quotations about the present
When people can't abide things as they are, when they can't abide the present, they do one of two things ... either they ... either they turn to a contemplation of the past ... or they set about to ... alter the future. And when you want to change something ... YOU BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
EDWARD ALBEE
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
We might realize that the present moment may be one of an eternal or sempiternal series of moments, all of which will resemble it because, in some ways, they are the present, and won't in other ways, because the present will be the past by that time.
JOHN ASHBERY
The Paris Review, winter 1983
We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infintesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality.
ALAN W. WATTS
attributed, S.A.I.N.T.: How to live more fully in the Spirit
If I did not love what is present, if I could not cling to this enormous, safe parachute, I would long since have fallen into the abyss.
CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN
Levels
I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.
TONI MORRISON
interview, Time, January 21, 1998
I don't want a future, I want a present. To me this appears of greater value. You have a future only when you have no present, and when you have a present, you forget to even think about the future.
ROBERT WALSER
The Tanners
Enjoy the present, whatsoever it be, and be not solicitous about the future.
JEREMY TAYLOR
attributed, Day's Collacon
Tomorrow gives a beck'ning hand--
I turn my face away;
I'll not invite her to my home--
I only love Today.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Today"
When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better.
ANDREW SOLOMON
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.
EUGENE O'NEILL
A Moon for the Misbegotten
The present is pregnant with the future.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
Philosophical Writings
The shadow by my finger cast
Divides the future from the past:
Before it, sleeps the unborn hour,
In darkness, and beyond thy power:
Behind its unreturning line,
The vanished hour, no longer thine:
One hour alone is in thy hands--
The NOW on which the shadow stands.
HENRY VAN DYKE
"The Sun-Dial at Wells College"
The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.
KIRAN DESAI
The Inheritance of Loss
The past was gone and the future had yet to unfold, and he knew he should focus his life on the present ... yet his day-to-day existence suddenly struck him as endless and unbearable.
NICHOLAS SPARKS
The Choice
Let any one try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
WILLIAM JAMES
Principles of Psychology
There is no comfort looking forth nor back,
The present gives the lie to all her past.
EMMA LAZARUS
"Epochs: VI. Grief"
You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.
JOHN GREEN
Looking for Alaska
All the past is not worth one today.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"New Year"
We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Ethics of Ambiguity
Let us act as though there were no past, only so far as it aids and cheers the present; and no future, excepting such as we make it by the best use of the present.
MARTHA MARTELL
Second Love