quotations about the present
The present is our only life.
ABI USRIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
GEORGE ORWELL
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Tomorrows were full of awful things. Today, now, was the essential.
ARIANA FRANKLIN
Mistress of the Art of Death
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"
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
The past lies like a nightmare upon the present.
KARL MARX
The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
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
Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of to-day.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Jean-Christophe
The present is a bright speck between the darkness of the future and the twilight of the past.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
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
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"
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?
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
When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable.
MARTIN AMIS
Other People