Selected presence quotes

1. What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.

2. I add status to any tournament I attend.

3. To be able to feel the lightest touch really is a gift.

4. My old drama coach used to say, 'Don't just do something, stand there.' Gary Cooper wasn't afraid to do nothing.

5. There are always times where the place of a commander isn't back with his Major State, but onward with his troops.

6. If fathers who fear fathering and run away from it could only see how little fathering is enough. Mostly, the father just needs to be there.

7. I say that we are wound With mercy round and round As if with air.

8. Jim Morrison was a well-built boy, larger than average, and young enough to maintain the engorged silent connection right through the residue of chemicals.

9. The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

10. I've been too many places. I'm like the bad penny.

11. Let there be nothing within thee that is not very beautiful and very gentle, and there will be nothing without thee that is not beautiful and softened by the spell of thy presence.

12. In painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter your manner.

13. Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

14. Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized.

15. I've been on a calendar, but never on time.

16. All actual life is encounter.

17. God, what is all this talk put out by the popes? Paradise is here, my good man. God, give me no other paradise!

18. We two are to ourselves a crowd.

19. The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

20. You are invited to the festival of this world and your life is blessed.

21. The future is keeping you out of the present time.

22. In the end, today is forever, yesterday is still today, and tomorrow is already today.

23. Pleasures newly found are sweet When they lie about our feet.

24. Eighty percent of success is showing up.

25. The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone.

26. For some strange reason, no matter where I go, the place is always called 'here'.

27. The timeless moment. - The 'moment' has no yesterday or tomorrow. It is not the result of thought and therefore has no time.

28. You cannot force the Now. - But can you neither condemn nor justify and yet be extraordinarily alive as you walk on? You can never invite the wind, but you must leave the window open.

29. The Now is indivisible. - Completeness, the now, is an absence of the conscious mind to strive to divide that which is indivisible. For once the completeness of things is taken apart it is no longer complete.

30. And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams - In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams.

31. I want to live my life, not record it.

32. Presence is more than just being there.

33. God is the mysterium tremendum that appears and overthrows, but he is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I.

34. Do not say, 'It is morning,' and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a new-born child that has no name.

35. Normally I didn't see a great deal. I didn't hear a great deal either. I didn't pay attention. Strictly speaking I wasn't there. Strictly speaking I believe I've never been anywhere.

36. The Age of Miracles is forever here!

37. I am the angel of reality, Seen for a moment standing in the door.

38. Clocks slay time. Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

39. It may be true that there is no God here, but there must be one not far off, and at such a moment one feels His presence; which comes to the same as saying (and I readily give this sincere profession of faith): I believe in God, and that it is His will that man lives not alone but with a wife and a child, when everything is normal.

40. The point is doing of them rather than the accomplishments. There is no actor but the action; there is no experiencer but the experience.

41. Here I stand, I'm your man.

42. All busy in the sunlight The flecks did float and dance, And I was tumbled up with them In formless circumstance.

43. Our footprint will be here for a long time. We're a long way from being able to leave with honor.

44. Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.

45. Not often in life has a human being caused me such joy by his mere presence as you did.

46. I'll be with you in the squeezing of a lemon.

47. A modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.

48. However, it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive.

49. Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

50. You say that in heaven there is eternal beauty. The eternal beauty is here and now, not in heaven.

51. Just before twenty-first March, 1953, seven days before, I stopped working on myself. A moment comes when you see the whole futility of effort. You have done all that you can do and nothing is happening. You have done all that is humanly possible. Then what else can you do? In sheer helplessness one drops all search. And the day the search stopped, the day I was not seeking for something, the day I was not expecting something to happen, it started happening. A new energy arose - out of nowhere. It was not coming from any source. It was coming from nowhere and everywhere. It was in the trees and in the rocks and the sky and the sun and the air - it was everywhere. And I was seeking so hard, and I was thinking it is very far away. And it was so near and so close.

52. Near about twelve my eyes suddenly opened - I had not opened them. The sleep was broken by something else. I felt a great presence around me in the room. It was a very small room. I felt a throbbing life all around me, a great vibration - almost like a hurricane, a great storm of light, joy, ecstasy. I was drowning in it. It was so tremendously real that everything became unreal. The walls of the room became unreal, the house became unreal, my own body became unreal. Everything was unreal because now there was for the first time reality.

53. A fair woman shall not only command without authority but persuade without speaking.

54. Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can.

55. And then we saw him bolt. We heard the miniature thunder where he fled, And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and gray, Like a shadow across instead of behind the flakes.

56. That's the secret. 'Tisn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just It. Some women'll stay in a man's memory if they once walk down a street.

57. The true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. Zen practice is to open up our small mind.

58. Because you cannot see him, God is everywhere.

59. ... the kingdom of heaven is with us today.

60. It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising; but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it. 1