Quotes about moment
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“I have only known her for two years. But if you took every memory, every moment, if you stretched them end to end-they'd reach forever.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Memory

“We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves,
unable to see that here, now,
this very moment is sacred;
but once it’s gone –
its value is incontestable.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

“It was one of those moments when you feel the future so much that it humbles the present.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Feeling, Future

“Gods, I wish the world was full of passive women. He thought for a moment longer, then scowled. On second thoughts, what a nightmare that'd be. It's the job of a man to fan the spark into flames, not quench it…”

Steven Erikson book Memories of Ice

Source: Memories of Ice

Women, God, World

“In this moment, there is plenty of time. In this moment, you are precisely as you should be. In this moment, there is infinite possibility. (17)”

Victoria Moran (1950) American writer

Source: Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit

Time

“I knew that it wouldn’t last. It was just a moment, a perfect moment, as time stood still and fleetingly everything fell back into its proper place.”

Sarah Dessen book That Summer

Source: That Summer

Time, Perfection

“She wanted to bottle how safe she felt in this moment, so she could drink of it later when loneliness and fear left her parched.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Fear, Drink, Loneliness

“How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible…”

William Gaddis book The Recognitions

Source: The Recognitions

Past

“For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Beauty, Soul

“Are you happy here?" I said at last.
He considered this for a moment. "Not particularly," he said. "But you're not very happy where you are, either.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

Happiness

“He bent to put his cheek against hers. His breath against her ear made her shudder with each deliberately spoken word. "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.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“A moment later Jonathan’s body wavered in the air, shimmering, and began to go transparent. “Don’t let them spread silly rumors about me, or make me a god. O. K., Fletch? I’m a seagull. I like to fly, maybe…”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

God, Flying

“They continued to watch each other from across the room, both frozen for a moment by the shadow of distant possibilities.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Distant

“Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.”

Gilda Radner (1946–1989) American comedian

Life, Change

“One of the drawbacks to life is that it contains moments when one is compelled to tell the truth”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Life, Truth

“Life isn't only about the big moments whether they be good or bad. Maybe it’s about the small things that stretch out to strengthen the most tenuous bound.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Life

“Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision”

John Ashbery book Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror

Source: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

Indecision

“Every moment you steal from the present is a moment you've lost forever. There is only now.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Variant: every moment you steal from the present is a moment you have lost for ever. There's only now.
Source: The Passion

“It was in a way a comforting idea; if there was all the time in the world, then the happenings of a given moment became less important.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

World, Way, Idea, Time

“Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Sex

“Love is a moment of stillness that sometimes a word can shatter to pieces. Or love can be a thing that endures, a rich, deep current flowing unending through the years.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Love

“Your thoughts and beliefs of the past have created this moment, and all the moments up to this moment. What you are now choosing to believe and think and say will create the next moment and the next day and the next month and the next year.”

Louise L. Hay (1926–2017) American writer

Thinking, Past

“Yes, but knee pants are so much more flattering. You can see my legs."
You want people to see your legs?"
I have very nice legs!" We both paused to admire them for a moment.”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Death's Mistress

People

“The miracle of love comes to us in the presence of the uninterpreted moment.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Love

“Very well," Magnus said. "Let us pause for a moment and consider—Oh, you have already run off Splendid.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

“The Wonder of it All:
Sitting there in your pajamas & all the time in the world & if I could keep any moment it would be this: watching you & holding my breath with the wonder of it all.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

World, Time

“Beautiful. All this suffering at the moment of destruction.”

Naoko Takeuchi (1967) Japanese manga artist

Beauty, Suffering

“I was blinded by stupidity for a brief moment in our life, for a flicker in the eternity in which you and I live, and I stumbled.”

Paullina Simons book The Summer Garden

Source: The Summer Garden

Life, Stupidity

“Right,” I said. “So the baboon, the crocodile…any other pets I should know about?”
Amos thought for a moment. “Visible ones? No, I think that’s it.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Thinking

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”

Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American playwright and novelist

Heart, Happy

“We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Life, Solitude, Holiday

“Nothing had been okay, not for a long time. And every moment that I thought I was getting close, like the one I’d had earlier, seemed to remind the universe that I didn’t deserve that, not yet.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

Universe, Time

“In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us -- not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.”

John Irving book Until I Find You

Source: Until I Find You

Loss, Childhood

“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”

Susan Sontag book On Photography

Variant: to take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.
Source: On Photography

Time, Personality

“It seems an insult to the night to speak of purpose and intent, when this common moment is so brimming full of blessed design tranquility. All things follow their course.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Source: The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

Night

“The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives…”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

Source: The Moviegoer

Happiness, People, Reading

“The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change: Yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Warrior of the Light

Change, Time

“If I had learned anything in my life about love, it was that they were tenous things that could end at any moment. Caution was essential-but not at the cost of risking your life”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Love, Life, Learning

“She looked like something that might have occured to Ibsen in one of his less frivolous moments.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Summer Lightning

Source: Summer Lightning

“Although there are times I'd give anything to have her back, I'm glad she went first. Losing her was like being cleft down the middle. It was the moment it all ended for me, and I wouldn't have wanted her to go through that.”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

Time

“Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

Source: Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America

“Evil is the moment when I lack the strength to be true to the Good that compels me.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

Source: Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil

Evil

“At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.”

Arthur Golden (1956) American novelist

Pain, Beauty

“It was often in small moments that significant things were revealed.”

Lisa Kleypas book Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor

Source: Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor

“In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Life

“There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Hagakure (c. 1716)
Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
Context: There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.
Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else.

Life, Understanding, Success

“All the light of the day, fleeing the earth, seemed for one brief moment to take refuge in the sky; pink clouds spiralled round the full moon that was as green as pistachio sorbet and as clear as glass; it was reflected in the lake.”

Irène Némirovsky (1903–1942) French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz

Source: Suite Française

Light

“Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy -- one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure, but turn out to have been the pleasure itself.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: Tender is the Night

Happiness, Pleasure, Time, Past

“For a moment, Nico felt like a little kid again. He was tempted to blurt out, That’s so cool! Even before he got into Mythomagic, he’d been obsessed with pirates. Probably that was one reason he’d been so smitten with Percy, a son of the sea god.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

God, Sea

“She had that rare virtue of never existing completely except for that opportune moment”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Life is not measured by the breathes you take, but by the moments that take your breathe away.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Life

“Every day, God gives us the sun — and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

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

God, Change, Sun

“After a moment, he turned sharply to me. 'Are you quite all right?'

'Yes, perfectly. Why do you ask?'

'Because I have just called you contrary and you did not bother to contradict me. I thought you might be ill.”

Deanna Raybourn (1968) American writer

Source: Silent on the Moor

“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

World, Grass

“And what is happiness, Nathan? In my experience, it's only a moment's pause here and there on what is otherwise a long and difficult road. No one can be happy all the time.”

William Kent Krueger book Ordinary Grace

Source: Ordinary Grace

Happiness, Time

“The moment she was cursed, I lost her. Once it wears off- soon- she will be embarrassed to remember things that she said, things she did, things like this. No matter how solid she feels in my arms, she is made of smoke.”

Holly Black book Red Glove

Source: Red Glove

Feeling

“The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.
And to save us.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Context: Love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to reach out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if it means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.
The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.
And to save us.

Love

“At the moment I was mad enough to chew up nails and spit out paper clips.”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

Madness

“Keller couldn't form any words for a moment. Then she said, "Galen? When you choose a form, choose something gentle."

I thought you thought everybody had to be a fighter." He said.

Some people shouldnt have to be.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Witchlight

People

“Each experience in your lifewas absolutely necessary in order to have gotten you to the next place, and the next place, up to this very moment.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

“people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They’re with us in the grocery store, as we turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles.”

Christina Baker Kline (1964) American writer

Source: Orphan Train

People

“If life was a dream, then dying must be the moment when you woke up. It was so simple it must be true. You died, the dream was over, you woke up. That's what people meant when they talked about going to heaven. It was like waking up.”

Ian McEwan book The Daydreamer

Source: The Daydreamer

Life, People, Dreams

“There are moments in life that the white-chocolate Magnum ice cream was invented for, and this is one of them.”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

Life

“For the moment I can think of nothing— except that I am a sentient being stabbed by the miracle of these waters that reflect a forgotten world.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

World, Thinking, Water

“Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

Freedom, Time

“some moments are nice, some are
nicer, some are even worth
writing
about.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: War All the Time

“The important thing is that man is lost in time, in the moment that immediately precedes him - which only attests, by reflection, to the fact that he is lost in the moment that follows”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Time

“The more connections you and your lover make, not just between your bodies, but between your minds, your hearts, and your souls, the more you will strengthen the fabric of your relationship, and the more real moments you will experience together.”

Barbara De Angelis (1951) American psychologist

Soul, Lovers, Heart

“Breathing involves a continual oscillation between exhaling and inhaling, offering ourselves to the world at one moment and drawing the world into ourselves at the next…”

David Abram (1957) American philosopher, ecologist

Source: Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology

World, Drawing

“But where pain was, healing could come; where loneliness was, new relationships could be formed; where rejection was, new love could be found. It was a moment. And moments changed. She would have to live through the moment to get to the next.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: How to Fall in Love

Love, Pain, Change, Loneliness

“It's really scary when you have a moment of temporary sanity.”

Nelson DeMille book The Lion

Source: The Lion

“I learned you pay for your happiness. That's why I don't expect to be happy all the time. I'd rather be surprised by one moment every so often to remind me that joy is possible, even if I have to pay for it later.”

Esmeralda Santiago (1948) Puerto Rican writer and actor

Source: Conquistadora

Happiness, Learning, Time, Joy

“Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Variant: There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.

Soul

“Just watch this moment, without trying to change it at all. What is happening? What do you feel? What do you see? What do you hear?”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

Feeling, Change

“Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.”

Elizabeth Strout book Olive Kitteridge

Source: Olive Kitteridge

Life, People

“He wanted to think of words that would make some difference but there were none in any language he knew that were sufficient to the moment or that would change a single thing.”

Kent Haruf book Eventide

Source: Eventide

Thinking, Change

“In that moment, he chose Greek. He threw in his lot with Camp Half-Blood-and the horses changed. The storm clouds inside burned away, leaving nothing but red dust and shimmering heat, like mirages on the Sahara.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Change, Horse

“There is no moment more precious than the exact moment they are living. And that exact moment has a lot to do with how future moments play out.”

Obert Skye book Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

Source: Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

Future

“It was so nice just to live in the moment, to enjoy holding him so closely, to pretend for a little while that they were merely two young people in love and nothing else.”

Melissa de la Cruz book The Van Alen Legacy

Source: The Van Alen Legacy

Love, People

“To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Experience

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience

Wisdom

“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over. So in a series of acts of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over.”

James Boswell book The Life of Samuel Johnson

(19 September 1777)
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791)
Variant: We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.

Friendship, Heart

“One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read - in such a moment, anything can happen.”

Jane Hirshfield (1953) Poet

Source: Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

Reading

“For a moment the two of them looked at each other, wordless, as if they were asleep and their dreams had converged on common ground, a place where sound was alien.”

Roberto Bolaño book 2666

Source: 2666

Dreams

“I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

The New York Times October 15, 1986, MAN IN THE NEWS; WITNESS TO EVIL: ELIEZER WEISEL, By JOSEPH BERGER http://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/15/world/man-in-the-news-witness-to-evil-eliezer-weisel.html

God, Faith, Anger, Faith

“We never can just stop time. Or take moments back. Life doesn't work that way, does it?”

Christine Feehan American writer

Source: Oceans of Fire

Life, Way, Time, Back To Work

“One of the Georges - I forget which - once said that a certain number of hours' sleep each night - I cannot recall at the moment how many - made a man something which for the time being has slipped my memory.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Source: Mike and Psmith

Sleep, Memory, Time, Night

“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Variant: You have passed through the two hardest tests on the spiritual road: the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what you encounter.
Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Disappointment, Courage, Waiting, Patience