOLOMON
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
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"
There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.
EUGENE O'NEILL
A Moon for the Misbegotten
There is no comfort looking forth nor back,
The present gives the lie to all her past.
EMMA LAZARUS
"Epochs: VI. Grief"
The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.
KIRAN DESAI
The Inheritance of Loss
When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable.
MARTIN AMIS
Other People
The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Kafka on the Shore
Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn't exist and never shall. There is only now.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Eldest
Zen lives in the present. The Whole teaching is: how to be in the present; how to get out of the past which is no more and how not to get involved in the future which is not yet, and just to be rooted, centered, in that which is.
OSHO
Zen: The Path of Paradox
When people can't abide things as they are, when they can't abide the present, they do one of two things ... either they ... either they turn to a contemplation of the past ... or they set about to ... alter the future. And when you want to change something ... YOU BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
EDWARD ALBEE
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Stop longing. You poison today's ease, reaching always for tomorrow.
ROBIN HOBB
Fool's Errand
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
Let any one try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
WILLIAM JAMES
Principles of Psychology