Present Moment Quotes - Page 21

• Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures.

  Eudora Welty

  Art, Memories, Writing

  Eudora Welty (2002). “On Writing”, Random House Digital, Inc.

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• Americans often have trouble enjoying the present moment.

  Alan Dundes

  Trouble, Moments, Enjoy

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• In 'The Plato Papers' I wanted to get another perspective on the present moment by extrapolating into the distant future. So in that sense, there's a definite similarity of purpose between a book set in the future and a book set in the past.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Plato, Book, Past

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• One of the things I like about performing on the stage is that it is a kind of meditative experience. Time does stand still. You have no concept or feeling of the passing of two or three hours' time. It's all kind of one present moment, which is a kind of a description of meditation.

  Michael Emerson

  Two, Meditation, Feelings

  "Actor Michael Emerson". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. May 16, 2012.

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• We tell ourselves that the more time we have at our disposal, the more opportunity we will have of finding greater happiness. But again we are looking to the future, to the times we will create. Again we miss the enjoyment of the present moment.

  Russell Peters

  Opportunity, Missing, Culture

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• It is this research into pure painting that is the problem at the present moment. I do not know any painters in Paris who are really searching for this ideal world.

  Robert Delaunay

  Paris, Research, World

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• At the present moment, the security of coherent philosophy, which existed from Parmenides to Hegel, is lost.

  Karl Jaspers

  Philosophy, Hegel, Moments

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• Recent studies of mindfulness practices reveal that they can result in profound improvements in a range of physiological, mental, and interpersonal domains in our lives. Cardiac, endocrine, and immune functions are improved with mindfulness practices. Empathy, compassion, and interpersonal sensivity seem to be improved. People who come to develop the capacity to pay attention in the present moment without grasping on to their inevitable judgments also develop a deeper sense of well-being and what can be considered a form of mental coherence.

  Daniel J. Siegel

  Philosophy, Compassion, Practice

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• The best gift we can have is living in the present moment and really enjoying it for what it is; and, not being in our heads and getting sidetracked.

  Amy Smart

  Moments, Live In The Present, Enjoy

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• It's easy to tell the evolutionary level of a group of beings, or an individual being, simply by examining their behavior, their art, their psychology, their thought forms, their lingual structures, their history, their present moment, their future ideas, and the quality of their emotions.

  Frederick Lenz

  Art, Buddhism, Ideas

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• When in these fresh mornings I go into my garden before anyone is awake, I go for the time being into perfect happiness. In this hour divinely fresh and still, the fair face of every flower salutes me with a silent joy. . . . All the cares, perplexities, and griefs of existence, all the burdens of life slip from my shoulders and leave me with the heart of a little child that asks nothing beyond the present moment of innocent bliss.

  Celia Thaxter

  Morning, Children, Flower

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• Nowhere in the world is presented a government of so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and poorest amongst us are held out the highest privileges and positions. The present moment finds me at the White House, yet there is as good a chance for your children as there was for my father's.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Children, Father, White

  Gordon Leidner, Abraham Lincoln (2009). “Abraham Lincoln: Quotes, Quips, and Speeches”, p.121, Sourcebooks, Inc.

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• On the surface it seems that the present moment is only one of many, many moments. Each day of your life appears to consist of thousands of moments where different things happen. Yet if you look more deeply, is there not only one moment, ever? Is life ever not this moment? This one moment, now, is the only thing you can never escape from. The one constant factor in your life. No matter what happens. No matter how much your life changes. One thing is certain. Its always now. Since there is no escape from the now, why not welcome it, become friendly with it.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Life Changing, Friendly, Different

  Eckhart Tolle (2010). “Stillness Speaks”, p.39, New World Library

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• It's never too late to change the programming imprinted in childhood, carried in our genes or derived from previous lives; the solution is mindfulness in the present moment.

  Peter Shepherd

  Wisdom, Childhood, Mindfulness

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• We are vulnerable to fear only when we leave the present. If I drift into the past, my regrets surge up, my memories of failing and forsaking. If I shift into the future, I meet with doubt and delusion, fear of what's to come, what I'm not capable of controlling. It's in the present moment that I belong.

  Jan Phillips

  Memories, Regret, Fear

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• Being present. The mind is like a butterfly that flits from one flower to the next. Seldom do we find ourselves nestled in the excuisite and eternal ocean of here and now. When you are, you can connect with your true self that is beyond the chattering of your mind. When you take the effort to focus your drifting consciousness to become fully awake to the present moment, you will discover the glorious light that dwells within you.

  Denise Linn

  Ocean, Flower, Butterfly

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• A pill that the present moment is daily bread to thousands.

  Douglas William Jerrold

  Medicine, Pills, Bread

  Douglas William Jerrold (1850). “The catspaw: a comedy”, p.5

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• What healthy religion is saying is that the real life is both now and later. You have to taste the Real first of all now. The constant pattern, however, is that most Christians either move both backwards (religion as nostalgia) or into the distant future (religion as carrot on the stick) and consistently avoid where everything really happens and matters—the present moment.

  Richard Rohr

  Faith, Christian, Real

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• Stale artifacts of the past' are always 'active components of the present moment' when they are experienced in the present moment.

  Walter Darby Bannard

  Past, Tradition, Moments

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• How often are you worrying about the present moment? The present moment is usually all right. If you're worrying, you're either agonizing over the past which you should have forgotten long ago, or else you're apprehensive over the future which hasn't even come yet. We tend to skip over the present moment which is the only moment God gives any of us to live.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Past, Long Ago, Should Have

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• Remember that a man, a true man, never hates. His rages and his bad moods never last beyond the present moment-like electric shocks.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Hate, Men, Electric Shock

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• At the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is.

  Matthew Arnold

  Christian, Eye, Men

  Matthew Arnold (1875). “God & the Bible: A Review of Objections to 'Literature & Dogma'”, p.14

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• But the idea of science and systematic knowledge is wanting to our whole instruction alike, and not only to that of our business class ... In nothing do England and the Continent at the present moment more strikingly differ than in the prominence which is now given to the idea of science there, and the neglect in which this idea still lies here; a neglect so great that we hardly even know the use of the word science in its strict sense, and only employ it in a secondary and incorrect sense.

  Matthew Arnold

  Education, Lying, Science

  Matthew Arnold, George William Erskine Russell, Thomas Burnett Smart (1904). “The Works of Matthew Arnold”

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• Sometimes we believe that happiness is not possible in the here and now, that we need a few more conditions to be happy. So we run toward the future to get the conditions we think are missing. But by doing so we sacrifice the present moment; we sacrifice true life.

  Nhat Hanh

  Motivational, Running, Believe

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• If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment.

  Elif Safak

  Past, Illumination, Mind

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