quotations about the present
There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.
EUGENE O'NEILL
A Moon for the Misbegotten
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"
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
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?
The present is pregnant with the future.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
Philosophical Writings
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"
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
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 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"
We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infintesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality.
ALAN W. WATTS
attributed, S.A.I.N.T.: How to live more fully in the Spirit
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
When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable.
MARTIN AMIS
Other People
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
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
You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.
JOHN GREEN
Looking for Alaska
All the past is not worth one today.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"New Year"
Let us act as though there were no past, only so far as it aids and cheers the present; and no future, excepting such as we make it by the best use of the present.
MARTHA MARTELL
Second Love
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