Source: The Fall of Freddie the Leaf: A Story Of Life For All Ages
“Every moment you steal from the present is a moment you've lost forever. There is only now.”
Variant: every moment you steal from the present is a moment you have lost for ever. There's only now.
Source: The Passion
“Every moment lost is worth the life of a thousand men.”
Said to Braxton Bragg at Chickamauga, September 18-20, 1863. As quoted in May I Quote You, General Forrest? by Randall Bedwell.
1860s
John Rivers in The Genius and the Goddess (1955)
Context: You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.
Very often attributed to Addison, this is apparently a paraphrase of a statement by Hugh Blair, published in Blair's Sermons (1815), Vol. 1, p. 219, where he mentions "men of pleasure and the men of business", and that "To the former every moment appears to be lost, which partakes not of the vivacity of amusement".
Misattributed
“Angels from the Lord lead and protect us every moment and every moment of every moment.”
#5992
Arcana Coelestia (1749 - 1756)
Variant: Everyday God gives us a moment in which it is possible to change everything that makes us unhappy.
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Source: No Way Out (2002), Ch. 2: Nothing To Be Transformed
Context: Whether you are interested in moksha, liberation, freedom, transformation, you name it, you are interested in happiness without one moment of unhappiness, pleasure without pain, it is the same thing. Whether one is here in India or Russia or in America or anywhere, what people want is to have one without the other. But there is no way you can have one without the other. This demand is not in the interest of the survival of this living organism.
