Present Life Quotes

When you have pictured and defined your desired legacy, allow your present life activities and efforts to begin reflecting the future you desire. Begin to do what you want to see, become involved in the causes you want to be a part of. Show your legatees how you want and expect things to be done after you are gone. This will enable them to fit the vision into their own as they make their own individual unique mark. ~ Archibald Marwizi

Life is a present; life is a miracle.
Life is a song divine.
When you touch my heart, hold my soul.
Oh my pure valentine. ~ Debasish Mridha

Love does not only need a taste, but it also needs a present. ~ Stebby Julionatan

I was probably more scared of my high school exams than I was of the Oscars. At the time you think it's everything and if you don't do well, your life's over. Opportunities are gone. So the more you do it, the less the fear is present. ~ Hugh Jackman

With a fiction it was the same. Mine was the whole story. For I took the place of the character who was most like myself, and his story was mine; until, grown weary with the life of years condensed in an hour, or arrived at my deathbed, or the end of the volume, I would awake, with a sudden bewilderment, to the consciousness of my present life, recognising the walls and roof around me, and finding I joyed or sorrowed only in a book. ~ George MacDonald

Nachiketa went to Yama (God of death) to know the mystery of death (Katho Upanishad), that means to know what was after death. They did not want to see this life. They did not know how wonderful this life was. Whatever you can do, do it within this present life.
They didn't want to know what was light, on the contrary searched for what was in the dark. ~ Sri Jibankrishna Or Diamond

Golden hours of vision come to us in this present life, when we are at our best, and our faculties work together in harmony. ~ Charles Fletcher Dole

What's interesting to me is the distinction between my old life and my present life. ~ Ira Sachs

Very often, when tides start turning, great gears start shifting, and gusting winds start blowing at the onset of a really wonderful dream's alignment with your present life, there is commotion, unpredictability, even turmoil.
So, hey, let's always assume that's the case whenever you experience commotion, unpredictability, even turmoil. K?
Let not your senses deceive, for even as the tempest may howl, just beyond it lies a serenity that could not otherwise find you. The storm before the calm, if you will. ~ Mike Dooley

literary fiction is fiction that examines the character of the people involved in the story, and that popular fiction is driven by plot. Whereas popular fiction, I tell them, is meant primarily as a means of escape, one way or another, from this present life, a kind of book equivalent of comfort food, literary fiction confronts us with who we are and makes us look deeply at the human condition. ~ Bret Lott

Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger. ~ C.S. Lewis

But the present life should never be hated, except insofar as it subjects us to sin, although even that hatred should not properly be applied to life itself. ~ John Calvin

If you feel stuck in your present life, if you feel no enthusiasm for anything, if you think you have no purpose or that you lost that purpose somewhere along the way, I guarantee you are living in a dungeon made of stories. And that none of those limiting stories are true. ~ Martha Beck

All I wanted was to say honestly to people: 'Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are!' The important thing is that people should realize that, for when they do, they will most certainly create another and better life for themselves. I will not live to see it, but I know that it will be quite different, quite unlike our present life. And so long as this different life does not exist, I shall go on saying to people again and again: 'Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!' ~ Anton Chekhov

Eternal life is personal existence in continuity with the present life, but transfigured. ~ Georgia Harkness

Most people are either sleep walking through their waking life or wake walking through their sleeping life. either way they're not getting much out of it. ~ Waking Life

The last chapter in 'Alice in Worcestershire' is called 'Writing the book'.
I started to write that 'Diary' chapter at the very beginning of the process and followed it through to the end... speaking to the reader.

My decision to do this was because I've often read autobiographies and wondered how the author felt and how it impacted them writing about painful memories that had been locked away in a deep forgotten place.
I wanted to know what was going in their 'present' life while they were writing; about the struggle with sharing their inner secrets and... I'm... inquisitive. (nosy)!

It took me over five years to finish 'Alice in Worcestershire' because sometimes, I was simply too drained to continue. Periodically, I updated the 'Diary' chapter and, thankfully, it's enthusiastically appreciated by readers. ~ Eskay Teel

It is not that God is the spectator and sharer of our present life, howsoever important that is; but rather that we are the reverent listeners and participants in God's action in the sacred story, the history of the Christ on earth. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Make treating yourself a priority and always remember your life is happening now. Don't put off all your dreams and pleasures to another day. In any balanced personal definition of success there has to be a powerful element of living life in the present. ~ Mireille Guiliano

No matter what sorrow or happiness may come to us on account of external and internal conditions, we must not be depressed or joyous about them. They occur through the karma of our previous actions. These sorrows and happinesses will also change and end. So look at it like this: When we have illness, the sorrows of parting from beloved friends, the theft of our possessions, when we are ridiculed by others and they say unpleasant things, we must not get stuck in the sorrow and become depressed, saying: "It isn't right that these things happen to me." These sorts of experiences that are difficult to bear do not occur on account of extenuating conditions in our present life. In previous lifetimes we did the evils that are the cause for it to happen that we experience these kinds of things. Specifically, ~ Chogyal Phagpa

May the Child Jesus be the star that guides you through the desert of your present life. ~ Pio Of Pietrelcina

You will enjoy any activity in which you are fully present ... ~ Eckhart Tolle

If he was a ghost in the life he remembered, Jeff thought, he was also a ghost in his present life, just the same way. Except, in all the fourteen years, just a couple of times. With Melody that first summer he had felt alive. On the beach on the island. And when he played the guitar. Most of the time, he thought, he practiced not being anybody. If you weren't anybody then nobody could - what? Hurt you or leave you behind? Make you unhappy? But then they couldn't make you happy either, could they? If you played it safe, then you kept safe. Jeff figured he was pretty good at keeping safe - he didn't even look in mirrors because he didn't want to see Melody's eyes. But one result of that was that Jeff didn't know anything about himself. And he thought, sitting in the little boat, alone on the creek, alone with the creek and the sky and the marshes, that he might want to know more. ~ Cynthia Voigt

Not in order to justify, but simply in order to explain my lack of consistency, I say: Look at my present life and then at my former life, and you will see that I do attempt to carry them out. It is true that I have not fulfilled one thousandth part of them [Christian precepts], and I am ashamed of this, but I have failed to fulfill them not because I did not wish to, but because I was unable to. Teach me how to escape from the net of temptations that surrounds me, help me and I will fulfill them; even without help I wish and hope to fulfill them.

Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side! If it is not the right way, then show me another way; but if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you must keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you. Do not mislead me, do not be glad that I have got lost, do not shout out joyfully: "Look at him! He said he was going home, but there he is crawling into a bog!" No, do not gloat, but give me your help and support. ~ Leo Tolstoy

You never know what's going on in someone's life. You never know what's really going on behind what they present. ~ Hill Harper

Stairs are your teacher; they teach you to be stronger. Love your teacher and every time life puts some stairs before you, accept them as a present! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

She was flawed, no longer intact. On the other hand, she felt as if she had been scourged clean. The past no longer weighed so heavily on the present. ~ Kate Atkinson

Ah, this feels just like the old times ... I still miss you and the others, you know, and life at school and those times when two or more of us would sit up talking far too late into the night. Which is not to say I would give up my present life to return there, but ... Well, even happy choices involve some sacrifice. And most of us, I suppose, would like to both have our cake and eat it if only it were possible ~ Mary Balogh

YOU CANT CHANGE THE PAST,BUT YOU CAN RUIN YOUR PERFECTLY PRESENT LIFE BY WORRYING ABOUT YOUR FUTURE. ~ Lester Swan

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present. ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon

You chose to live here now. You should try to live in the present. ~ Francesca Marciano

Perhaps she was both child and woman, darkness and light, past and present, life and death - all the opposites contained and reconciled in her. ~ Paule Marshall

131and do not gaze longingly at what We have given some of them to enjoy, the finery of this present life: We test them through this, but the provision of your Lord is better and more lasting. ~ Anonymous

Maligant items don't have to be reminders of bad times, like a breakup or a health crisis. They can bring back memories of loved ones or high points in your life. But if these memories leave you feeling sad or feeling that your life isn't as good now, then the objects are causing you mental and emotional harm and have no place in your home. ...The key to enjoying happiness and good health in a warm, welcoming home is to live IN THE PRESENT MOMENT surrounded by items that you cherish and that have meaning for you and your family. If too much of your time is spent replaying your greatest hits or struggling with old pain, you're not making new memories of your present life. --pg 20 ~ Peter Walsh

The greatest judgment which God himself can, in the present life, inflict upon a man is to leave him in the hand of his own boasted 'free'-will. ~ Augustus Toplady

Once in a very blue moon, John Tallow imagined his younger self standing down the timeline of his present life, bare toes curling in teenage beach sand, looking ahead to today and watching his future life collapse in on itself like a dying star. His future life becoming small and dark and dense, its gravity apparently grim and inescapable.
Once in a very blue moon, John Tallow spent some cash on a bottle of vodka and drank it at home within an hour. ~ Warren Ellis

So, O king, does the present life of man on earth seem to me, in comparison with the time which is unknown to us, as though a sparrow flew swiftly through the hall, coming in by one door and going out by the other, and you, the while, sat at meat with your captains and liegemen, in wintry weather, with a fire burning in your midst and heating the room, the storm raging out of doors and driving snow and rain before it. For the time for which he is within, the bird is sheltered from the storm, but after this short while of calm he flies out again into the cold and is seen no more. Thus the life of man is visible for a moment, but we know not what comes before it or follows after it. ~ Bede

Hardship in our present life is an atonement for sins committed in our previous existence, or the education necessary to prepare for a higher place in the life to come. ~ John Allyn

The man of true genius never lives before his time, he never undertakes impossibilities, and always embarks on his enterprise at the suitable place and period. Though he may catch a glimpse of the coming light as it gilds the mountain top long before it reaches the eyes of his contemporaries, and he may hazard a prediction as to the future, he acts with the present. ~ Joseph Henry

You probably can't get much closer to God than serving a congregation 24/7. At the same time, there's a different kind of closeness in this present life I have in which I have much more freedom to come and go and to engage some of the silence and stillness and solitude that I was missing before. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

When you do the things in the present that you can see, you are shaping the future that you are yet to see. ~ Idowu Koyenikan

And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life - it lives in the constant present. ~ John Guare

She saw the myriad gods, and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; she saw that there were ranges of life beyond our present life, ranges of mind beyond our present mind and above these she saw the splendors of the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo

All present life is but an interjection, An'Oh!'or 'Ah!'of joy or misery, Or a 'Ha! ha!'or 'Bah!'a yawn or 'Pooh!' Of which perhaps the latter is most true. ~ Robert Byron

A Chipewyan guide named Saltatha once asked a French priest what lay beyond the present life. 'You have told me heaven is very beautiful,' he said. 'Now tell me one more thing. Is it more beautiful than the country of the muskoxen in the summer, when sometimes the mist blows over the lakes, and sometimes the water is blue, and the loons cry very often? That is beautiful. If heaven is still more beautiful, I will be glad. I will be content to rest there until I am very old. ~ Barry Lopez

But the fact that Christ as the bridegroom brings forth fruit through me as the bride, through the agency of the indwelling Holy Spirit by faith, opens the way for me as a Christian to begin to know in the present life the reality of the supernatural. This is where the Christian is to live. Doctrine is important, but it is not an end in itself. There is to be an experiential reality, moment by moment. ~ Francis Schaeffer

Tashi says nomads keep to the routines and customs they learned from their parents and they know the basic truths: that life is full of suffering, that suffering can be understood and lived through, that their actions and intentions will determine their future lives just as the past has allowed for this present life. ~ Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

During the long period which elapsed between the Egyptian and the Babylonian servitudes, the hopes as well as fears of the Jews appear to have been confined within the narrow compass of the present life. ~ Edward Gibbon

The little girl's sense of secrecy that developed at prepuberty only grows in importance. She closes herself up in fierce solitude: she refuses to reveal to those around her the hidden self that she considers to be her real self and that is in fact an imaginary character: she plays at being a dancer like Tolstoy's Natasha, or a saint like Marie Leneru, or simply the singular wonder that is herself. There is still an enormous difference between this heroine and the objective face that her parents and friends recognise in her. She is also convinced that she is misunderstood: her relationship with herself becomes even more passionate: she becomes intoxicated with her isolation, feels different, superior, exceptional: she promises that the future will take revenge on the mediocrity of her present life. From this narrow and petty existence she escapes by dreams. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Proclaiming resurrection turns the world upside down (cf. Acts 17:1-9) and holds out to the poor and lowly the hope of being vindicated while posing a worrisome prospect to those who have already received their consolation in the present life (cf. Luke 6:24).322 ~ Ellen F. Davis

Works of piety and charity ... are necessary in this present life for as long as inequality prevails. Their workings here would not be required were it not for the superabundant numbers of the poor, the needy, and the sick ... As long as this inequity rages in the world, these good works will be necessary and valuable to anyone practicing them and they shall yield the reward of an everlasting inheritance to the man of good heart and concerned will. ~ John Cassian

Where fear is present, wisdom cannot be. ~ Lactantius

The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all. ~ Bede

The truth is that in my present life I don't remember that I ever was president ~ William Howard Taft

The present is precious gift.
The past cannot be replayed.
The future is no guarantee.
Live in the present. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Of this our true individual life, our present life is a glimpse, a fragment, a hint, and in its best moments a visible beginning. ~ Josiah Royce

Why complain? Does it solve your problems? No. In fact, it attracts problems; compounds them. Complaining attitude carries an unconscious negative charge attached to it. A constantly whining person invariably gets drowned in an ocean of negativity. Complaining can not work as a strategy as we all have finite time and energy and when we complain we lose our valuable time and also our mental peace and happiness. Your attitude defines you; if you are a complainer then you are problem-oriented; you would attract problems, and if you focus on grappling with the problems instead of passive complaining then you are solution-oriented, you would find answers to your problems.

Complaints are akin to the dark clouds that shroud the beaming sun in your life, and the worst part is that these clouds are not capable of even producing a drizzle to wash away your agonies. If you feel like complaining about anything, from your present life situation to any affliction bothering you and making you unhappy, think of your many blessings and rejoice on them. There are countless millions in this world who would sacrifice anything to be in your shoes. ~ Sanjeev Ahluwalia

A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world. ~ Joseph Addison

Rebirth is an affirmation that must be counted among the primordial affirmations of mankind. The concept of rebirth necessarily implies the continuity of personality. Here the human personality is regarded as continuous and accessible to memory, so that, when one is incarnated or born, one is able, potentially, to remember that one has lived through previous existences, and that these existences were one's own, ie, they had the same ego form as the present life. As a rule, reincarnation means rebirth in a human body. ~ Carl Jung

That some unevangelized men are saved, in the present life, by an extraordinary exercise of redeeming grace in Christ, has been the hope and belief of Christendom. It was the hope and belief of the elder Calvinists, as of the later. ~ William Greenough Thayer Shedd

We are a seed patiently waiting in the earth: waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener's good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But cock-crow is coming. ~ C.S. Lewis

This is real freedom-the ability to enjoy the choices we make in every successive moment of the present. ~ Deepak Chopra

In my travels I have found that those who keep Heaven in view remain serene and cheerful in the darkest day. If the glories of Heaven were more real to us, if we lived less for material things and more for things eternal and spiritual, we would be less easily disturbed by this present life. ~ Billy Graham

One of the great things about life is that you can start over. With God there are always new beginnings and second chances. He specializes in giving people fresh starts. While you may feel overwhelmed at times and held back by painful recollections haunting fears remorse shame or guilt God's power in your present life is not limited by what took place in your past. When you are governed and manipulated by your painful memories you allow your past to control your future. But when you choose to give God the controls He can do amazing things with the rest of your life. You can start now and have a brand-new ending ~ Sue Augustine

The point of the resurrection ... is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die ... What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it ... What you do in the present - by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself - will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it ... ). They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom. ~ N. T. Wright

How many ills, how many infirmities, does man owe to his excesses, his ambition – in a word, to the indulgence of his various passions! He who should live soberly in all respects, who should never run into excesses of any kind, who should be always simple in his tastes, modest in his desires, would escape a large proportion of the tribulations of human life. It is the same with regard to spirit-life, the sufferings of which are always the consequence of the manner in which a spirit has lived upon the earth. In that life undoubtedly he will no longer suffer from gout or rheumatism; but his wrong-doing down here will cause him to experience other sufferings no less painful. We have seen that those sufferings are the result of the links which exist between a spirit and matter; that the more completely he is freed from the influence of matter – in other words, the more dematerialized he is – the fewer are the painful sensations experienced by him. It depends, therefore, on each of us to free ourselves from the influence of matter by our action in this present life. Man possesses free-will, and, consequently, the power of electing to do or not to do. Let him conquer his animal passions; let him rid himself of hatred, envy, jealousy, pride; let him throw off the yoke of selfishness; let him purify his soul by cultivating noble sentiments; let him do good; let him attach to the things of this world only the degree of importance which they deserve – and he will, even under his presen ~ Allan Kardec

HUMANITY IS AN EXPERIMENT:
Your present life now is nothing less than a cheap and pathetic imitation of what life supposed to be like, unless you free yourself from the slavery we have all accepted for reality you will never get to paradise. ~ Ray Mancini

The more attention you give to the past, the more you energize it, and the more likely you are to make a "self" out of it. Don't misunderstand: Attention is essential, but not to the past as past. Give attention to the present; give attention to your behavior, to your reactions, moods, thoughts, emotions, fears, and desires as they occur in the present. There's the past in you. If you can be present enough to watch all those things, not critically or analytically but nonjudgmentally, then you are dealing with the past and dissolving it through the power of your presence. You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You find yourself by coming into the present. ~ Eckhart Tolle

For this we must believe: that the mind is never seriously aroused to desire and ponder the life to come unless it be previously imbued with contempt for the present life. Indeed, there is no middle ground between these two: either the world must become worthless to us or hold us bound by intemperate love of it. ~ John Calvin

Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving forever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life? ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

The Indians used to be the only inhabitants of the Americas, but times change. Having perceived us as belonging to history, they are free to emote over us, to re-create us in their history-based understanding, and dismiss our present lives as archaic and irrelevant to the times. ~ Paula Gunn Allen

Of course the no-government ethics will meet with at least as many objections as the no-capital economics. Our minds have been so nurtured in prejudices as to the providential functions of government that anarchist ideas must be received with distrust. Our whole education, from childhood to the grave, nurtures the belief in the necessity of a government and its beneficial effects. Systems of philosophy have been elaborated to support this view; history has been written from this standpoint; theories of law have been circulated and taught for the same purpose. All politics are based on the same principle, each politician saying to people he wants to support him: "Give me the governmental power; I will, I can, relieve you from the hardships of your present life." All our education is permeated with the same teachings. We may open any book of sociology, history, law, or ethics: everywhere we find government, its organisation, its deeds, playing so prominent a part that we grow accustomed to suppose that the State and the political men are everything; that there is nothing behind the big statesmen. The same teachings are daily repeated in the Press. Whole columns are filled up with minutest records of parliamentary debates, of movements of political persons. And, while reading these columns, we too often forget that besides those few men whose importance has been so swollen up as to overshadow humanity, there is an immense body of men - mankind, in fact - growing and dying, livin ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of 'Heaven' ridiculous by saying they do not want 'to spend eternity playing harps'. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible. Musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity. Crowns are mentioned to suggest the fact that those who are united with God in eternity share His splendour and power and joy. Gold is mentioned to suggest the timelessness of Heaven (gold does not rust) and the preciousness of it. People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs. ~ C.S. Lewis

Life is available only in the present moment. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

I, Master John Hus, in chains and in prison, now standing on the shore of this present life and expecting on the morrow a dreadful death, which will, I hope, purge away my sins, find no heresy in myself, and accept with all my heart any truth whatsoever that is worthy of belief. ~ Jan Hus

Lastly, we must be holy, because without holiness on earth - we will never be prepared to enjoy Heaven. ...I do not know what others may think - but to me it does seem clear that Heaven would be a miserable place to an unholy man. It cannot be otherwise. People may say in a vague way, that they "hope to go to Heaven," but they do not consider what they say. There must be a certain "fitness for the inheritance of the saints in light." Our hearts must be somewhat in tune. To reach the holiday of glory - we must pass through the training school of grace. We must be heavenly-minded and have heavenly tastes in the present life - or else we will never find ourselves in Heaven in the life to come! (Holiness) ~ J.C. Ryle

Through the fall our nature was stripped of divine illumination and resplendence. But the Logos of God had pity upon our disfigurement, and in His compassion He took our nature upon Himself. On Tabor He manifested it to His elect disciples clothed once again most brilliantly. He showed what we once were and what we shall become through Him in the age to come if we choose to live our present life, as far as possible, in accordance with His ways. ~ Gregory Palamas

Let us seek to extend the present life to the uttermost by observing every law of health, and by properly balancing labor, study, rest and recreation. ~ Brigham Young

The benevolent have the advantage of the envious, even in this present life; for the envious man is tormented not only by all the ill that befalls himself, but by all the good that happens to another; whereas the benevolent man is the better prepared to bear his own calamities unruffled, from the complacency and serenity he has secured from contemplating the prosperity of all around him. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

At night, the house thick with sleep, she would peer out her bedroom window at the trees and sky and feel the presence of a mystery. Some possibility that included her
separate from her present life and without its limitations. A secret. Riding in the car with her father, she would look out at other cars full of people she'd never seen, any one of whom she might someday meet and love, and would feel the world holding her making its secret plans. ~ Jennifer Egan

Men use to reason with themselves: It will not always be health, let us lay up for sickness; it will not always be youth, for age; and why not, saith St. Paul, it will not alway be this life, nor alway present life, lay up for yourselves against the life to come. ~ Lancelot Andrewes

You're all murdering life ... You're all trying to change yourselves, all trying to change what is, and thus you're never actually living what is. You're killing who you are every day of your lives by not being who you are ... where you are. ~ Luke Rhinehart

Is it not folly, Spider-like to spin
The Thread of present Life away to win-
What? for ourselves, who know not if we shall
Breathe out the very Breath we now breathe in! ~ Omar Khayyam

Sunset shows that LIFE is too beautiful to hold on to the past so Move on to the Present. ~ Jennifer Aquillo

Such,' he said,'O King, seems to me the present life of men on earth, in comparison with that time which to us is uncertain, as if when on a winter's night you sit feasting with your ealdormen and thegnsö a single sparrow should fly swiftly into the hall, and coming in at one door, instantly fly out through another. In that time in which it is indoors it is indeed not touched by the fury of the winter, and yet, this smallest space of calmness being passed almost in a flash, from winter going into winter again, it is lost to your eyes. Somewhat like this appears the life of man; but of what follows or what went before, we are utterly ignorant. ~ Bede

Blessed is he who like Joshua (cf. Josh. 10:12-13) keeps the Sun of righteousness from setting in himself throughout the whole day of his present life, not allowing it to be blotted out by the dusk of sin and ignorance. In this way he will truly be able to put to flight the cunning demons that rise up against him. ~ Maximus The Confessor

The present life is only the introductory part of our existence. It is that however which stamps a character on all that follows. ~ Joshua C. Breland

A different conception of society , very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. Under the name of Anarchy, a new interpretation of the past and present life of society arises, giving at the same time a forecast as regards its future, both conceived in the same spirit as the above-mentioned interpretation in natural sciences. Anarchy, therefore, appears as a constituent part of the new philosophy, and that is why Anarchists come in contact, on so many points, with the greatest thinkers and poets of the present day. ~ Peter Kropotkin

I believe that the first 8 years are most important and the time in a child's life when parents must be absolutely and completely present. ~ Dirk Benedict

To dream the future is much more better than to regret the past.
But the best of all, to live in the present life with all of your power. ~ Toba Beta

A woman in her thirties came to see me. As she greeted me, I could sense the pain behind her polite and superficial smile. She started telling me her story, and within one second her smile changed into a grimace of pain. Then, she began to sob uncontrollably. She said she felt lonely and unfulfilled.

There was much anger and sadness. As a child she had been abused by a physically violent father. I saw quickly that her pain was not caused by her present life circumstances but by an extraordinarily heavy pain-body. Her pain-body had become the filter through which she viewed her life situation.

She was not yet able to see the link between the emotional pain and her thoughts, being completely identified with both. She could not yet see that she was feeding the pain-body with her thoughts. In other words, she lived with the burden of a deeply unhappy self. At some level, however, she must have realized that her pain originated within herself, that she was a burden to herself. She was ready to awaken, and this is why she had come.

I directed the focus of her attention to what she was feeling inside her body and asked her to sense the emotion directly, instead of through the filter of her unhappy thoughts, her unhappy story. She said she had come expecting me to show her the way out of her unhappiness, not into it.

Reluctantly, however, she did what I asked her to do. Tears were rolling down her face, her whole body was shaking. "At t ~ Eckhart Tolle

The best of life on Earth is a glimpse of Heaven; the worst of life is a glimpse of Hell. For Christians, this present life is the closest they will come to Hell. For unbelievers, it is the closest they will come to Heaven. ~ Randy Alcorn

Memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously. ~ Isabel Allende

The happy marriage, which is the only proper nursery, is indissoluble. The unhappy marriage, which perpetually tells the child a bogey-man story about life, ought to be dissolved. ~ Rebecca West

There is good in everything; it's just how you choose to look at it. Everything that's worth it has a price. For me to be a model - I had to leave my family. Do you think I liked that? No! There are sacrifices. Life is meant to be a challenge, because challenges are what make you grow. ~ Gisele Bundchen

I hope it does not take the rest of my life until I find what it is I've been looking for. ~ Billy Joel

It was a curious game. This curiousness was evidenced, for example, in the fact that the young man, even though he himself was playing the unknown driver remarkably well, did not for a moment stop seeing his girl in the hitchhiker. And it was precisely this that was tormenting. He saw his girl seducing a strange man, and had the bitter privilege of being present, of seeing at close quarters how she looked and of hearing what she said when she was cheating on him (when she had cheated on him, when she would cheat on him). He had the paradoxical honor of being himself the pretext for her unfaithfulness.
This was all the worse because he worshipped rather than loved her. It had always seemed to him that her inward nature was real only within the bounds of fidelity and purity, and that beyond these bounds she would cease to be herself, as water ceases to be water beyond the boiling point. ~ Milan Kundera

As you live your day so you craft your life. Just take care of your days and a great life will take care of itself. ~ Robin S. Sharma

In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow. ~ Jessica Cutler

The quality of your life was determined by the quality of your service. I'm attracted to characters who have a higher calling, who want to serve in ways where you get beyond the comfortable service and you get into the space of the sacrificial. And I really am attracted to characters who just want to do things that brighten the world. That probably is the central aspect of my personality. ~ Will Smith