91 Present Quotes

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

Any artist will tell you he's really only interested in the stuff he's doing now. He will, always. It's true, and it should be like that.

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.

The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope.

The only saving grace of the present is that it's too damned stupid to question the past very closely.

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.

If you aren't in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.

I don't have any romanticism about any part of my past. I think of it only inasmuch as it gave me pleasure or helped me grow psychologically. That is the only thing that interests me about yesterday. I don't believe in yesterday, by the way. You know I don't believe in yesterday. I am only interested in what I am doing now.

The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.

We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.

The normal present connects the past and the future through limitation. Contiguity results, crystallization by means of solidification. There also exists, however, a spiritual present that identifies past and future through dissolution, and this mixture is the element, the atmosphere of the poet.

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

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an eternal now does always last.

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

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

So let's take the good times as they go and I'll meet you further on up the road...

Lose not yourself in a far off time, seize the moment that is thine.

Live more and more in the Present, which is ever beautiful and stretches away beyond the limits of the past and the future.

'If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine.'

I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields; - Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. - You with the unpaid bill, Despair, - You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care, - I will pay you in the grave, - Death will listen to your stave.

'People who live in the past generally are afraid to compete in the present. I've got my faults, but living in the past is not one of them. There's no future in it.'

Life - how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.

These are the days of the endless summer These are the days, the time is now There is no past, there's only future There's only here, there's only now.

All history is modern history.

I've always lived in the moment.

At eighteen you sleep without memories.

In the light, the earth remains our first and our last love. Our brothers are breathing under the same sky as we; justice is a living thing. Now is born that strange joy which helps one live and die, and which we shall never again postpone to a later time. On the sorrowing earth it is the unresting thorn, the bitter brew, the harsh wind off the sea, the old and the new dawn.

The word 'now' is like a bomb thrown through the window, and it ticks.

The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts. Life is not to be conceived on the analogy of a melodrama in which the hero and heroine go through incredible misfortunes for which they are compensated by a happy ending. I live and have my day, my son succeeds me and has his day, his son in turn succeeds him. What is there in all this to make a tragedy about?

History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

I'll tell you this - No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.

Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations, for the sake of an ideal of happiness that may never be realised.

Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of to-day. Leave your theories. All theories, you see, even those of virtue, are bad, foolish, mischievous. Do not abuse life. Live in to-day. Be reverent towards each day. Love it, respect it, do not sully it, do not hinder it from coming to flower. Love it even when it is gray and sad like to-day. Do not be anxious. See. It is winter now. Everything is asleep. The good earth will awake again. You have only to be good and patient like the earth. Be reverent. Wait. If you are good, all will go well. If you are not, if you are weak, if you do not succeed, well, you must be happy in that. No doubt it is the best you can do. So, then, why will? Why be angry because of what you cannot do? We all have to do what we can. . . . Als ich kann.'

What she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here there, she survived. Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.

The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.

I make war on the living, not on the dead.

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

We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible. There have been war, plague, scandal, and treason, and there is no way of our preventing their having taken place; the executioner became an executioner and the victim underwent his fate as a victim without us; all that we can do is to reveal it, to integrate it into the human heritage, to raise it to the dignity of the aesthetic existence which bears within itself its finality; but first this history had to occur: it occurred as scandal, revolt, crime, or sacrifice, and we were able to try to save it only because it first offered us a form. Today must also exist before being confirmed in its existence: its destination in such a way that everything about it already seemed justified and that there was no more of it to reject, then there would also be nothing to say about it, for no form would take shape in it; it is revealed only through rejection, desire, hate and love. In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men. But at the heart of his existence he finds the exigency which is common to all men; he must first will freedom within himself and universally; he must try to conquer it: in the light of this project situations are graded and reasons for acting are made manifest.