Living The Moment Quotes

It's not possible to live twenty-four hours a day soaked in the immediate awareness of one's sex. Gendered self-consciousness has, mercifully, a flickering nature. ~ Denise Riley

If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

Outside I saw her sitting in the wheelchair, hands folded on her lap, and I knew I was living the moment that says nothing, that will allow nothing said of consequence. ~ Gerard Donovan

I was living the moment I'd always feared: knowing what it was like to have her and still feeling as though I needed to let her go. ~ Penelope Ward

I was fuzzy on the details, but I knew the basic outline. I knew how I wanted to be, it was simply a question of being who I wanted to be.
I thought I had had it all figured out before. I'd had the plan perfectly clear in my head. I wasn't going to cross into thirty without the triple crown in hand: serious boyfriend, career, and great friends..
It was time to accept that maybe, just maybe, I didn't have to have it all figured out by the time I turned thirty. Maybe I could just work on me, and see what else fell into place.
I was pretty sure that was otherwise known as living. ~ Megan Crane

I was living for one thing only, and that was to confirm my own lack of feeling. ~ Haruki Murakami

When I was a child, my society lifted me up - though education primarily, as well as through other kinds of cultural stimulation. It wasn't just my parents or my religious community. The entire society lifted me up to the bottom rung of the ladder. Then they said, "Girl, it's up to you whether or not you climb." I don't have a problem with that. I think that is the best way to go about living. ~ Marianne Williamson

My former bishop Allan Bjorberg once said that the greatest spiritual practice isn't yoga or praying the hours or living in intentional poverty, although these are all beautiful in their own way. The greatest spiritual practice is just showing up. And Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of just showing up. Showing up, to me, means being present to what is real, what is actually happening. Mary Magdalene didn't necessarily know what to say or what to do or even what to think when she encountered the risen Jesus. But none of that was nearly as important as the fact that she was present and attentive to him. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

Incredible how so many people have no sense of honor. How does this happen? This happens by thriving on how one appears to the world around him rather than cultivating a person inside him that he knows is honorable and that he can be proud of. When all the focus is on what people think about you based upon your facebook profile or based upon the exterior that you put on everyday; you leave no room for looking at yourself and saying, "I want to look into the mirror every day and see someone that I can be proud of." And that's what a life of honor is based upon. It is based upon the knowledge that you know your own actions, your own self, and you can see the things that you do and know the things that you think. You answer to yourself, therefore, your standards need to come up to what you expect of yourself. It doesn't matter at all if anybody is looking. When such a sense of honor is present in a large group of people, that's when we see no crime rate or a very low crime rate, respect for other human life and personas, respect for the surroundings and really a respect for oneself. Because a respect for other people can only first be born from a true respect for oneself. ~ C. JoyBell C.

But what is your life? Can you see it? It vanishes at its own appearance. Moment by moment. Until it vanishes to appear no more. When you look at the world is there a point in time when the seen becomes the remembered? How are they separate? It is that which we have no way o show. It is that which is missing from our map and from the picture that it makes. And yet is all we have. ~ Cormac McCarthy

We all pretend, we all hide things, so why not take the concept to an extreme? That is the basic idea for the character of Dexter. Pretend to be human, while quietly and carefully living out the life of a monster on the side. ~ Jeff Lindsay

But that's not even what she's asking. Cassie wants to know if I'll still walk home with her after school every day, if I'll watch movies with her that I miss hald of because I'm answering her bizarre questions; if I'll still tolerate her mindless chatter and scattered conversations.
If I'll still be nice to her.
This girl who speaks slowly and runs awkwardly, who can only manage short spurts of eye contact and stiffens under anyone's touch, who struggles to match appropriate emotions with situations.
Who finds joy in the simplest of things, who will never sit at a cafeteria table or in a bathroom and say mean things behind people's back.
Who understands more than most people give her credit for.
Who's heart can't seem to hold animosity, even towards those who have been cruel to her.
Who only ever wanted to be a friend to me since the moment she stepped out of her mom's car with a bag of cookies.
"Of course, I will," I promise.
"Yeah, okay." She finally looks up to offer me a wide grin and a nod. "Are you going to eat those Junior Mints? ~ K.A. Tucker

It was hard to turn down the money since I didn't have a job, but I didn't want to exploit my notoriety because I knew the way I'd been living was wrong. ~ Donna Rice

Spooky things happen in houses densely occupied by adolescent boys. When I checked out a four-inch dent in the living room ceilingone afternoon, even the kid still holding the baseball bat looked genuinely baffled about how he possibly could have done it. ~ Mary Blakely

The idea that there is some kind of contradiction between the in-depth study of God's Word, so as to know what God has revealed about himself, and a living, vital faith is inherently self-contradictory. ~ James R. White

NOBREZA SILENCIOSA. SILENT NOBILITY. It is a mistake to believe that the crucial moments of a life when its habitual direction changes forever must be loud and shrill dramatics, washed away by fierce internal surges. This is a kitschy fairy tale started by boozing journalists, flashbulb-seeking filmmakers and authors whose minds look like tabloids. In truth, the dramatics of a life-determining experience are often unbelievably soft. It has so little akin to the bang, the flash, of the volcanic eruption that, at the moment it is made, the experience is often not even noticed. When it deploys its revolutionary effect and plunges a life into a brand-new light giving it a brand-new melody, it does that silently and in this wonderful silence resides its special nobility. ~ Pascal Mercier

I had to get some things right in my personal life. And once I got my family on the same page, to understand who I am and what I do for a living, I asked my oldest daughter, 'What do you think about Daddy coming back?' And she said, 'I didn't think you were done. I want you to win the Super Bowl.' ~ Randy Moss

Fashion has to reflect who you are, what you feel at the moment, and where you're going. ~ Pharrell Williams

Oh my goodness; the highlight of my career. I couldn't pick a show or a moment because that would just be impossible. ~ Darren Boyd

The moment you start to think you understand love is the moment you don't feel it anymore. ~ Ana Kostovska

Ah, Toulouse, you have travelled too much. You know the gods of a hundred lands, those of the trees and mountains, the sky and sea, the stars and planets, of demons and angels, and even the Master of the Cosmos. But I am speaking of God. There are others, I'm sure, but only one God who created even great Zeus and Rama. Yet travel is like philosophy: a few years of it will perk the eye to differences, which you shall be able to notice with ease. Yet living as I have, travelling to lonely lands and through a thousand metropolises and hidden woods, you rather see the similarities. All becomes one, and God too becomes one. Not the sum of all those gods here, but beyond them, a being few philosophers have truly grasped. He has always been one, but he is severed in our minds. So it is up to us to piece him back together. If our souls possess a clarity beyond what our mortal nature can bestow, we shall see him. ~ Mary-Jean Harris

This was the first time God had crossed my mind in over a year, and again only in my moment of absolute hopelessness. I'd done the same on the raft and in the prison camps when I'd promised God my life should he let me survive. Had I kept my promise? No. And this time, instead of promises, I had only anger and complaints and blame. But I didn't blame myself; I blamed God. Maybe he was listening, maybe not, but even if, as I sometimes suspected, God watched over me, I couldn't blame him for cutting me loose this time. ~ Louis Zamperini

I don't doubt that at the dawn of martial arts, the main goal was to beat up one's opponents in the most effective way possible. But then, indirectly, the alchemy of martial arts began to strike some chords deep within the spirit of many individuals, transforming living war-machines into poets, artists, and philosophers. ~ Daniele Bolelli

Anger, resentment, jealousy, desire for revenge, lust, greed, antagonisms, and rivalries are the obvious signs that I have left home. And that happens quite easily. When I pay careful attention to what goes on in my mind from moment to moment, I come to the disconcerting discovery that there are very few moments during the day when I am really free from these dark emotions, passions and feelings.

Constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn't pay attention to me. Without realizing it, I find myself brooding about someone else's success, my own loneliness, and the way the world abuses me. Despite my conscious intentions, I often catch myself daydreaming about becoming rich, powerful, and very famous. All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God's favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed, that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in so doing I move far away from my father's home and choose to dwell in a "distant country. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Before you lost your mind, how did you make a living?"
"I was a hitman for the Mafia. Are you done crying yet?"
"I wasn't crying! And I wish you were a hitman because, if I had money, I'd hire you right this minute to knock yourself off. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

When did my heart turn away from its willingness to die if need be in order to kill d'Albret?
Perhaps once I escaped, once I was no longer in his orbit or infected with the bleak despair that enveloped me while I was in his household. Or mayhap my short time away from him has reminded me that there are things worth living for. There are good people in this world, in this duchy. Those who mean to do all they can to stop d'Albret. Living inside his walls, it was all too easy to forget that.
There is the thrill of a fast horse, and the sun and wind in your face. The rare - and all the more precious for it - moments of laughter to be had. The excitement of seeing Mortain's marque and knowing the hunt is about to begin. The look in someone's eye when he truly see you - not just your face and hair, but the very essence of your soul.
It is a raw and uncomfortable realization that Beast is partly behind this newfound will to live. Not for him, but because he reminded me of what life has to offer. He lives life so joyously - it is impossible not to want that joy for oneself. ~ Robin LaFevers

I felt my muscles tensing as my body readied itself to flight - not fight - from whatever critter was about to spring free from beneath the branches and attack. I'd long since realized I was the type who'd always run. I'd grown up having a mother who'd continuously informed me there was no shame in living to flee another day. ~ Ethan Day

For me happiness occurs arbitrarily: a moment of eye contact on a bus, where all at once you fall in love; or a frozen second in a park where it's enough that there are trees in the world. ~ Russell Brand

The man who begins to go to bed forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door is bored; that is to say, he is not living. ~ Arnold Bennett

Better than one hundred years lived without seeing the arising and passing of things / Is one day lived seeing their arising and passing.2 What does this say about what we value and work for in our lives, and about the liberating effect of seeing directly, in the moment, the truth of change? ~ Joseph Goldstein

What frightened her the most was the moment of those first notes, because that was when people really listened: She was changing the atmosphere in the room. ~ Elizabeth Strout

Don't leave me", "Don't go away", "Don't forget me"... it seems to me, a tragedy, that these words so divine are the words that everyone is trained to never say. We are trained to never say and to never listen, to these words. These are the sentiments we were born into this world with as infants, the purest form of soul, the same sentiments we are trained to murder in ourselves and in others. We wage a war against what it means to be alive and then we wonder why we're killing ourselves. If I say these things to someone, and they still leave me, I have not lost anything because I have truly lived. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Because we had no other relatives living in the U.K., me, my parents and my siblings continuously journeyed abroad to bond with our extended family. ~ Anton Du Beke

You see that God deems it right to take from me any claim to merit for what you call my devotion to you. I have promised to remain forever with you, and now I could not break my promise if I would. The treasure will be no more mine than yours, and neither of us will quit this prison. But my real treasure is not that, my dear friend, which awaits me beneath the somber rocks of Monte Cristo, it is your presence, our living together five or six hours a day, in spite of our jailers; it is the rays of intelligence you have elicited from my brain, the languages you have implanted in my memory, and which have taken root there with all of their philological ramifications. These different sciences that you have made so easy to me by the depth of the knowledge you possess of them, and the clearness of the principles to which you have reduced them – this is my treasure, my beloved friend, and with this you have made me rich and happy. Believe me, and take comfort, this is better for me than tons of gold and cases of diamonds, even were they not as problematical as the clouds we see in the morning floating over the sea, which we take for terra firma, and which evaporate and vanish as we draw near to them. To have you as long as possible near me, to hear your eloquent speech, -- which embellishes my mind, strengthens my soul, and makes my whole frame capable of great and terrible things, if I should ever be free, -- so fills my whole existence, that the despair to which I was just on the ~ Alexandre Dumas

What is so sweet as to awake from a troubled dream and behold a beloved face smiling upon you? I love to believe that such shall be our awakening from earth to heaven. My faith never wavers that each dear friend I have "lost" is a new link between this world and the happier land beyond the morn. My soul is for the moment bowed down with grief when I cease to feel the touch of their hands or hear a tender word from them; but the light of faith never fades from the sky, and I take heart again, glad they are free. I cannot understand why anyone should fear death…Suppose there are a million chances against that one that my loved ones who have gone on are alive. What of it? I will take that one chance and risk mistake, rather than let any doubts sadden their souls, and find out afterward. Since there is that one chance of immortality, I will endeavor not to cast a shadow on the joy of the departed…Certainly it is one of our sweetest experiences that when we are touched by some noble affection or pure joy, we remember the dead most tenderly, and feel more powerfully drawn to them. ~ Helen Keller

I don't really live my life in the media spotlight. People don't know that much really about me or what I think. ~ Emmy Rossum

My particular dread--the vivid possibility that left me staring at tree shadows on the bedroom ceiling night after night--was having to lie in a small tent, alone in an inky wilderness, listening to a foraging bear outside and wondering what its intentions were. I was especially riveted by an amateur photograph in Herrero's book, taken late at night by a camper with a flash at a campground out West. The photograph caught four black bears as they puzzled over a suspended food bag. The bears were clearly startled but not remotely alarmed by the flash. It was not the size or demeanor of the bears that troubled me--they looked almost comically nonaggressive, like four guys who had gotten a Frisbee caught up a tree--but their numbers. Up to that moment it had not occurred to me that bears might prowl in parties. What on earth would I do if four bears came into my camp? Why, I would die, of course. Literally shit myself lifeless. I would blow my sphincter out my backside like one of those unrolling paper streamers you get at children's parties--I daresay it would even give a merry toot--and bleed to a messy death in my sleeping bag. ~ Bill Bryson

I believe that all people living together in unity is one of the most important messages we can teach our children. ~ Michael Jackson

What is the nature of the worldly life (sansar)? God lives in every living being of the world, that means if you oppress any living being or cause misery to them, then adharma (unrighteousness, irreligion) will occur. The result (effect) of adharma will be against your desires and the result of dharma (righteousness, religion) will be favorable to your desires. ~ Dada Bhagwan

Totally isolated from our own culture for long periods, we became vulnerable to forgotten times and tribes re-awakening within us. Our journeys, we found, were to take us simultaneously to some of the least-charted regions of the planet and to the least-charted regions of our own minds. What began for us as the effort to capture a purely objective record of what we saw gradually dissolved into a quest, an odyssey of self-discovery which actually took place amongst the last of the lands of real living kings and queens, dragons and pirates, cannibals and headhunters, mystics and magicians. ~ Lawrence Blair

We do have a problem in this country. You can either make a movie and ignore that, or you can acknowledge it and say, this is the water that we're living in. You know this - the movie lives in this - it's centered around this particular problem, and I chose to acknowledge it. ~ Nick Cassavetes

Because it wasn't enough to be accompanied by the beast who scared the crap out of every god in Heaven, Xuanzang was assigned a few more traveling companions. The gluttonous pig-man Zhu Baijie. Sha Wujing, the repentant sand demon. And the Dragon Prince of the West Sea, who took the form of a horse for Xuanzang to ride. The five adventurers, thusly gathered, set off on their -

"Holy ballsacks!" I yelped. I dropped the book like I'd been bitten.

"How far did you get?" Quentin said.

He was leaning against the end of the nearest shelf, as casually as if he'd been there the whole time, waiting for this moment.

I ignored that he'd snuck up on me again, just this once. There was a bigger issue at play.

In the book was an illustration of the group done up in bold lines and bright colors. There was Sun Wukong at the front, dressed in a beggar's cassock, holding his Ruyi Jingu Bang in one hand and the reins of the Dragon Horse in the other. A scary-looking pig-faced man and a wide-eyed demon monk followed, carrying the luggage. And perched on top of the horse was . . . me.

The artist had tried to give Xuanzang delicate, beatific features and ended up with a rather girly face. By whatever coincidence, the drawing of Sun Wukong's old master could have been a rough caricature of sixteen-year-old Eugenia Lo from Santa Firenza, California.

"That's who you think I am?" I said to Quentin.

"That's who I k ~ F.C. Yee

Where philosophy ends, poetry must commence. There should not be a common point of view, a natural manner of thinking which standsin contrast to art and liberal education, or mere living; that is, one should not conceive of a realm of crudeness beyond the boundaries of education. Every conscious link of an organism should not perceive its limits without a feeling for its unity in relation to the whole. For example, philosophy should not only be contrasted to non-philosophy, but also to poetry. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

I have to apologize to you that I am still among the living. There will be a remedy for this, however. ~ Albert Einstein

This does not necessarily mean that the man whose path at this moment crosses mine will be personally endowed with each and all of the marvellous qualities which we are accustomed to attribute to our representations of God, that he will be a perfect image of the divine Majesty, a striking sign of the Presence. But then, what about ourselves, as we look doubtfully at this man? Do we ourselves perfectly mirror the Lord in our bodies, our hearts and minds, our behaviour? What matters in our meeting is not the quality of the image that he and I present of God, still less any reflections upon this quality, but precisely the setting free of that image in his depths as in mine ~ Henri Le Saux

A man becomes a solitary at the moment when, no matter what may be his external surroundings, he is suddenly aware of his own inalienable solitude and sees that he will never be anything but solitary. ~ Thomas Merton

Dogs possess a quality that's rare among humans
the ability to make you feel valued just by being you
and it was something of a miracle to me to be on the receiving end of all that acceptance. The dog didn't care what I looked like, or what I did for a living, or what a train wreck of a life I'd led before I got her, or what we did from day to day. She just wanted to be with me, and that awareness gave me a singular sensation of delight. I kept her in a crate at night until she was housebroken, and in the mornings I'd let her up onto the bed with me. She'd writhe with joy at that. She'd wag her tail and squirm all over me, lick my neck and face and eyes and ears, get her paws all tangled in my braid, and I'd just lie there, and I'd feel those oceans of loss from my past ebbing back, ebbing away, and I'd hear myself laugh out loud. ~ Caroline Knapp

Like butterflies, we evolve; but as Beings of Light we continuously evolve when we are fully present. ~ Michelle Cruz-Rosado

Boy," David said, pointing. "That's not our horse."
"Of course it isn't," Allan said, coming out from the inn with a wide stretch and a yawn. "It's mine."
"Christ Almighty." David sighed. "I thought we got rid of you."
"You don't mean that for a moment," Allan said, mounting his horse. "Besides, did you really think to go to Ireland without one of her favorite native sons?"
"Clearly a foolish hope," David muttered, mounting as well.
I swung up onto the horse, feeling my body ache as my muscles settled into place. "Play nice, boys. ~ A.C. Gaughen