Quotes about moment
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“People destined to meet will do so, apparently by chance, at precisely the right moment.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“Few in this world are ever simply nasty; those who hurt us are themselves in pain. The appropriate response is hence never cynicism nor aggression but, at the rare moments one can manage it, always love.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Course of Love

Love, Pain, World, Hurt

“From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul brain and power.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Soul, Personality

“I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Peeta Mellark to Katniss, p. 245
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

“I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful hault, 'won't go,' or, even worse, explodes in some innocent person's face.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Source: Journal of a Solitude

Feeling, Personality

“We are not men, to have need of another, an eternal life; we are women, and for us one moment with man we love is everlasting Paradise, one moment far from the man we love is everlasting hell. It is here on earth that we women love out eternity”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Last Temptation of Christ

Source: The Last Temptation of Christ

Love, Life, Women, Men

“Till this moment I never knew myself.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“We write to taste life twice," Anais Nin wrote, "in the moment and in retrospection.”

Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist

Source: Traveling With Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story

Life

“You speak from your heart, young Firepaw. This will make you a stronger warrior one day." said Lionheart
Tigerclaw growled. "Or it might make him give in to kittypet weakness right at the moment of attack”

Erin Hunter

Source: Into the Wild

Heart

“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Life, Truth, Fear, Soul

“Well, some people say I'm pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?”

Wole Soyinka (1934) Nigerian writer

People, History, Evil

“Every moment spent in unhappiness is a moment of happiness lost.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Source: The Fall of Freddie the Leaf: A Story Of Life For All Ages

Happiness

“I know that somehow, every step I took since the moment I could walk was a step towards finding you.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Good Night, Cute, Romantic, For Her

“Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Pain, Thinking, Fight

“The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“Many of us lead family lives. At most, the members of a family stay together for the duration of a lifetime, often much less. While that fleeting moment of being together still lasts, we should try to remain in perfect harmony with each other, while observing the Dharma as much as possible. Night and day, let us turn our minds toward goodness, love, and compassion.”

Dilgo Khyentse (1910–1991) Bhutanese Buddhist Lama

Source: The Hundred Verses of Advice: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most

Love, Family, Perfection, Night

“Our body begins to destroy itself from the moment it is born. We are fragile. We’re creatures of passage. All that is left of us are our actions, the good or the evil we do to our fellow humans”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book Marina

Source: Marina

Evil

“Mother told me once that some Westonians privately criticised Dad for retreating so soon. They apparently felt it would have been more dignified to have waited a week or so before running away. I think this view misses the essential point of running away, which is to do it the moment the idea has occurred to you. Only an obsessional procrastinator would cry, “Let’s run for our lives, but not till Wednesday afternoon.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

Source: So, Anyway...

Idea, Thinking, Waiting, Cry

“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Touching Peace (1992), p. 1. Parallax Press ISBN 0-938077-57-0
Variant: The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.
Source: Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living

Peace, Beauty, Water

“Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn't.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Life

“I'm trying to remember how you tell the time by looking at the sun." -"I should leave it for a while, it's too bright to see the numbers at the moment.”

Terry Pratchett book The Last Continent

Source: The Last Continent

Time, Sun

“I am a clown… and I collect moments.”

Heinrich Böll book The Clown

Source: The Clown

“There is no peace that cannot be found in the present moment.”

Tasha Tudor (1915–2008) American illustrator and writer

Peace

“This moment will just be another story someday.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Sad

“Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That's the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real--the here-and-now. Seize the day.”

Saul Bellow book Seize the Day

Source: Seize the Day

People, Universe, Past, Future

“The joys of love… last only a moment. The sorrows of love last all the life long.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: The Joys of Love

Love, Life, Joy

“that which is eternal within the moment only becomes shallow if spread out in time.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Source: The Home and the World

Time

“I'm trying to have a moment o' existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it's a puir lookout if a man canna feel the chilly winds o' fate lashing aroound his netheres wi'out folks telling him he's deid, eh?”

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Source: A Hat Full of Sky

Fate, Feeling

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer … It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.
We are, and always will be, the United States of America.
It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, Election victory speech (November 2008)

World, Fear, Dreams, Hope

“Every moment before this one depends on this one.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Dependency

“The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Children, Education

“The turning points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass unobserved.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Appearance

“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP”

Leonard Nimoy (1931–2015) American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer

Leonard Nimoy's last tweet https://twitter.com/therealnimoy/status/569762773204217857 (February 23, 2015), quoted in Miriam Kramer, " Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy Dies at 83 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/star-trek-s-leonard-nimoy-dies-at-83/", Scientific American (February 27, 2015).

Life, Memory, Perfection

“How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.”

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

When You Are Old http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1756/, st. 1–3 The Rose (1893) Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats Context: p>When you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.</p

Love, Beauty, Soul, Change

“Accept — then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

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

Life, Sad

“The guy I'd felt such an immediate and deep connection to I'd thought that just maybe there really were such things as soul mates, and had considered, at least for a few brief moments, that he might be mine.”

P. C. Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Guy, Soul

“She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.”

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

Heart

“If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Heart, Joy, Moving On

“Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Nature, Freedom

“Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we are, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.”

Harlan Ellison book Paladin of the Lost Hour

Paladin of the Lost Hour (1985)

Way, Universe, Memory, Time

“But the close withdrew: the hand softened. It was over-- the moment.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

“Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Being Peace

Smile, Peaceful

“Moments, when lost, can't be found again. They're just gone.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

“Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Life, Beauty, Parting

“I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

World, Knowledge

“We are born at a given moment, in a given place, and like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season in which we are born.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Wine, Season

“A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

Richard Avedon (1923–2004) American photographer

Truth

“what she loved: life, London, this moment of June.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Love, Life

“I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure.
I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

Source: De Profundis

Pleasure

“… For a lifetime was but a moment in that place, and each man dreams his own heaven.

And in the darkness David closed his eyes, as all that was lost was found again.”

John Connolly The Book of Lost Things

Source: The Book of Lost Things

Dreams

“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Hope, Hope

“Only those moments count when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than to exchange a word with someone.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Source: The New Gods (1969)

“I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

World

“If you concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man. You'll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens… Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we're living right now.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Life, Happiness, Star

“Vimes had got around to a Clean Desk policy. It was a Clean Floor strategy
that eluded him at the moment.”

Terry Pratchett Thud!

Source: Thud!

“The moment that judgement stops through acceptance of what it is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

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

Love, Peace, Joy

“We often dream about people from whom we receive a letter by the next post. I have ascertained on several occasions that at the moment when the dream occurred the letter was already lying in the post-office of the addressee.”

C.G. Jung book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle

Source: Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle

People, Dreams, Lying

“She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: "It shines like a little diamond",
"What does?"
"This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Age of Reason

Source: The Age of Reason

Smile

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

Way, Suffering

“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself-and especially to feel, or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Love, Feeling, Freedom, Personality

“Moments like this are buds on the tree of life. Flowers of darkness they are.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Life, Flowers, Tree

“They say that in the second before our death, each of us understands the real reason for our existence, and out of that moment, heaven or hell is born.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Death, Hell, Understanding

“There is a place in the heart that will never be filled; a space. And even during the best moments, and the greatest times, we will know it.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Time, Heart

“Die to the past every moment. You don't need it. Only refer to it when it is absolutely relevant to the present. Feel the power of this moment and the fullness of Being. Feel your presence.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

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

Feeling, Past

“Live in the Moment", "Empty Your Mind of the Trash"
Wisdom is the Use of Knowledge”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Wisdom, Knowledge

“Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! 'Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of your old life and into the new!”

Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932) British novelist

Life

“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

“The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

“All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Thinking, Universe

“There are moments that define a person's whole life. MOMENTS in which everything they are and everything they may possibly become hinge on a single decision.”

Jonathan Maberry book Rot & Ruin

Source: Rot & Ruin

Life, Decision, Personality

“You have to understand that in a person's life there are a few precious moments in which decisions, choices that you make now, will affect you for the rest of your life.”

Dave Pelzer book The Lost Boy

Source: The Lost Boy

Life, Understanding, Decision, Personality

“My life-my whole life- take it, and do with it what you will. I love you-love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly, madly!

You didn't know it then-you know it now.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan

Love, Life

“I am living in the Google years, no question of that. And there are advantages to it. When you forget something, you can whip out your iPhone and go to Google. The Senior Moment has become the Google moment, and it has a much nicer, hipper, younger, more contemporary sound, doesn't it? By handling the obligations of the search mechanism, you almost prove you can keep up….

You can't retrieve you life (unless you're on Wikipedia, in which case you can retrieve an inaccurate version of it).”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Source: I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections

Life, Search, Question, Forgetting

“Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Pleasure, Faith

“The point of power is always in the present moment.”

Louise L. Hay (1926–2017) American writer

“I pray every single moment of my life; not on my knees but with my work. My prayer is to lift women to equality with men. Work and worship are one with me.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Life, Women, Men

“Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

War, Courage, Understanding, Memory

“The premonition of madness is complicated by the fear of lucidity in madness, the fear of the moments of return and reunion, when the intuition of disaster is so painful that it almost provokes a greater madness […] One would welcome chaos if one were not afraid of lights in it.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Pain, Fear, Light, Madness

“All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym‎ [O Demônio e a srta Prym] (2000), p. x; this has also been misquoted as "A moment is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny."
Context: When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.

Life, Courage, Change, Courageous

“But what about the End of the Universe? We'll miss the big moment."
I've seen it. It's rubbish," said Zaphod,"nothing but a gnab gib."
A what?"
Opposite of a big bang. Come on, let's get zappy.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Universe

“Don't let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

World, Success, Madness

“The moment you're loved, that's when you got your soul.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

Love, Soul

“The moment I saw her, a part of me walked out of my body and wrapped itself around her. And there it still remains.”

Arundhati Roy book The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Source: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Parting

“Some nights, alone, he thinks of her, and some nights, alone, she thinks of him. Some night these thoughts, separated by miles and time zones, occur at the same objective moment, and Ray and Mirabelle are connected without ever knowing it.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Thinking, Time, Night

“Live quietly in the moment and see the beauty of all before you. The future will take care of itself……”

Paramahansa Yogananda book Autobiography of a Yogi

Source: Autobiography of a Yogi

Beauty, Future, Beauty

“You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.”

Merce Cunningham (1919–2009) American dancer

Love, Feeling, Dance, Painting

“An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.”

Alberto Moravia (1907–1990) Italian writer and journalist

Un male incerto provoca inquietudine, perché, in fondo, si spera fino all'ultimo che non sia vero; ma un male sicuro, invece, infonde per qualche tempo una squallida tranquillità.
Source: Il Disprezzo (Milano: Bompiani, 1954) p. 77; Angus Davidson (trans.) Contempt (New York: New York Review of Books, 2005) p. 75.

Hope, Evil, Time, Heart

“It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Feeling, Painting

“These moments of escape are not to be despised. They come too seldom.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves