quotations about the present
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?
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"
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
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
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
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"
Enjoy the present, whatsoever it be, and be not solicitous about the future.
JEREMY TAYLOR
attributed, Day's Collacon
The present is pregnant with the future.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
Philosophical Writings
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
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
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
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
There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.
EUGENE O'NEILL
A Moon for the Misbegotten
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
There is no comfort looking forth nor back,
The present gives the lie to all her past.
EMMA LAZARUS
"Epochs: VI. Grief"
All the past is not worth one today.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"New Year"
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
We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Ethics of Ambiguity
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