Quotes about present

page 7

“I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us.
I would like an abundance of peace.
I would like full vessels of charity.
I would like rich treasures of mercy.
I would like cheerfulness to preside over all.
I would like Jesus to be present.
I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us.
I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts.
I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord; that I should suffer distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me.
I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings.
I would like to be watching Heaven's family drinking it through all eternity.”

“In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.”

“You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present.”

“In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don't try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.”

“Honest students of this century alone know that the facts presented to us regarding wars, assassinations, political motivations and all the machinations of the political and religious power systems we live under are hogwash. So it has been for at least 1700 years.”

“Holy Scripture presents a kind of mirror to the eyes of the mind, so that our inner face may be seen in it. There we learn our own ugliness, there our own beauty.”

“The issue of a battle is the result of an instant, of a thought. There is the advance, with its various combinations, the battle is joined, the struggle goes on a certain time, the decisive moment presents itself, a spark of genius discloses it, and the smallest body of reserves accomplish victory.”

“It is a mistake, too, to say that the face is the mirror of the soul. The truth is, men are very hard to know, and yet, not to be deceived, we must judge them by their present actions, but for the present only.”

“The future that we will never experience is constantly haunting us in the present moment. Thus, taking away our true happiness.”

“Some people can't focus on the present moment for a great reason that they can't explain to anyone else.”

“Your past, present and future sins will be placed upon your shoulders and not on the shoulders of the man who left us long ago.”

“With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public.”

“A moment of danger can bring about a temporary cessation of the stream of thinking and thus give you a taste of what it means to be present, alert, aware.”

“We women have presented larger petitions in support of our enfranchisement than were ever presented for any other reform; we have succeeded in holding greater public meetings than men have ever held for any reform, in spite of the difficulty which women have in throwing off their natural diffidence, that desire to escape publicity which we have inherited from generations of our foremothers. We have broken through that. We have faced hostile mobs at street corners, because we were told that we could not have that representation for our taxes that men have won unless we converted the whole of the country to our side. Because we have done this, we have been misrepresented, we have been ridiculed, we have had contempt poured upon us, and the ignorant mob have been incited to offer us violence, which we have faced unarmed and unprotected by the safeguards which Cabinet Ministers enjoy. We have been driven to do this; we are determined to go on with this agitation because we feel in honour bound. Just as it was the duty of your forefathers, it is our duty to make the world a better place for women than it is to-day.”

“The form of this book can be seen as a revival for the present age of the oldest form of recorded spiritual teachings: the sutras of ancient India. Sutras are powerful pointers to the truth in the form of aphorisms or short sayings, with little conceptual elaboration. The Vedas and Upanishads are the early sacred teachings recorded in the form of sutras, as are the words of the Buddha. The sayings and parables of Jesus, too, when taken out of their narrative context, could be regarded as sutras, as well as the profound teachings contained in the Tao Te Ching, the ancient Chinese book of wisdom. The advantage of the sutra form lies in its brevity...”

“So many people are most miserable these days.
The reason they find it so difficult to be happy is that they always view the past to be better than it was, the present dramatically worse than it is, and the future less resolute than it will be.
The idea of happiness is foreign to them.
Is this not something that is innate because babies are born with
"tabula rasa" which refers to the epistemological idea that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception. However I don't disagree with the doctrine of Innatism which holds that the mind is born already in possession of certain knowledge.
A smile, for instance is natural and innate!
So it is a combination of the two schools of thought.”

“I'm living in the future so the present is my past.
My presence is a present, kiss my ass.”

“Words were so puzzling. should mean a present just asshould mean to stick tacks in people.”

“I am convinced that God is love, this thought has for me a primitive lyrical validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakably blissful, when it is absent, I long for it more vehemently than does the lover for his object.”

“I reflected that everything happens to a man precisely, precisely now. Centuries of centuries and only in the present do things happen; countless men in the air, on the face of the earth and the sea, and all that really is happening is happening to me...”

“Everything I know and I am and I have seen felt done past present past now then before now seen felt done hurt felt focus into a something beyond words beyond beyond beyond and it speaks now and it says.
Stay.
Fight.
Live.
Take it.”

“You have to let yourself be fully present in every moment. Just be awake for it, do you know what I mean? Go all in and wring every last drop out of the experience.”

“The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

“Did you pick that out?" I asked Dimitri. Honestly, I would have expected him to bend a piece of steel with his bare hands and present her with that.”

“Pray, pray be composed, and do not betray what you feel to every body present”

“The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.”

“Life is the past, the present and the perhaps.”

“Today is a gift from God - that is why it is called the present.”

“One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.”

“I live in the present because the future is always chancy. When it comes to being with you, I'm willing to take the risk.”

“The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.”

“Best not to mix the past with the present. The present paints the past with gold. The past paints the present with lead.”

“Anxiety, the illness of our time, comes primarily from our inability to dwell in the present moment.”

“Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality… One can't possess reality, one can possess images--one can't possess the present but one can possess the past.”

“We will not just say, "I love him very much," but instead, "I will do something so that he will suffer less." The mind of compassion is truly present when it is effective in removing another person's suffering.”

“Last forever!' Who hasn't prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying.”

“The present no matter what I brought couldn’t change the past. The Past was set and sealed.”

“Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying "Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I embrace in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding.”

“Most people are perpetually locked in the present. Their decisions are overly influenced by the most immediate event; they easily become emotional and ascribe greater significance to a problem than it should have in reality.”

“He doesn't know which is worse, a past he can't regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo.”

“Live one day at a time. Keep your attention in present time. Have no expectations. Make no judgements. And give up the need to know why things happen as they do. Give it up!”

“I am a person who continually destroys the possibilities of a future because of the numbers of alternative viewpoints I can focus on the present.”

“That's what came from having romance in your soul. You believe in things like love at first sight and perfect presents.”

“I am a recluse at present & do nothing but write & read & read & write”

“Limitations are possibilities…
Opportunities to perceive ourselves
Beyond our present selves…”

“The danger would be going back, or staying still. The only way out was through. The past was ruins, but the present was still in play.”

“And it was this image that was stamped on the hearts and minds of all who were present that day. Of Froi of the Exiles holding the future of Lumatere in his hands.”

“Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God's being present in the mess of our unfixedness. (Messy Spirituality)”

“She worked in order to live, and presently fell in love, also in order to live, for the heart, too, has its hunger.”

“I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born”

“The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.”

“what is the worst pain? To me, it's always the pain that is present.”

“Was life like that? You could look ahead to the future or back to the past, but the present moved too quickly to absorb.”

“A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us.”

“Through it [literature] we know the past, govern the present, and influence the future.”

“Confine yourself to the present.”

“It’s what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.”

“Ghosts don't haunt us. That's not how it works. They're present among us because we won't let go of them.”

“But laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man may present his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population.”

“For it is only by forgetting that we ever really drop the thread of time and approach the experience of living in the present moment, so elusive in ordinary hours.”

“Lei had recently discovered how to change the display, like the Times Square JumboTron, so now the banner read: Merry Christmas! All your presents belong to Leo!”

“A lone walker is both present and detached, more than an audience but less than a participant. Walking assuages or legitimizes this alienation.”

“He formed his sentences hesitantly and then threw them at me with such force that I felt as if I were receiving a present each time”

“We must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.”

“So eager are our people to obliterate the present.”

“["The Devil in the Dark"] impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction thennow, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn.”

“Everything which is done in the present, affects the future by consequence, and the past by redemption.”

“Even if we no longer have much in common, we would have always had the past, which, in some ways, is just as important as the present or future. It is where we come from, what makes us who we are.”

“… why bother remembering a past that cannot be made into a present?”

“Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options”

“And then there was Jeremiah. When I looked at Jeremiah, I saw past, present, and future. He didn’t just know the girl I used to be. He knew the right-now me, and he loved me anyway.”

“If you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better.”

“I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.”

“Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records — Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.”

“The older one becomes the quicker the present fades into sepia and the past looms up in glorious technicolour”

“Sometimes I think I live more closely to the past than the present.”

“The present rearranges the past. We never tell the story whole because a life isn't a story; it's a whole Milky Way of events and we are forever picking out constellations from it to fit who and where we are.”

“It’s my belief that the study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present, rather than an escape from it.”

“Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.”

“At least as a single woman, I had time to pursue my own interests, read voraciously, and travel when opportunity presented.”

“When confronted with a birthday in a week I will remember that a book can be a really good present, too.”

“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.”

“We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.”

“Even if times got bad, he would never again deny himself the possibility that the future might be happy even if the present was painful. He would allow himself dreams.”

“I think it’s more like a shirt that says, ‘I’m going to have to end this date early so I can go prepare my Power Point presentation”

“The seeds of the past bear fruit in the present.”

“It is not possible that you could ever find yourself anywhere where God was not fully present, fully active, able and willing to set you free.”

“History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past”

“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.”

“Like the wild beasts, she lives without a future. She inhabits only the present tense, a fugue of the continuous, a world of sensual immediacy as without hope as it is without despair.”

“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.”

“Let the past hold on to itself and let the present move forward into the future.”

“You may have created my past and screwed up my present, but you have no control over my future.”

“I am for who i was in the beginning but now is present and i exist in the future.”

“They understand not only evil, it seemed, but the extravagance of tricks with which evil presents itself as good.”

“The imprint of Miss Hepburn is absolutely, totally present. Like it or not, she will be the most important look of the twentieth century.”

“Often it takes some calamity to make us live in the present. Then suddenly we wake up and see all the mistakes we have made.”

“A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions.”

“The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future.”