The Present Quotes

The Bible holds up before us ideals that are within sight of the weakest and the lowliest, and yet so high that the best and the noblest are kept with their faces turned ever upward. It carries the call of the Saviour to the remotest corners of the earth; on its pages are written the assurances of the present and our hopes for the future ~ William Jennings Bryan

Accept the past; embrace the present; consider the future. ~ Russell Eric Dobda

It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man
that question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at the present moment in these uprising times
whether to follow uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and re-shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I failed. But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays
I mean, not by their essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes. If I had ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in red and black that we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said: 'See how wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature!' But having ended no better than I began they say: 'See what a fool that fellow was in following a freak of his fancy! ~ Thomas Hardy

Algernon. Good heavens! Is marriage so demoralising as that? Lane. I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person. Algernon. ~ Oscar Wilde

The future will be different if we make the present different. ~ Peter Maurin

If you're not careful to think and speak words of faith, worry will creep in, and it will not only steal your peace and joy, it will steal your 'today.' The present is the greatest gift God ever gives us. So hold on to the peace that's yours in Christ. Don't let it go. ~ Joyce Meyer

If you saw her in these moments, you might think she was collecting her thoughts in order to go forward. But I see it another way: Her mind is being overwhelmed by two processes that must simultaneously proceed at full steam. One is to deal with and live in the present world. The other is to re-experience and mourn something that happened long ago. It is as though her lightness pulls her toward heaven, but the extra gravity around her keeps her earthbound. ~ Steve Martin

Every man who is not for us in this prolonged struggle for liberty is responsible for the present degradation of the mothers of the race. It is pitiful to see how few men ever have made our cause their own, but while leaving us to fight our battle alone, they have been unsparing in their criticism of every failure. Of all the battles for liberty in the long past, woman only has been left to fight her own, without help and with all the powers of earth and heaven, human and divine, arrayed against her. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

No other generation but ours can evangelize the present generation. ~ John Mott

Winners live in the present tense. People who come up short are consumed with future or past. I want to be living in the now. ~ Alex Rodriguez

The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship [in the Soviet Union], if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture. ~ Leon Trotsky

The opium of the people in the present world is perhaps not so much religion as it is accepted boredom. Such a world is at the mercy, it must be known, of those who provide at least the semblance of an escape from boredom. Human life aspires to the passions, and again encounters its exigencies. ~ Georges Bataille

The mechanical brain does not secrete thought "as the liver does bile," as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day. ~ Norbert Wiener

The present moment is really all that we have. The only place you can really love another person is in the present. Love in the past is a memory. Love in the future is a fantasy. To be really alive, love - or any other experience - must take place in the present. ~ Jack Kornfield

It is solely bigness in business which makes it possible to supply the masses with all those products the present-day American common man does not want to do without. Luxury goods for the few can be produced in small shops. Luxury goods for the many require big business. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

One of the commonest ailments of the present day is the premature formation of opinion. ~ Kin Hubbard

I am afraid that I do not believe that any body of men can have enough knowledge of the past, the present and the future to establish "development priorities" which presumably means procuring some developments as being good and prohibiting others as being bad. ~ John James Cowperthwaite

It is not brains or intelligence that is needed to cope with the problems with Plato and Aristotle and all of their successors to the present have failed to confront. What is needed is a readiness to undervalue the world altogether. This is only possible for a Christian ... All technologies and all cultures, ancient and modern, are part of our immediate expanse. There is hope in this diversity since it creates vast new possibilities of detachment and amusement at human gullibility and self-deception. There is no harm in reminding ourselves from time to time that the "Prince of this World" is a great P.R. man, a great salesman of new hardware and software, a great electric engineer, and a great master of the media. It is his master stroke to be not only environmental but invisible for the environmental is invincibly persuasive when ignored. ~ Marshall McLuhan

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it's pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We're on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on ~ C.S. Lewis

A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts. In a different connection, we have already spoken of the tendency there was to look into the past, to help make the present, with all its horrors, less real. But in robbing the present of its reality there lay a certain danger. It became easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive of camp life, opportunities ~ Viktor E. Frankl

The past is an illusion. You must learn to live in the present and accept yourself for what you are now. What you lack in flexibility and agility you must make up with knowledge and constant practice. ~ Bruce Lee

Ordinary philosophy is like a hound hunting his own tail. The more he hunts the farther he has to go, and his nose never catches up with his heels, because it is forever ahead of them. So the present is already a foregone conclusion, and I am ever too late to understand it...The truth is that we travel on a journey that was accomplished before we set out; and the real end of philosophy is accomplished, not when we arrive at, but when we remain in, our destination (being already there) - which may occur vicariously in this life when we cease our intellectual questioning ~ Benjamin Paul Blood

Make peace with your past so you don't mess up the present! ~ Marcia Casar Friedman

Sleep was a vehicle for passing the time, for avoiding the present. It was a trolley for the depressed, the impatient, and the dying. ~ Hugh Howey

There is no cause for nostalgia save the good and life-enhancing nostalgia for the present. ~ Ray Bradbury

It's hardly possible to overstate the value, in the present state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with other persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Such communication has always been ... one of the primary sources of progress. ~ John Stuart Mill

The best adventures in life is in the present. Seize the present and make it great adventure. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing. ~ R.D. Laing

Redistribution depends on three things, amnesia,meaning you don't remember the murderous paths of these beliefs. Envy, you hate the successful in the present and used, people who
have nothing to earn yet. ~ Jedediah Bila

People only invoke history to ballast their arguments in the present." "Maybe ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

When I see memories, I see the past.
When I see thoughts, I see the present.
When I see intentions, I see the future.

When I see regret, I see the past.
When I see hope, I see the present.
When I see expectation, I see the future.

When I see habits, I see the past.
When I see actions, I see the present.
When I see character, I see the future.

When I see karma, I see the past.
When I see chance, I see the present.
When I see destiny, I see the future.

When I see knowledge, I see the past.
When I see understanding, I see the present.
When I see wisdom, I see the future.

When I see elders, I see the past.
When I see adults, I see the present.
When I see children, I see the future. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations, that we have forgotten, as a people, the cost of a free and undivided Republic. ~ John A. Logan

There is less difference than many suppose between the ideal Socialist system, in which the big businesses are run by the State, and the present Capitalist system, in which the State is run by the big businesses. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

That, I decided, was what it meant to be a slave: your past didn't matter, in the present you were invisible and you had no claim on the future. ~ Lawrence Hill

I used to think that the present determined the future. That if I worked hard, and long, I'd get the things I wanted. The job, the apartment, the life. That the future was simply a mound of clay waiting to be told by the present, what form to take. But that isn't true. It can't be. ~ Rebecca Serle

Only when all conceptions of space and time, life and death, are exploded, when the grip of the past and fear of the future become merely conditions of one's past, only then can one live in the present fully. ~ Alberto Villoldo

In the classic Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel's teacher urged him always to take his next shot unburdened by previous failures to hit the target; as he improved, his teacher urged him not to be influenced by his successes either, to stay in the present moment. ~ Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

No time better than the present,' I always say. Or was that, 'Nothing is better than a present'? I forget. ~ Kaza Kingsley

By taking control of the present, you are choosing to alter the past you are making for yourself, and your future too. ~ Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

I don't care about anything but you, and that's enough for the present. I want you to be happy
not to think of anything sad; only to feel that I'm near you and I love you. Why should there be pain? In such hours as this what have we to do with pain? That's not the deepest thing; there's something deeper. ~ Henry James

Frequently avoidance of the present leads to idealization of the future ... When an event does not live up to your expectations you can get out of the depression by idealizing again. Do not let this vicious circle become your life-style. Interrupt it now with some strategic present-moment fulfillment. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

To ward off alienation and gloom, it is only necessary to remember the unremembered heroes of the past, and to look around us for the unnoticed heroes of the present. ~ Howard Zinn

The well-known shrill voice startled Almayer from his dream of splendid future into the unpleasant realities of the present hour. An unpleasant voice too. He had heard it for many years, and with every year he liked it less. No matter; there would be an end to all this soon. ~ Joseph Conrad

The paradox is that we can become wiser and more compassionate and live more fulfilling lives by refusing to be who we have tended to be in the past. But we must also relax, accepting things as they are in the present, as we strive to change ourselves. ~ Sam Harris

I know in alone here. I'm not delusional. But the way memory animates the past is more real than the present. ~ Susan Abulhawa

The past lives within the present, and our ancestors breathe through our children. ~ Elif Shafak

This book first arose out of a passage in [Jorge Luis] Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought - our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography - breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a 'certain Chinese encyclopaedia' in which it is written that 'animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies'. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that. ~ Michel Foucault

I don't believe that the future gives us signs. I think that we look back and read the past with the present in our eyes...Maybe you read to look forward, and start reading the future. ~ Cath Crowley

What distinguishes a technological world is that the terms of nature are obscured; one need not live quite in the present or the local. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present. ~ Cyril Connolly

For me the present is merged in eternity. I may not sacrifice the latter for the present. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

In the time of writing you have to forget the present, if you can do that. Try to live in the period you are writing. ~ Teodoro A. Agoncillo

I would like you to accept only one prayer, and that is laughter, because when you are totally laughing you are in the present. You cannot laugh in the future and you cannot laugh in the past. All those people who have created this retarded humanity have taken away all juice, all laughter, all smiles, and dragged everybody into being inauthentic. And if you are inauthentic, insincere, you can never grow the seed that has been given to you by this great compassionate universe. ~ Rajneesh

I like the present. I'm always interested in new ideas, and what's happening. I'm not nostalgic. ~ Douglas Coupland

The present is shaped by the past. ~ Amine A. Ayad

Personality Self/ Ego Spiritual Self /Higher Soul/God Not recognizing the divinity in yourself or others Recognizing divinity in self and all living things Seeing yourself as separate from everything Knowing you are connected to everything Focuses on differences Recognizes similarities Intellect (Mind) Intuition (Heart) Hostility Compassion Re-Action Responding with awareness Past or Future Fully in the present moment Fear (false evidence appearing real) Courage Judgment Acceptance Right/Wrong Everything is an experience to learn from, both negative and positive. Better/Worse Everything has value. ~ Sabrina Reber

You have compassion but by itself it is not enough. It is almost as if you carry around inside you some dead thing. Some heavy black cinder in your heart that burdens you; a ponderous anchor that tethers you to the past. Until you can burn it away, you can never truly live in the present, in the now. Until you can live in the now, you cannot see things as they really are. Meantime you are a man who is wilfully blind. You have eyes and yet you will not use them. ~ John Dolan

Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us - no walking around National Trust properties or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in mines and slums without literacy or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor - that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better later. We live now - for our own instant hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio. ~ Caitlin Moran

At a certain age, he thought, it is better for one's health not to do what I am about to do. At a certain age, a man's outlook is best tempered by moderation, if not resignation, if not outright capitulation. At a certain age, one should live without either harking too much back to grievances of the past or inviting resistance in the present by embodying a challenge to the pieties that be. Yet to give up playing any but the role socially assigned, in this instance assigned to the respectably retired - at seventy-one, that is surely what is appropriate, and so, for Coleman Silk, as he long ago demonstrated with requisite ruthlessness to his very own mother, that is what is unacceptable. ~ Philip Roth

He who governed the world before I was born shall take care of it likewise when I am dead. My part is to improve the present moment. ~ John Wesley

If mankind were to continue in other than the present barbarism, a new path must be found, a new civilization based on some other method than technology. ~ Clifford D. Simak

If we have abandoned ourselves to God, there is only one rule for us: the duty of the present moment. ~ Jean-Pierre De Caussade

The Wild Heart wants promises of forever. The Peaceful Soul just wants harmony in the present. ~ J. Autherine

We must carefully cultivate the voice that speaks to us because an internal voice is the ultimate narrator of our charming and delightful personal story or the documentarian of our tragic and disgraceful plotlines. Stories that we tell ourselves become our functional reality, which format structures the concourse of the nested emotional control panel that guides and girds us through the din of the present. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

An era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age. ~ Saul Bellow

Accept that you are strong enough to endure the present. The rest doesn't matter. ~ Pepper Winters

Only the present moment contains life. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Rather than focusing on our future, we should do our best to improve our lives now, in the present moment. ~ Joseph P. Kauffman

But you have to live in the present. You have to take the old and make it new
that's my point. ~ Lauren Myracle

The future has become uninhabitable. Such hopelessness can arise, I think, only from an inability to face the present, to live in the present, to live as a responsible being among other beings in this sacred world here and now, which is all we have, and all we need, to found our hope upon. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

People have all sorts of pasts, sometimes dark or dreary, but perhaps the actions they choose in the present are the ones that carry the most weight. ~ Erin Bowman

The greatest significance of the present student generation is that it is through them that the point of view of the subjugated is finally and inexorably being expressed. ~ James A. Baldwin

When I left class that day, I did not tell them what I myself was just beginning to discover: how similar our own fate was becoming to Gatsby's. He wanted to fulfill his dream by repeating the past, and in the end he discovered that the past was dead, the present a sham, and there was no future. Was this not similar to our revolution, which had come in the name of our collective past and had wrecked our lives in the name of dream? ~ Azar Nafisi

I looked anxiously around me: the present, nothing but the present. Furniture light and solid, rooted in its present, a table, a bed, a closet with a mirror-and me. the true nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, and all that was not present did not exist. The past did not exist. Not at all. Not in things, not even in my thoughts. It is true that I had realized a long time ago that mine had escaped me. But until then I had believed that it had simply gone out of my range. For me the past was only a pensioning off: it was another way of existing, a state of vacation and inaction; each event, when it had played its part, put itself politely into a box and became an honorary event: we have so much difficulty imagining nothingness. Now I knew: things are entirely what they appear to be-and behind them ... there is nothing. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

The scenes of our life are like pictures in rough mosaic, which have no effect at close quarters, but must be looked at from a distance in order to discern their beauty. So that to obtain something we have desired is to find out that it is worthless; we are always living in expectation of better things, while, at the same time, we often repent and long for things that belong to the past. We accept the present as something that is only temporary, and regard it only as a means to accomplish our aim. So that most people will find if they look back when their life is at an end, that they have lived their lifelong ad interim, and they will be surprised to find that something they allowed to pass by unnoticed and unenjoyed was just their life - that is to say, it was the very thing in the expectation of which they lived. And so it may be said of man in general that, befooled by hope, he dances into the arms of death. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Setting goals helps bring your future into your present and the present is the only time we can take action. ~ Zig Ziglar

Therein lies the social significance of art: It is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is more lacking. The unsatisfied yearning of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious, which is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present. The artist seizes on this image and, in raising it from deepest unconsciousness, he brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers. ~ Carl Jung

An open and receptive attention to and awareness of what is occurring in the present moment ~ Matt Peplinski

In my case, I write in the past because I'm not really part of the present. I have nothing valid to say about anything current, though I have something to say about what existed then. ~ Patrick O'Brian

The effect on Lucy was not bad, for the faint seemed to merge subtly into the narcotic sleep. It was with a feeling of personal pride that I could see a faint tinge of colour steal back into the pallid cheeks and lips. No man knows, till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own lifeblood drawn away into the veins of the woman he loves.
The Professor watched me critically. "That will do," he said. "Already?" I remonstrated. "You took a great deal more from Art." To which he smiled a sad sort of smile as he replied, "He is her lover, her fiance. You have work, much work to do for her and for others, and the present will suffice. ~ Bram Stoker

Although one may direct the future or past through the onerous linkages of temporal cause and effect, riding the breaking waves of the present and never once overstepping it, the better way is to go there and do it yourself. ~ Mary-Jean Harris

You can't afford to get sick, and you can't depend on the present health care system to keep you well. It's up to you to protect and maintain your body's innate capacity for health and healing by making the right choices in how you live. ~ Andrew Weil

I never thought of a future without you. That was the reason I always lived in the present, hoping I would find you someday. ~ Sapan Saxena

Our condition never satisfies us; the present is always the worst. Though Jupiter should grant his request to each, we should continue to importune him. ~ Jean De La Fontaine

Dim or indistinct views of sin are the origin of most of the errors, heresies and false doctrines of the present day. If ~ J.C. Ryle

We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker's, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble. ~ C.S. Lewis

I identify myself in language, but only by losing myself in it like an object. What is realised in my history is not the past definite of what was, since it is no more, or even the present perfect of what has been in what I am, but the future anterior of what I shall have been for what I am in the process of becoming. ~ Jacques Lacan

What we do today means a great deal, though it may mean nothing tomorrow. ~ Marty Rubin

To strengthen the connection between your conscious mind and your subconscious mind is to gain access to a map and compass to help you move towards your dream. To gain access to the subconscious mind is to gain the ability to see and create the future, the ability to shift the present, and the ability to alter your own perceptions of the past. ~ Kevin Michel

Today we are again witnessing the emergence of transnational elites ... [Whose] ties cut across national boundaries ... It is likely that before long the social elites of most of the more advanced countries will be highly internationalist or globalist in spirit and outlook ... The nation-state is gradually yielding its sovereignty ... Further progress will require greater American sacrifices. More intensive efforts to shape a new world monetary structure will have to be undertaken, with some consequent risk to the present relatively favorable American position. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

Long distance running is meditation. When I finish a long run, it's like my brain has been washed. All the stress and negative thoughts are left somewhere on those long kilometers. At the end, the illusions of the past and future are removed from my mind, and it is set back to zero, so I feel I am totally in the present moment, reset, and ready to restart my life afresh. ~ Robert Black

Utilize A noxious puff-word. Since it does nothing that good old use doesn't do, its extra letters and syllables don't make a writer seem smarter; rather, using utilize makes you seem either like a pompous twit or like someone so insecure that she'll use pointlessly big words in an attempt to look sophisticated. The same is true for the noun utilization, for vehicle as used for car, for residence as used for house, for presently, at present, at this time, and at the present time as used for now, and so on. What's worth remembering about puff-words is something that good writing teachers spend a lot of time drumming into undergrads: "formal writing" does not mean gratuitously fancy writing; it means clean, clear, maximally considerate writing. ~ David Foster Wallace

I've seen the future and it's much like the present only longer. ~ Dan Quisenberry

If we can develop the ability to be aware of the present moment, we can use the past as a guide for ordering our actions in the future, so that we may attain our goal. ~ S. N. Goenka

We'll therefore relish with content, Whate'er kind providence has sent, Nor aim beyond our pow'r; For, if our stock be very small, 'Tis prudent to enjoy it all, Nor lose the present hour. ~ Nathaniel Cotton

We read the past by the light of the present, and the forms vary as the shadows fall, or as the point of vision alters. ~ James Anthony Froude

Women prefer to serve the present and are afraid of age; they are in the grip of youth of their dreams. Age is truly an oppression for women. ~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Any good history begins in strangeness. The past should not be comfortable. The past should not a familar echo of the present, for if it is familar why revist it? The past should be so strange that you wonder how you and people you know and love could come from such a time. ~ Richard White

Every new Fashion is a refusal to inherit, a subversion against the oppression of the preceding Fashion; Fashion experiences itself as a Right, the natural right of the present over the past. ~ Roland Barthes

We make the revolutionary history, telling the past as we have learned it mouth-to-mouth, telling the present as we see, know, and feel it in our heats and with our words. ~ Bell Hooks