“The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.”

“Nothing ever does happen in the future and nothing ever has happened in the past; the only happening is in the present moment. And yet people everywhere are so wrapped up in the past and future that the present moment tends to be overlooked. Yet this present moment is the only moment of reality; everything else is imagination. Now is the only time we can live. We can't live in the past, although some attempt it, and we can't live in the future. We live now or not at all.”

“The past is gone-the future is not come. And we are here together, you and I.”

“The present moment
contains past and future.
The secret of transformation,
is in the way we handle this very moment.”

“The past was neither as good nor as bad as we suppose: it was just different. If we tell ourselves nostalgic stories, we shall never engage the problems that face us in the present—and the same is true if we fondly suppose that our own world is better in every way. The past really is another country: we cannot go back. However, there is something worse than idealizing the past—or presenting it to ourselves and our children as a chamber of horrors: forgetting it.”

“The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.”

“If we are unable to unify the past, present, and future of the sentence, then we are similarly unable to unify the past, present, and future of our own biographical experience or psychic life.”

“By living deeply in the present moment we can understand the past better and we can prepare for a better future.”

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

“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.”