Quotes about moment
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François-René de Chateaubriand photo

“Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant.”

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French writer, politician, diplomat and historian

As quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893) selected and compiled by James Wood.

Leonardo DiCaprio photo

“Don't think for a moment that I'm really like any of the characters I play. That's why it's called acting.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Eugene Cernan photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
William Pitt the Younger photo

“We must not count with certainty on a continuance of our present prosperity during such an interval [15 years]; but unquestionably there never was a time in the history of this country when, from the situation of Europe, we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace, than we may at the present moment.”

William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British politician

"The War Speeches of William Pitt", Oxford University Press, 1915, p. 16
Speech in the House of Commons, 17 February 1792, introducing the Budget. His prediction was a vain hope.

David Attenborough photo

“In moments of great grief, that's where you look and immerse yourself. You realise you are not immortal, you are not a god, you are part of the natural world and you come to accept that.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

"David Attenborough at 90: 'I think about my mortality every day'" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/david-attenborough-at-90-i-think-about-my-mortality-every-day/, interview with Joe Shute, The Telegraph (29 October 2016)

Joan Baez photo

“Here's to you, Nicola and Bart
Rest forever here in our hearts
The last and final moment is yours
That agony is your triumph”

Joan Baez (1941) American singer

Here's to You
Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)

Nathaniel Hawthorne photo

“We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream: it may be so the moment after death.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

1836
Notebooks, The American Notebooks (1835 - 1853)

Hans Urs Von Balthasar photo
George Orwell photo
Eminem photo

“Look, if you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it, or just let it slip?”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Lose Yourself".
2000s, 8 Mile (2002)

Rafael Nadal photo
Hans Fritzsche photo

“I mean, the realization that crime does not begin when you murder people. Crime begins with propaganda, even if such propaganda is for a good cause. The moment propaganda turns against another nation or against any human being, evil starts”

Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953) German Nazi official

To Leon Goldensohn, April 6, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004
Context: What I would like to emanate from the darkness of this tragedy is one spark of life. I mean, the realization that crime does not begin when you murder people. Crime begins with propaganda, even if such propaganda is for a good cause. The moment propaganda turns against another nation or against any human being, evil starts. Whereas the Germans started propaganda toward the end of this tragedy, you Allies stand at the beginning of the tragedy.

Frank Herbert photo

“A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

As quoted in Shoptalk: learning to write with writers (1990), edited by Donald Morison Murray<!-- Cook Publishers -->
General sources
Context: A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, 'Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write.' There's no difference on paper between the two.

Eleanor Roosevelt photo
Virginia Woolf photo

“Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day.”

"Modern Fiction"
The Common Reader (1925)
Context: Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it.

Thomas Mann photo

“Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Source: The Beloved Returns (1939), Ch. 7
Context: Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded it slips away, like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife. Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.

George Orwell photo

“At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"The Freedom of the Press", unused preface to Animal Farm (1945), published in Times Literary Supplement (15 September 1972)
Context: At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

William Saroyan photo

“Then swiftly, neatly, with the grace of the young man on the trapeze, he was gone from his body.
For an eternal moment he was still all things at once: the bird, the fish, the rodent, the reptile, and man.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

"The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze"
The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)
Context: Then swiftly, neatly, with the grace of the young man on the trapeze, he was gone from his body.
For an eternal moment he was still all things at once: the bird, the fish, the rodent, the reptile, and man. An ocean of print undulated endlessly and darkly before him. The city burned. The herded crowd rioted. The earth circled away, and knowing that he did so, he turned his lost face to the empty sky and became dreamless, unalive, perfect.

Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

Source: The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859), Ch. X.
Context: Poets are never young, in one sense. Their delicate ear hears the far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.

Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus photo

“Those designs are best which the enemy are entirely ignorant of till the moment of execution.”
Nulla consilia meliora sunt nisi illa, quae ignorauerit aduersarius, antequam facias.

De Re Militari (also Epitoma Rei Militaris), Book III, "Dispositions for Action"
Context: It is much better to overcome the enemy by famine, surprise or terror than by general actions, for in the latter instance fortune has often a greater share than valour. Those designs are best which the enemy are entirely ignorant of till the moment of execution. Opportunity in war is often more to be depended on than courage. (General Maxims)

Friedrich Hölderlin photo

“What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful!”

Hyperion
Context: What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go.

Leonard Cohen photo

“I don't know which side is anybody on any more. I don't really care. There is a moment when we have to transcend the side we're on and understand that we are creatures of a higher order.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Introducing "If It Be Your Will"
Warsaw concert (1985)
Context: I don't know which side is anybody on any more. I don't really care. There is a moment when we have to transcend the side we're on and understand that we are creatures of a higher order. That doesn't mean that I don't wish you courage in your struggle. There is on both sides of the struggle men of good will. That is important to remember. On both sides of the struggle, some struggling for freedom, some struggling for safety and solemn testimony of that unbroken faith which binds generations one to another I sing this song, "If It Be Your Will"

Alfred Freddy Krupa photo
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali photo
George Orwell photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
George Orwell photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo
Rahul verma (Rv) photo

“everything comes to you at right moment.”

Context: Rahul verma (Rv)

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Billie Eilish photo

“You ruined everything good
Always said you were misunderstood
Made all my moments your own
Just fucking leave me alone.”

Billie Eilish (2001) American singer-songwriter

Source: Happier Than Ever (2021)

Eminem photo
Neale Donald Walsch photo
Eckhart Tolle photo

“You cannot love your partner one moment and attack him or her the next.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Barack Obama photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo

“But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Franz Grillparzer photo
Erich Maria Remarque photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Miguel Sousa Tavares photo
Marguerite Yourcenar photo
Sadhguru photo
Sylvia Day photo
Bruce Lee photo
W.B. Yeats photo

“We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

"Earth, Fire and Water" from The Celtic Twilight (1893)
Source: The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore

Guy Debord photo

“In a world that has REALLY been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Eckhart Tolle photo

“One thing we do know: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Variant: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Virginia Woolf photo
Eckhart Tolle photo

“All you realy need to do is accept this moment fully. You are then at ease in the here and now and at ease with yourself.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises from the Power of Now

Emil M. Cioran photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo
Graham Greene photo
Madeline Miller photo
Anthony Kiedis photo
Tamora Pierce photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo

“The moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.”

Variant: Someone once said that the moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.
Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Judy Blume photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Cassandra Clare photo
David Levithan photo
Lewis Carroll photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Jenny Han photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Christopher Morley photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Groucho Marx photo

“From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

To S J Perelman about his book Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge (1929), as quoted in LIFE (9 February 1962)

Virginia Woolf photo

“The moment was all; the moment was enough.”

Source: The Waves

Eckhart Tolle photo

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Variant: Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Alice Munro photo
Jane Austen photo
Henri Barbusse photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Tony Benn photo
Neale Donald Walsch photo
Ian Fleming photo

“A dry martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.'…
Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?”

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 7 : Rouge et Noir
Context: Bond insisted ordering Leiter's Haig-and-Haig "on the rocks" and then he looked carefully at the barman. "A Dry Martini", he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet." "Oui, monsieur." "Just a moment. Three measures of Gordons, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?" "Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

Nora Roberts photo
Gabrielle Zevin photo
Tom Stoppard photo

“There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead