Quotes about moment
page 13

“One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: The Golden Compass

World

“At that moment I had no mind to change, or not change, or throw against the nearest wall.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Change

“The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl on One Beautiful April Morning

Memory, Heart

“To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment”

Galway Kinnell (1927–2014) Poet

“I've wanted to go out with you from the first moment I saw you. I just had to wait until you were ready.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

Waiting

“For a moment, Percy actually remembered what it was like to be happy. He had an amazing girlfriend. They could have a future together.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Happiness, Future

“The father hesitated only a moment. He felt the vague pain in his chest. If I run, he thought, what will happen? Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts. And we've done fine tonight. Even Death can't spoil it.”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Death, Pain

“Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Variant: Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat.
Source: Factotum

Life, World, Sleep, Clothes

“… well, if women's work was never done, why trouble about how much of it wasn't being accomplished at any given moment?”

Diana Gabaldon book The Fiery Cross

Source: The Fiery Cross

Women

“Be not Afraid of anything. You will do Marvelous work. it is Fearlessness that brings Heaven even in a moment.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Peaceful

“Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is a supreme creative act.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Love

“Step by step
Moment by moment
We live through
Another day”

Anne McCaffrey book Dragon Harper

Source: Dragon Harper

“Some moments are perfect, and then someone comes along and f*cks it up. Ain't it always the way.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bullet

Source: Bullet

Way, Perfection

“Have you ever had one of those moments when you look up and realize that you're one of those people you see on the train talking to themselves?”

Marc Maron (1963) Comedian

People, Training

“A man begins dying at the moment of his birth. Most People live in denial of Death's patient courtship until, late in life and deep in sickness, they become aware of him sitting bedside.”

Dean Koontz book The Husband

Source: The Husband

Life, Death, People, Birth

“You will be at your best forever, Even now you have good moments. Occasional glimpses of your heavenly self. When you change your baby's diaper, forgive your boss's temper, tolerate your spouse's moodiness, you display traces of saintliness.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: 3:16: The Numbers of Hope

Forgiveness, Change, Baby

“If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Love, Life, Happiness, Effort

“Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched".”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Happiness, Motivation, Personality

“We breathe the light, we breathe the music, we breathe the moment as it passes through us.”

Anne Rice book The Vampire Lestat

Source: The Vampire Lestat

Music, Light

“How fragile we are, between the few good moments.”

Jane Hirshfield (1953) Poet

“The ending is nearer than you think, and it is already written. All that we have left to choose is the correct moment to begin.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Thinking

“I know the best moments can never be captured on film, even as I spend nearly half my life trying to do just that.”

Rosie O'Donnell (1962) American comedienne, television personality and actress

Life

“It's strange, I think, the way our lives turn out. Moments of circumstance, when later combined with conscious decisions and actions and a boatload of hope, can eventually forge a future that seems predestined.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Longest Ride

Source: The Longest Ride

Hope, Way, Thinking, Decision

“… it has been well said that it is precisely these moments when we are feeling that ours is the world and everything that's in it that Fate selects for sneaking up on us with the rock in the stocking.”

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

Fate, World, Feeling

“The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.”

Idries Shah (1924–1996) writer and Sufi teacher

Source: Sufi Thought and Action

“In that moment I understood that the cruelest words in the universe are if only.”

Lisa See book Peony in Love

Source: Peony in Love

Universe

“Because that was some mega tense awkwardness, a real 'Hello my name is Ever and I'll be your next stalker' kind of moment…”

Alyson Nöel book Evermore

Source: Evermore

“….. it would be interesting to find out what goes on in that moment when someone looks at you and draws all sorts of conclusions.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Drawing

“It is anticipation and recollection that fill the heart—never the sensation of the moment.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Source: Threshold

Heart

“What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two: melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

“We all have our moments of brilliance and glory, and this was mine.”

Roald Dahl book Boy

Source: Boy: Tales of Childhood

“Everyone has a moment when they discover they love Amy Poehler.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Love

“This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Peace, Solitude

“How can you just forget a person completely until the moment you see his face again?”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Personality, Forgetting

“Shut up, Julius! I mean, quiet a moment, Commander.”

Eoin Colfer Artemis Fowl

Artemis Fowl

“In our moments of pain and trial, I guess we would shudder to think it could be worse, but without the atonement it not onlybe worse, itbe worse.”

Jeffrey R. Holland (1940) Mormon leader

Pain, Thinking

“I often arrive at quite sensible ideas and judgements, on the spur of the moment. It is when I stop to think that I become foolish.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Diary of a Pilgrimage

Source: Diary of a Pilgrimage

Idea, Thinking

“However difficult it may be to accept what happens to us, one must understand that moments such as this give us the possibility for radical change in our behavior.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Warrior of the Light

Behavior, Understanding, Change

“Every moment has its pleasures and its hope.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park

Pleasure, Hope, Hope

“At this moment, many people have stopped living. They do not become angry, nor cry out; they merely wait for time to pass. They did not accept the challenges of life, so life no longer challenges them”

Paulo Coelho book The Fifth Mountain

Source: The Fifth Mountain

Life, People, Time, Waiting

“We sat in the car
& the night dropped
down until the
only sounds were
the crickets &
the dance of our voices

& for a moment
the world became
small enough to
roll back & forth
between us.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Hearing Voices - Volume 5: Collected Stories and Drawings

World, Cars, Dance, Night

“The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 563

Life, Angels, Past

“All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Children, Courage, Housing

“A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

“There are moments when i wish i could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but i have a feeling that if i did, the joy would be gone as well. So i take the memories as they come, accepting them all, letting them guide me whenever i can.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Sadness, Feeling, Memory, Joy

“Every moment waited is a moment wasted….”

David Deida (1958) American writer

Source: The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire

Waiting

“All the miles of a hard road are worth a moment of true happiness.”

Arnold Lobel book Fables

Source: Fables

Happiness

“"Is," "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by Sigismundo Celine
Source: Nature's God

Sense

“There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Sadness, Feeling, Joy, Sad

“But he could not renounce his infinite capacity for illusion at the very moment he needed it most… he saw fireflies where there were none.”

Gabriel García Márquez book The General in His Labyrinth

Source: The General in His Labyrinth

“A moment passed, perhaps half a second when their faces said what they felt, and then Emma was smiling, laughing, her arms around his neck.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Smile

“I often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“At moments like this I envy those who have found a safe haven in which to bestow their hearts; or perhaps I envy them for having a heart to bestow. I often feel that I myself am without one, and possess in its stead merely a heart shaped stone.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Feeling, Heart, Envy

“The other package has pieces of dried stag stick. The pups like chewing on those."

"What's a stag stick?" Meg asked, taking the packages.

He stared at her for a moment. Then he put a fist below his belt and popped out a thumb.

"Oh," Meg said. ".”

Anne Bishop book Written in Red

Source: Written in Red

“Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back.”

Alice Hoffman book The Ice Queen

Source: The Ice Queen

“You are always in my thoughts. When you were little, I knew your whereabouts at any given moment. Now that you are… off on your own, I still always know where you are, because I keep you in my heart.”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Heart

“At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted on her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.”

Victor Hugo book The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Source: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Feeling, Kiss

“Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.”

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

"A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz", in The Aleph (1949); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Variant: Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment — the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

Life

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

God

“As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Source: Of Mice and Men

“Happiness is the experience of living every moment with love, grace and gratitude.”

Denis Waitley (1933) American writer

Love, Happiness, Gratitude

“Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we've managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Variant: Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we've managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal.

Reality, Sea

“I dreamed I was a single moment in a single day.

A note struck and vanished. A sounding. A reckoning. Gone.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: The World and Other Places: Stories

Dreams

“There is something about that moment, when literature becomes accessible, and a door of the world opens.”

Lois Lowry (1937) American writer

World, Literature

“Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Life, Heart

“Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when

the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self

lay lightly down, and slept.”

Maxine Kumin (1925–2014) American poet and author

Wolf, Change

“Moments are history. If you have enough of them, they become a story.”

Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director

Source: The Shoemaker's Wife

History

“He looked at her and for a moment she lived in the bright blue worlds of his eyes, eagerly and confidently.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

World, Confidence

“Give yourself permission to allow this moment to be exactly as it is, and allow yourself to be exactly as you are.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

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

“I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Dreams

“She smiled at him, though her hazel-green eyes were wary beneath the brim of a sodden hat. Right at that moment, staring at her across the hall, Gideon Shaw, cynic, hedonist, drunkard, libertine, fell hopelessly in love.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Again the Magic

Love, Smile

“This is not a letter but my arms about you for a brief moment.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

“Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Life, Sadness, Sex, Soul

“If you were to open up a baby's head - and I am not for a moment suggesting that you should - you would find nothing but an enormous drool gland.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Baby

“It seemed to travel with her, to sweep her aloft in the power of song, so that she was moving in glory among the stars, and for a moment she, too, felt that the words Darkness and Light had no meaning, and only this melody was real.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Travel, Star, Light

“Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing…”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Life, Change, Time, Heart

“She had made the choice for him - in a moment of flight and panic, but she had made it - not realizing that her Jace would rather die than be like this, and that she'd been not so much saving his life as damning him to an existence he would despise.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Life

“You love me?"
He just looked at me for a moment. And then he reared back his head and laughed, a rich, mellow sound, unreserved and unashamed. " No, not at all. I regularly battle gods for women I dislike!”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Hunt the Moon

Love, Women, God

“It was the meanest moment of eternity.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

“They kissed for the sort of endless moment that only exists between lovers whose lips are still new territory to one another.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies

Lovers, Kiss

“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is the moments we share with one another when we're uncool.”

Cameron Crowe (1957) Academy Award-winning American writer and film director

Variant: The only true currency in this bankrupt world are the moments you share with someone when you're uncool.
Source: Almost Famous

World

“I don't care how much evidence the state presented. I've never for one moment believed he murdered that waitress.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Kiss an Angel

“Contentment and happiness didn't exist in my life for more than a few moments at a time, and they were really only illusionary. There was always something hidden. Lying in wait to spring up and ruin everything.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Life, Happiness, Spring, Lying

“A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born but you can choose how you die.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Personality

“And how shall I think of you?' He considered a moment and then laughed. 'Think of me with my nose in a book!”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Books, Thinking

“But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell burst, the plummet of the car from a bridge.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Life, Cars

“Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.”

Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American playwright and novelist

Reading

“As if when someone close to us dies, we momentarily trade places with them, in the moment right before. And as we get over it, we’re really living their life in reverse, from death to life, from sickness to health.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Life, Death, Health

“Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

“All it takes is a single moment.”

Alison McGhee (1960) American novelist

Source: All Rivers Flow To The Sea

“We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of moments that could have been found but were forever hidden in the sands.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Love, Fear, Thinking, Heart

“There were moments bristling with deadness, when she looked out at her life and went, "" Or worse, feeling interrupted and tired, "Wha—?”

Lorrie Moore Birds of America

Source: Birds of America

Life, Feeling, Dead

“That's the most stupid expression in the world. 'I fell in love'—as if you had no choice. There's a moment, there's always a moment; I can do this, I can give in to this or I can resist it. I don't know when your moment was but I bet there was one.”

Patrick Marber Closer

Source: Closer

Love, Stupidity, World

“Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It's one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Life

“Happiness comes in moments, & then it's gone until the next time. Could be years. But sadness settles it.”

Dennis Lehane book Mystic River

Source: Mystic River

Happiness, Sadness, Time

“It was strange, I reflected, as we went out into the golden evening of the Byzantine streets, that even in the weirdest circumstances, the most troubling episodes of one’s life, the greatest divides from home and familiarity, there were these moments of undeniable joy.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: The Historian (2005), Ch. 37

Life, Home, Joy

“I sure do miss that woman. Smart. Funny. Sweet. She never gave me a moment's trouble."

"Gosh, I'm sorry about that. I knew it was boring between you two, but not that bad.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Call Me Irresistible

“It's hard for me, a Jew, to stay in the moment. Without the past, where is the guilt? And without the future, where is the dread? And without guilt and dread, who am I?”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Past, Future

“Hemingway has his classic moment in "The Sun Also Rises" when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt. All he can say is, "Gradually, then suddenly." That's how depression hits. You wake up one morning, afraid that you're gonna live.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Variant: There is a classic moment in ‘The Sun Also Rises’ when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, “Gradually and then suddenly.” When someone asks how I lost my mind, that’s all I can say too.
Source: Prozac Nation

Sun

Quotes about moment page 13

Quotes about moment
page 13