Quotes about moment
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“Want to know the best thing about teaching? Seeing that moment when a kid discovers his or her gift. There's no feeling on earth like it.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Feeling

“And the moment you care that much, a man has you. He owns a little piece of your soul, and he can beat you to death with it.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Micah

Source: Micah

Death, Soul

“Why should I even bother? What's the point, really?"
He thought for a moment. "Who says there has to be a point?" he asked. "Or a reason. Maybe it's just something you have to do.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“I take his hand, holding on tightly, preparing for the cameras, and dreading the moment when I will finally have to let go.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, pp. 373-374 (closing words)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)
Context: "One more time? For the audience?" he says. His voice wasn't angry. It's hollow, which is worse. Already the boy with the bread is slipping away from me.
I take his hand, holding on tightly, preparing for the cameras, and dreading the moment when I finally have to let go.

“And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped around my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Pain, Beauty, Feeling

“What we have at the moment isn't as the old liturgies used to say, 'the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead,' but a vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may work out in the end.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Hope, Optimism, Dead

“Déjà vu is more than just that fleeting moment of surprise, instantly forgotten because we never bother with things that make no sense. It show that time doesn't pass. It's a leap into something we have already experienced and that is being repeated.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Sense, Time

“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different, it's accepting the past for what it was, and using this moment and this time to help yourself move forward.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Hope, Forgiveness, Time, Past

“Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Light

“Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: A Clockwork Orange

Pain, World, Sleep

“And I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn't matter.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Love

“Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

Thinking, Waiting

“I can see the beauty of glass objects fully at the moment when they slip from my hand”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Beauty

“In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Shot of Love (1981), Every Grain Of Sand

“My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Life

“Jessica swallowed. "I think you had better stick to English."

"But Italian is so moving," Dain said.

"To ho voluto dal primo che ti vedi." I've wanted you from the first moment I saw you.

"Mi tormenti ancora." You've tormented me ever since.”

Loretta Chase book Lord of Scoundrels

Source: Lord of Scoundrels

Thinking

“Honey, I plan to marry you the moment the ink is dry on that death certificate.”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

Death

“Simon’s love life was complicated, but there was a pang, just for a moment, for this woman talking graphic novels with him.
Ah, well. Tessa Gray, foxy nerd, was probably dating someone already.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Whitechapel Fiend

Love, Life

“I loveI have loved ye from the moment I saw ye, I will love ye ’til time itself is done, and so long as you are by my side, I am well pleased wi’ the world.”

Diana Gabaldon book The Fiery Cross

Source: The Fiery Cross

Love, World, Time

“It was one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and deceptive - when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves flood-marks which are never reached again.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

Source: The Mill on the Floss

Feeling, Sincerity

“From the moment of my birth, I lived with pain at the center of my life. My only purpose in life was to find a way to coexist with intense pain.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Life, Pain, Way, Birth

“Life is uncharted territory. It reveals its story one moment at a time.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Life, Time

“Friendship is love as much as any romance. And like any love, it’s difficult and treacherous and confusing. But in the moment when your knees touch, there’s nothing else you could ever want.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Love, Friendship

“There has to be a moment at the beginning when you wonder whether you’re in love with the person or in love with the feeling of love itself.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Love, Feeling, Personality

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night (1960)

Life, God, Children, Faith

“If your concern is that I may be overcome with manly ardor and ravish you in a moment of weakness… I may. If you ask nicely.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

“What if it turns out that a life isn't defined by who you belong to, or where you came from, by what you wished for or whom you've lost, but instead by the moments you spend getting from each of these places to the next?”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts (2005)

Life

“I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths

Men, Water, Country

“I have wanted to do this," he said, "every moment of every hour of every day that I have been with you since the day I met you. but you know that. Youknow. Don't you?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“The snow was too light to stay, the ground too warm to keep it. And the strange spring snow fell only in that golden moment of dawn, the turning of the page between night and day.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

Source: Palace of Stone

Spring, Light, Night

“Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten.”

Rob Sheffield (1966) American music journalist

Source: Love Is a Mix Tape

“There is no such thing as a fact. There is only how you saw the fact, in a given moment. How you reported the fact. How your brain processed that fact. There is no extrication of the storyteller from the story.”

Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things

Source: Small Great Things

“But pain… seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)

Life, Pain, Question, Time

“Tessa is gone, and every moment she is gone is a knife ripping me apart from the inside.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Princess

“We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

“Maybe marriage, like life, isn't only about the big moments, whether they be good or bad. Maybe it's all the small things—like being guided slowly forward, surely, day after day—that stretches out to strengthen even the most tenuous bond.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Life, Marriage

“I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt’s complete absence. They have forgotten.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Imagination, Parent

“With each passing moment I'm becoming part of the past. There is no future for me, just the past steadily accumulating.”

Haruki Murakami book Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Past, Future, Parting

“Reynie's fce fell. 'It's not funny, Kate.'
For a moment - a fleeting moment - Kate looked desperately sad. 'Well, of course it's not funny, Reynie Muldoon. But what do you want me to do? Cry?”

Trenton Lee Stewart The Mysterious Benedict Society

Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society

Sadness, Cry

“There are moments when troubles enter our lives and we can do nothing to avoid them.
But they are there for a reason. Only when we have overcome them will we understand why they were there.”

Paulo Coelho book The Fifth Mountain

Source: The Fifth Mountain

Understanding

“I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Love, Life, Question

“Sexual union is a holy moment in which a part of Heaven flows into the Earth.”

James Redfield book The Celestine Prophecy

Source: The Celestine Prophecy

Parting

“The moment Eve bit into the apple, her eyes opened and she became free. She exposed the truth of what every woman knows: to find our sovereign voice often requires a betrayal.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Truth, Betrayal

“I need voices of reason and of hysteria and of empathy. I need to have an Alanis moment. I need advice from Elizabeth Bennett. I need Tim Tams and comfort food.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Food

“But now, I was beginning to wonder if you didn't always have to choose between turning away for good or rushing in deeper. In the moments that it really counts, maybe it's enough- more than enough, even- just to be there.
~Ruby, pg 399”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Variant: If you didn't always have to choose between turning away for good or rushing in deeper. In the moments that it really counts, maybe it's enough - more than enough, even - just to be there.
Source: Lock and Key

“When the moment comes, will you take your chance to be a hero?”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Eternity Code

Chance

“The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.”

Eric Berne book Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships

Games People Play: the Psychology of Human Relations (1964)

Boy, Bird, Singing

“The moment we decide to throw more energy into fighting for our mate than with him, the crack of a fist on the enemy's jaw splits the ears of angels.”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

Angels, Fight

“We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition.”

William Gibson book Pattern Recognition

Source: Pattern Recognition

Future

“The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Life, Feeling, Success, Future

“What remains of your past if you didn't allow yourself to feel it when it happened? If you don't have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss them over with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories.”

David Rakoff (1964–2012) writer

Source: Fraud: Essays

Feeling, Memory, Past

“There are moments in your life when you see yourself through someone else’s eyes, when your only hope of believing you’re capable of doing something is because someone else believes it for you.”

Marc Acito (1966) American novelist, humorist, screenwriter

Source: How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater

Life, Hope

“I stare at her for a long moment. I want to kiss her. I want to kiss her more than I've ever wanted anything in my life.”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

Life, Kiss

“If bringing down the wall would require you to fly, you must believe you can fly. Otherwise, when the decisive moment comes, you will surely discover you ahve no wings.”

Patrick Carman book The Dark Hills Divide

Source: The Dark Hills Divide

Decision, Flying

“All my years to this moment
All my roads to this wall.
All my words to this silence
All my pride to this fall.
-Songs of Sapphique”

Catherine Fisher book Incarceron

Source: Incarceron

Silence

“There are moments that have a certain flavor of eternity”

Marc Levy book Vous revoir

Source: Vous revoir

“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.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Variant: Life can be found only in the present moment. 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.

Life, Past, Future

“We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

Love, God

“Sean O'Connell: Sometimes I don't. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Personality

“When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

“I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Love Among the Chickens

Source: Love Among the Chickens

“poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Source: Drum Taps

Boy, Thinking

“I brought my lips down to hers, and it was like everything that had ever happened to me had simply been a warm-up for this moment, that this was where my life truly began.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Life

“And I'm full aware of how much you don't like me at this moment"

Can't be a new thing for you" Jim said”

Jessica Bird book Covet

Source: Covet

“I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Life, Loneliness, Night

“Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

On Death and Dying (1969)

Death, Peace, Star, Light

“A moment later, he plopped down on the sand beside her, and when they accidentally touched, Gabby had the briefest flash of them sitting together just like this on a hundred different weekends in the future.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

Future

“All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 7
Context: Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fullness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humourously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.