Quotations About Living in the Present Moment:
Living in the moment means letting go of the past and not waiting for the future. It means living your life consciously, aware that each moment you breathe is a gift. ~Oprah Winfrey
With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
One problem with gazing too frequently into the past is that we may turn around to find the future has run out on us. ~Michael Cibenko
There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday. ~Robert Nathan, So Love Returns
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present. ~Jan Glidewell
Would you keep a chive on your tooth just because you enjoyed last night's potato? ~From the television show Boston Common
I have memories - but only a fool stores his past in the future. ~David Gerrold
Do not let your shadow walk you. You are not a slave of the past. ~Dodinsky, www.dodinsky.com
I can't wait all my life
On a street of broken dreams.
~Journey, "It Could Have Been You"
No man is rich enough to buy back his past. ~Oscar Wilde
It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last year's crops. ~George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859
We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time. ~Art Buchwald
If you are still talking about what you did yesterday, you haven't done much today. ~Author Unknown
The past is a good place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. ~Author Unknown
Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way. ~Edna Ferber
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes. ~Carl Sandburg, "Prairie," Complete Poems, 1950
The past is never there when you try to go back. It exists, but only in memory. To pretend otherwise is to invite a mess. ~Chris Cobbs
Waste not fresh tears over old griefs. ~Euripides, Alexander
The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post. ~L. Thomas Holdcroft
We cannot carry our father's corpse with us everywhere we go. ~Guillaume Apollinaire, The Cubist Painters, 1913
The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before. ~Herman Melville, White Jacket
No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves to today. ~Brendan Francis
I need neither future nor past, but to learn to take today not too fast. ~Jeb Dickerson, www.howtomatter.com
People are always asking about the good old days. I say, why don't you say the good now days? ~Robert M. Young
Having spent the better part of my life trying either to relive the past or experience the future before it arrives, I have come to believe that in between these two extremes is peace. ~Author Unknown
"Old times" never come back and I suppose it's just as well. What comes back is a new morning every day in the year, and that's better. ~George E. Woodberry
Opportunities fly by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone. ~Jerome K. Jerome, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, 1889
When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. ~Alexander Graham Bell
You have to wake up a virgin each morning. ~Jean-Louis Barrault
We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it. ~John Newton
If you have one eye on yesterday, and one eye on tomorrow, you're going to be cockeyed today. ~Author Unknown
Stay on top of your past so you can have a better view of your future. ~Dodinsky, www.dodinsky.com
Our past is like a footprint. It only confirms we were there. No burden on our future does it bear. Bring the rain, clear the pane of clutter. ~Jeb Dickerson, www.howtomatter.com
Nothing is worth more than this day. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Today is the greatest
Day I've ever known
Can't live for tomorrow,
Tomorrow's much too long....
~Billy Corgan, "Today," Siamese Dream (Smashing Pumpkins), 1993
The living moment is everything. ~D.H. Lawrence
Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee. ~Montaigne
Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts. ~Jean Cocteau, Professional Secrets, 1922
Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. ~Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Forever is composed of nows. ~Emily Dickinson
Could we see when and where we are to meet again, we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye. ~Marie Louise De La Ramee
The other day a man asked me what I thought was the best time of life. "Why," I answered without a thought, "now." ~David Grayson
It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis. ~Margaret Bonnano
Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That's why we call it the present. ~Babatunde Olatunji, a similar version is also attributed to Alice Morse Earle
Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within and God o'erhead.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Psalm of Life
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is. ~Alan Watts
It's not what if, it's what now. ~Author Unknown
Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return. ~Mary Jean Iron
We are always getting ready to live but never living. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence. ~Sholem Asch, The Nazarene, 1939
Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do. ~Jean de la Bruyere
If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is. ~Author Unknown
Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness. ~James Thurber
We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for yesterday and fear of tomorrow. ~Fulton Oursler
Chasing the past, I stumbled into the future. ~T.A. Sachs
Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys. ~André Gide, Nourritures Terrestres
Why be saddled with this thing called life expectancy? Of what relevance to an individual is such a statistic? Am I to concern myself with an allotment of days I never had and was never promised? Must I check off each day of my life as if I am subtracting from this imaginary hoard? No, on the contrary, I will add each day of my life to my treasure of days lived. And with each day, my treasure will grow, not diminish. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
In today already walks tomorrow. ~Friedrich von Schiller
When I am anxious it is because I am living in the future. When I am depressed it is because I am living in the past. ~Author Unknown
The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness. ~Abraham Maslow
The future is always beginning now. ~Mark Strand, Reasons for Moving
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. ~Albert Einstein
Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized. ~Leo Buscaglia
The future is no place to place your better days. ~Dave Matthews
The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face. ~Jim Bishop
If a man examine carefully his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead. ~Emerson, Journals, 1827
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present. ~Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor. ~D.H. Lawrence
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. ~Dale Carnegie
Pile up too many tomorrows and you'll find that you've collected nothing but a bunch of empty yesterdays. ~The Music Man
We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's. ~Henry Ward Beecher
God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road. ~Isak Dinesen
Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far. ~Euripides
Life's a journey, not a destination. ~Aerosmith
If you wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes. If you don't wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes. ~Senegalese Proverb
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. ~Abraham Lincoln
Look lovingly at the present, for it holds the only things that are forever true.
A Course in Miracles
It is in awareness that we bring everything to life that lives within us. There is no time like the present to give birth to creativity.
Kathleen Anderson
Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
Guillaume Apollinaire
Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path of joy.
Sarah Ban Breathnach
We have only this moment, sparking like a star in our hand…and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late.
Marie Beynon
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Buddha
What you are is what you have been. What you'll be is what you do now.
Buddha
Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher place. Start right where you are.
Julia Cameron
Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach out children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.
Pablo Casals
You should live every day like it's your last day because one day you're gonna be right.
Ray Charles
Do not carry the burden of the past; do not live in the future. The only important thing is that one lives in the present authentically and fully. Whatever your current life is, be the most you can be by living in the moment.
Chan Chih
Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.
Pema Chodron
We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment, but it is transient. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. If we share with caring, lightheartedness, and love, we will create abundance and joy for each other. And then this moment will have been worthwhile.
Deepak Chopra
These are great days.
Winston Churchill
We can escape the prison of our own beliefs and enter the Palace of Possibilities when we allow ourselves to be astonished by everything.
Gary Craig
Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
Simone de Beauvoir
Right now, and in every now-moment, you are either closing or opening. You are either stressfully waiting for something – more money, security, affection – or you are living from your deep heart, opening as the entire moment, and giving what you most deeply desire to give, without waiting.
David Deida
If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.
Taisen Deshimaru
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Annie Dillard
Not doing is not about immobility or giving up in despair. It is first and foremost about being able to be with, to accept fully, what is in this moment.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Present-moment living, getting in touch with your now, is at the heart of effective living. When you think about it, there really is no other moment you can live. Now is all there is, and the future is just another present moment to live when it arrives.
Wayne Dyer
You’ll seldom experience regret for anything that you’ve done. It is what you haven’t done that will torment you. The message, therefore, is clear. Do it! Develop an appreciation for the present moment. Seize every second of your life and savor it. Value your present moments. Using them up in any self-defeating ways means you’ve lost them forever.
Wayne Dyer
Write in your heart that every day is the best day of the year.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Now is the time to know that all that you do is sacred.
Hafiz
Be part of the miraculous moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Find joy and peace in this very moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh
At any moment you have a choice that either leads you closer to your spirit or further away from it.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Life can be found only in the present moment. 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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The point of power is always in the present moment.
Louise Hay
The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is exactly what it is: a miracle and unrepeatable.
Storm Jameson
Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Love the moment, and the energy of that moment will spread beyond all boundaries.
Corita Kent
Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.
Omar Khayyam
You have the power in the present moment to change limiting beliefs and consciously plant the seeds for the future of your choosing. As you change your mind, you change your experience.
Serge Kahili King
We're all stumbling toward the light with varying degrees of grace at any given moment.
Bo Lozoff
Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have – so spend it wisely.
Kay Lyons
I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
Abraham Maslow
Always now - just now - come into being. Always now - just now - give yourself to death. Practicing this is Zen practice.
Soko Morinaga
We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it’s gone—its value is incontestable.
Joyce Carol Oates
Today is a gift I honor by fully living it.
Mary Anne Radmacher
Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.
Gilda Radner
Begin doing what you want to do now. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand – and melting like a snowflake.
Marie Beyon Ray
Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.
Maria Robinson
Gratitude helps us to return to our natural state of joyfulness, where we notice what's right instead of what's wrong. It makes us feel complete, that we have everything we need, at least in this moment.
M. J. Ryan
It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.
Vita Sackville-West
Now is the operative word. Everything you put in your way is just a method of putting off the hour when you could actually be doing your dream.
Barbara Sher
We know nothing of tomorrow; our business is to be good and happy today.
Sydney Smith
The best things in life are the nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you.
Robert Lewis Stevenson
Each moment is a place you've never been.
Mark Strand
We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still.
Lewis Thomas
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the now the primary focus of your life.
Eckhart Tolle
Don't live in the past, don't ponder about the future, stay at the PRESENT moment NOW...always.
Mark Twain
A sobering thought: what if, at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential.
Jane Wagner
Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
Alan Watts
I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.
William Allen White
There is no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.
Alexander Woollcott
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present. Jan Glidewell
Waste not fresh tears over old griefs. Euripides
Study as if you were to live forever. Live as if you were going to die tomorrow. Isidore of Seville
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. Buddha
We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine. H. L. Mencken
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. Chinese Proverb
The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness. Abraham Maslow
Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Charles Dederich
We are always getting ready to live but never living. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do. Jean de la Bruyere
I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.
D.H. Lawrence
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
Abraham Lincoln
Today is life - the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Dale Carnegie
One should count each day a separate life. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Nothing is worth more than this day.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe If you are still talking about what you did yesterday, you haven't done much today. Anonymous
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present. Albert Camus
Learning is movement from moment to moment. J Krishnamurti We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's. Henry Ward Beecher Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present. Marcus Aurelius
Today is the blocks with which we build. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I have memories - but only a fool stores his past in the future. David Gerrold
Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed. Coria Kent
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
Leo Tolstoy
If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine. Morris West
Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition. Sir William Osler
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is. Alan Watts
Eckhart Tolle Quotes
1- To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for you inner state at any given moment. That means now.
2- For what you do to others, you do to yourself.
3- Instead of asking “what do I want from life?,” a more powerful question is, “what does life want from me?”
4- If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn’t know he is dreaming. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream.
5- Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?
6- 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.
7- You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the Now.
8- Whenever an answer, a solution, or a creative idea is needed, stop thinking for a moment by focusing attention on your inner energy field. … When you resume thinking, it will be fresh and creative.
9- All the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind.
10- If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me
11- Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.
12- Forget about your life situation and pay attention to your life. Your life situation exists in time. Your life is now. Your life situation is mind-stuff. Your life is real.
13- Not all thinking and all emotion are of the ego. They turn into ego only when you identify with them and they take you over completely, that is to say, when they become “I.”
14- Space has no “existence.” “To exist” literally means “to stand out.” You cannot understand space because it doesn’t stand out. Although in itself it has no existence, it enables everything else to exist. Silence has no existence either, nor does the Unmanifested.
15- Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.
16- Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.
17- The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly — you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.
18- What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.
19- “How” is always more important that “what.” See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it.
20- The secret of life is to “die before you die” — and find that there is no death.
http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/eckharttolle.html
More Present Moment Quotes
Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present -- which seldom happens to us.
-- Jean de la Bruyère
Every morning is a fresh beginning. Every day is the world made new. Today is a new day. Today is my world made new. I have lived all my life up to this moment, to come to this day. This moment--this day--is as good as any moment in all eternity. I shall make of this day--each moment of this day--a heaven on earth. This is my day of opportunity.
-- Dan Custer
Don't let the past steal your present.
-- Cherralea Morgen
Forever is composed of nows.
-- Emily Dickinson
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
-- Alan Watts
It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis.
-- Margaret Bonnano
Know the true value of time! Snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no procrastination. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
-- Philip Chesterfield
Life is a great and wondrous mystery, and the only thing we know that we have for sure is what is right here right now. Don't miss it.
-- Leo Buscaglia
Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed.
-- Coreta Kent
Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized.
-- Leo Buscaglia
Living in the moment means letting go of the past and not waiting for the future. It means living your life consciously, aware that each moment you breathe is a gift.
-- Oprah Winfrey
Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.
-- Mary Jean Iron
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
-- Dale Carnegie
One today is worth two tomorrows.
-- Benjamin Franklin
Present-moment living, getting in touch with your ''now,'' is at the heart of effective living. When you think about it, there really is no other moment you can live. Now is all there is, and the future is just another present moment to live when it arrives. One thing is certain, you cannot live it until it does appear.
-- Wayne Dyer
Remember then: there is only one time that is important--Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.
-- Leo Tolstoy
Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.
-- Wayne Dyer
The meeting of two eternities, the past and future....is precisely the present moment.
-- Henry David Thoreau
The more I give myself permission to live in the moment and enjoy it without feeling guilty or judgmental about any other time, the better I feel about the quality of my work.
-- Wayne Dyer
The other day a man asked me what I thought was the best time of life. "Why," I answered without a thought, "now."
-- David Grayson
The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post.
-- L. Thomas Holdcroft
There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
-- James Baldwin
Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.
-- Dale Carnegie
We are always getting ready to live but never living.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We may make our future by the best use of the present. There is no moment like the present.
-- Maria Edgeworth
We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time.
-- Art Buchwald
What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind.
-- Buddha
When I am anxious it is because I am living in the future. When I am depressed it is because I am living in the past.
-- Author Unknown
When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
-- Alexander Graham Bell
Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
-- Francis Bacon
Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have - so spend it wisely.
-- Kay Lyons
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is God's gift, that's why we call it the present.
-- Joan Rivers
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.
-- Jan Glidewell
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this.
-- Henry David Thoreau
Present Moment quotes can be paraphrased as ‘be here now.’ All that exists is in this instant. “The past is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present.” Author unknown.
More Present Moment Quotes
Annie Dillard reminds us, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Your future is truly the result of what you are thinking and doing right now. Make the most of each instant!
Look lovingly at the present, for it holds the only things that are forever true.
A Course in Miracles
It is in awareness that we bring everything to life that lives within us. There is no time like the present to give birth to creativity.
Kathleen Anderson
Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
Guillaume Apollinaire
Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path of joy.
Sarah Ban Breathnach
We have only this moment, sparking like a star in our hand…and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late.
Marie Beynon
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Buddha
What you are is what you have been. What you'll be is what you do now.
Buddha
Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher place. Start right where you are.
Julia Cameron
Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach out children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.
Pablo Casals
You should live every day like it's your last day because one day you're gonna be right.
Ray Charles
Do not carry the burden of the past; do not live in the future. The only important thing is that one lives in the present authentically and fully. Whatever your current life is, be the most you can be by living in the moment.
Chan Chih
Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.
Pema Chodron
We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment, but it is transient. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. If we share with caring, lightheartedness, and love, we will create abundance and joy for each other. And then this moment will have been worthwhile.
Deepak Chopra
These are great days.
Winston Churchill
We can escape the prison of our own beliefs and enter the Palace of Possibilities when we allow ourselves to be astonished by everything.
Gary Craig
Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
Simone de Beauvoir
Right now, and in every now-moment, you are either closing or opening. You are either stressfully waiting for something – more money, security, affection – or you are living from your deep heart, opening as the entire moment, and giving what you most deeply desire to give, without waiting.
David Deida
If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.
Taisen Deshimaru
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Annie Dillard
Not doing is not about immobility or giving up in despair. It is first and foremost about being able to be with, to accept fully, what is in this moment.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Present-moment living, getting in touch with your now, is at the heart of effective living. When you think about it, there really is no other moment you can live. Now is all there is, and the future is just another present moment to live when it arrives.
Wayne Dyer
You’ll seldom experience regret for anything that you’ve done. It is what you haven’t done that will torment you. The message, therefore, is clear. Do it! Develop an appreciation for the present moment. Seize every second of your life and savor it. Value your present moments. Using them up in any self-defeating ways means you’ve lost them forever.
Wayne Dyer
Write in your heart that every day is the best day of the year.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Now is the time to know that all that you do is sacred.
Hafiz
Be part of the miraculous moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Find joy and peace in this very moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh
At any moment you have a choice that either leads you closer to your spirit or further away from it.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Life can be found only in the present moment. 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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The point of power is always in the present moment.
Louise Hay
The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is exactly what it is: a miracle and unrepeatable.
Storm Jameson
Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Love the moment, and the energy of that moment will spread beyond all boundaries.
Corita Kent
Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.
Omar Khayyam
You have the power in the present moment to change limiting beliefs and consciously plant the seeds for the future of your choosing. As you change your mind, you change your experience.
Serge Kahili King
We're all stumbling toward the light with varying degrees of grace at any given moment.
Bo Lozoff
Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have – so spend it wisely.
Kay Lyons
I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
Abraham Maslow
Always now - just now - come into being. Always now - just now - give yourself to death. Practicing this is Zen practice.
Soko Morinaga
We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it’s gone—its value is incontestable.
Joyce Carol Oates
Today is a gift I honor by fully living it.
Mary Anne Radmacher
Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.
Gilda Radner
Begin doing what you want to do now. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand – and melting like a snowflake.
Marie Beyon Ray
Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.
Maria Robinson
Gratitude helps us to return to our natural state of joyfulness, where we notice what's right instead of what's wrong. It makes us feel complete, that we have everything we need, at least in this moment.
M. J. Ryan
It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.
Vita Sackville-West
Now is the operative word. Everything you put in your way is just a method of putting off the hour when you could actually be doing your dream.
Barbara Sher
We know nothing of tomorrow; our business is to be good and happy today.
Sydney Smith
The best things in life are the nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you.
Robert Lewis Stevenson
Each moment is a place you've never been.
Mark Strand
We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still.
Lewis Thomas
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the now the primary focus of your life.
Eckhart Tolle
Don't live in the past, don't ponder about the future, stay at the PRESENT moment NOW...always.
Mark Twain
A sobering thought: what if, at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential.
Jane Wagner
Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
Alan Watts
I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.
William Allen White
There is no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.
Alexander Woollcott
With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
One problem with gazing too frequently into the past is that we may turn around to find the future has run out on us. ~Michael Cibenko
There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday. ~Robert Nathan, So Love Returns
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present. ~Jan Glidewell
Would you keep a chive on your tooth just because you enjoyed last night's potato? ~From the television show Boston Common
I have memories - but only a fool stores his past in the future. ~David Gerrold
Do not let your shadow walk you. You are not a slave of the past. ~Dodinsky, www.dodinsky.com
I can't wait all my life
On a street of broken dreams.
~Journey, "It Could Have Been You"
No man is rich enough to buy back his past. ~Oscar Wilde
It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last year's crops. ~George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859
We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time. ~Art Buchwald
If you are still talking about what you did yesterday, you haven't done much today. ~Author Unknown
The past is a good place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. ~Author Unknown
Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way. ~Edna Ferber
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes. ~Carl Sandburg, "Prairie," Complete Poems, 1950
The past is never there when you try to go back. It exists, but only in memory. To pretend otherwise is to invite a mess. ~Chris Cobbs
Waste not fresh tears over old griefs. ~Euripides, Alexander
The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post. ~L. Thomas Holdcroft
We cannot carry our father's corpse with us everywhere we go. ~Guillaume Apollinaire, The Cubist Painters, 1913
The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before. ~Herman Melville, White Jacket
No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves to today. ~Brendan Francis
I need neither future nor past, but to learn to take today not too fast. ~Jeb Dickerson, www.howtomatter.com
People are always asking about the good old days. I say, why don't you say the good now days? ~Robert M. Young
Having spent the better part of my life trying either to relive the past or experience the future before it arrives, I have come to believe that in between these two extremes is peace. ~Author Unknown
"Old times" never come back and I suppose it's just as well. What comes back is a new morning every day in the year, and that's better. ~George E. Woodberry
Opportunities fly by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone. ~Jerome K. Jerome, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, 1889
When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. ~Alexander Graham Bell
You have to wake up a virgin each morning. ~Jean-Louis Barrault
We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it. ~John Newton
If you have one eye on yesterday, and one eye on tomorrow, you're going to be cockeyed today. ~Author Unknown
Stay on top of your past so you can have a better view of your future. ~Dodinsky, www.dodinsky.com
Our past is like a footprint. It only confirms we were there. No burden on our future does it bear. Bring the rain, clear the pane of clutter. ~Jeb Dickerson, www.howtomatter.com
Nothing is worth more than this day. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Today is the greatest
Day I've ever known
Can't live for tomorrow,
Tomorrow's much too long....
~Billy Corgan, "Today," Siamese Dream (Smashing Pumpkins), 1993
The living moment is everything. ~D.H. Lawrence
Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee. ~Montaigne
Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts. ~Jean Cocteau, Professional Secrets, 1922
Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. ~Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Forever is composed of nows. ~Emily Dickinson
Could we see when and where we are to meet again, we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye. ~Marie Louise De La Ramee
The other day a man asked me what I thought was the best time of life. "Why," I answered without a thought, "now." ~David Grayson
It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis. ~Margaret Bonnano
Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That's why we call it the present. ~Babatunde Olatunji, a similar version is also attributed to Alice Morse Earle
Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within and God o'erhead.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Psalm of Life
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is. ~Alan Watts
It's not what if, it's what now. ~Author Unknown
Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return. ~Mary Jean Iron
We are always getting ready to live but never living. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence. ~Sholem Asch, The Nazarene, 1939
Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do. ~Jean de la Bruyere
If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is. ~Author Unknown
Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness. ~James Thurber
We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for yesterday and fear of tomorrow. ~Fulton Oursler
Chasing the past, I stumbled into the future. ~T.A. Sachs
Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys. ~André Gide, Nourritures Terrestres
Why be saddled with this thing called life expectancy? Of what relevance to an individual is such a statistic? Am I to concern myself with an allotment of days I never had and was never promised? Must I check off each day of my life as if I am subtracting from this imaginary hoard? No, on the contrary, I will add each day of my life to my treasure of days lived. And with each day, my treasure will grow, not diminish. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
In today already walks tomorrow. ~Friedrich von Schiller
When I am anxious it is because I am living in the future. When I am depressed it is because I am living in the past. ~Author Unknown
The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness. ~Abraham Maslow
The future is always beginning now. ~Mark Strand, Reasons for Moving
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. ~Albert Einstein
Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized. ~Leo Buscaglia
The future is no place to place your better days. ~Dave Matthews
The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face. ~Jim Bishop
If a man examine carefully his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead. ~Emerson, Journals, 1827
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present. ~Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor. ~D.H. Lawrence
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. ~Dale Carnegie
Pile up too many tomorrows and you'll find that you've collected nothing but a bunch of empty yesterdays. ~The Music Man
We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's. ~Henry Ward Beecher
God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road. ~Isak Dinesen
Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far. ~Euripides
Life's a journey, not a destination. ~Aerosmith
If you wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes. If you don't wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes. ~Senegalese Proverb
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. ~Abraham Lincoln
Look lovingly at the present, for it holds the only things that are forever true.
A Course in Miracles
It is in awareness that we bring everything to life that lives within us. There is no time like the present to give birth to creativity.
Kathleen Anderson
Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
Guillaume Apollinaire
Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path of joy.
Sarah Ban Breathnach
We have only this moment, sparking like a star in our hand…and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late.
Marie Beynon
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Buddha
What you are is what you have been. What you'll be is what you do now.
Buddha
Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher place. Start right where you are.
Julia Cameron
Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach out children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.
Pablo Casals
You should live every day like it's your last day because one day you're gonna be right.
Ray Charles
Do not carry the burden of the past; do not live in the future. The only important thing is that one lives in the present authentically and fully. Whatever your current life is, be the most you can be by living in the moment.
Chan Chih
Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.
Pema Chodron
We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment, but it is transient. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. If we share with caring, lightheartedness, and love, we will create abundance and joy for each other. And then this moment will have been worthwhile.
Deepak Chopra
These are great days.
Winston Churchill
We can escape the prison of our own beliefs and enter the Palace of Possibilities when we allow ourselves to be astonished by everything.
Gary Craig
Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
Simone de Beauvoir
Right now, and in every now-moment, you are either closing or opening. You are either stressfully waiting for something – more money, security, affection – or you are living from your deep heart, opening as the entire moment, and giving what you most deeply desire to give, without waiting.
David Deida
If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.
Taisen Deshimaru
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Annie Dillard
Not doing is not about immobility or giving up in despair. It is first and foremost about being able to be with, to accept fully, what is in this moment.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Present-moment living, getting in touch with your now, is at the heart of effective living. When you think about it, there really is no other moment you can live. Now is all there is, and the future is just another present moment to live when it arrives.
Wayne Dyer
You’ll seldom experience regret for anything that you’ve done. It is what you haven’t done that will torment you. The message, therefore, is clear. Do it! Develop an appreciation for the present moment. Seize every second of your life and savor it. Value your present moments. Using them up in any self-defeating ways means you’ve lost them forever.
Wayne Dyer
Write in your heart that every day is the best day of the year.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Now is the time to know that all that you do is sacred.
Hafiz
Be part of the miraculous moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Find joy and peace in this very moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh
At any moment you have a choice that either leads you closer to your spirit or further away from it.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Life can be found only in the present moment. 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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The point of power is always in the present moment.
Louise Hay
The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is exactly what it is: a miracle and unrepeatable.
Storm Jameson
Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Love the moment, and the energy of that moment will spread beyond all boundaries.
Corita Kent
Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.
Omar Khayyam
You have the power in the present moment to change limiting beliefs and consciously plant the seeds for the future of your choosing. As you change your mind, you change your experience.
Serge Kahili King
We're all stumbling toward the light with varying degrees of grace at any given moment.
Bo Lozoff
Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have – so spend it wisely.
Kay Lyons
I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
Abraham Maslow
Always now - just now - come into being. Always now - just now - give yourself to death. Practicing this is Zen practice.
Soko Morinaga
We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it’s gone—its value is incontestable.
Joyce Carol Oates
Today is a gift I honor by fully living it.
Mary Anne Radmacher
Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.
Gilda Radner
Begin doing what you want to do now. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand – and melting like a snowflake.
Marie Beyon Ray
Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.
Maria Robinson
Gratitude helps us to return to our natural state of joyfulness, where we notice what's right instead of what's wrong. It makes us feel complete, that we have everything we need, at least in this moment.
M. J. Ryan
It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.
Vita Sackville-West
Now is the operative word. Everything you put in your way is just a method of putting off the hour when you could actually be doing your dream.
Barbara Sher
We know nothing of tomorrow; our business is to be good and happy today.
Sydney Smith
The best things in life are the nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you.
Robert Lewis Stevenson
Each moment is a place you've never been.
Mark Strand
We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still.
Lewis Thomas
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the now the primary focus of your life.
Eckhart Tolle
Don't live in the past, don't ponder about the future, stay at the PRESENT moment NOW...always.
Mark Twain
A sobering thought: what if, at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential.
Jane Wagner
Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
Alan Watts
I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.
William Allen White
There is no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.
Alexander Woollcott
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present. Jan Glidewell
Waste not fresh tears over old griefs. Euripides
Study as if you were to live forever. Live as if you were going to die tomorrow. Isidore of Seville
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. Buddha
We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine. H. L. Mencken
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. Chinese Proverb
The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness. Abraham Maslow
Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Charles Dederich
We are always getting ready to live but never living. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do. Jean de la Bruyere
I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.
D.H. Lawrence
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
Abraham Lincoln
Today is life - the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Dale Carnegie
One should count each day a separate life. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Nothing is worth more than this day.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe If you are still talking about what you did yesterday, you haven't done much today. Anonymous
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present. Albert Camus
Learning is movement from moment to moment. J Krishnamurti We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's. Henry Ward Beecher Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present. Marcus Aurelius
Today is the blocks with which we build. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I have memories - but only a fool stores his past in the future. David Gerrold
Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed. Coria Kent
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
Leo Tolstoy
If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine. Morris West
Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition. Sir William Osler
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is. Alan Watts
Eckhart Tolle Quotes
1- To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for you inner state at any given moment. That means now.
2- For what you do to others, you do to yourself.
3- Instead of asking “what do I want from life?,” a more powerful question is, “what does life want from me?”
4- If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn’t know he is dreaming. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream.
5- Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?
6- 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.
7- You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the Now.
8- Whenever an answer, a solution, or a creative idea is needed, stop thinking for a moment by focusing attention on your inner energy field. … When you resume thinking, it will be fresh and creative.
9- All the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind.
10- If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me
11- Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.
12- Forget about your life situation and pay attention to your life. Your life situation exists in time. Your life is now. Your life situation is mind-stuff. Your life is real.
13- Not all thinking and all emotion are of the ego. They turn into ego only when you identify with them and they take you over completely, that is to say, when they become “I.”
14- Space has no “existence.” “To exist” literally means “to stand out.” You cannot understand space because it doesn’t stand out. Although in itself it has no existence, it enables everything else to exist. Silence has no existence either, nor does the Unmanifested.
15- Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.
16- Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.
17- The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly — you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.
18- What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.
19- “How” is always more important that “what.” See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it.
20- The secret of life is to “die before you die” — and find that there is no death.
http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/eckharttolle.html
More Present Moment Quotes
Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present -- which seldom happens to us.
-- Jean de la Bruyère
Every morning is a fresh beginning. Every day is the world made new. Today is a new day. Today is my world made new. I have lived all my life up to this moment, to come to this day. This moment--this day--is as good as any moment in all eternity. I shall make of this day--each moment of this day--a heaven on earth. This is my day of opportunity.
-- Dan Custer
Don't let the past steal your present.
-- Cherralea Morgen
Forever is composed of nows.
-- Emily Dickinson
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
-- Alan Watts
It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis.
-- Margaret Bonnano
Know the true value of time! Snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no procrastination. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
-- Philip Chesterfield
Life is a great and wondrous mystery, and the only thing we know that we have for sure is what is right here right now. Don't miss it.
-- Leo Buscaglia
Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed.
-- Coreta Kent
Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized.
-- Leo Buscaglia
Living in the moment means letting go of the past and not waiting for the future. It means living your life consciously, aware that each moment you breathe is a gift.
-- Oprah Winfrey
Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.
-- Mary Jean Iron
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
-- Dale Carnegie
One today is worth two tomorrows.
-- Benjamin Franklin
Present-moment living, getting in touch with your ''now,'' is at the heart of effective living. When you think about it, there really is no other moment you can live. Now is all there is, and the future is just another present moment to live when it arrives. One thing is certain, you cannot live it until it does appear.
-- Wayne Dyer
Remember then: there is only one time that is important--Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.
-- Leo Tolstoy
Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.
-- Wayne Dyer
The meeting of two eternities, the past and future....is precisely the present moment.
-- Henry David Thoreau
The more I give myself permission to live in the moment and enjoy it without feeling guilty or judgmental about any other time, the better I feel about the quality of my work.
-- Wayne Dyer
The other day a man asked me what I thought was the best time of life. "Why," I answered without a thought, "now."
-- David Grayson
The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post.
-- L. Thomas Holdcroft
There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
-- James Baldwin
Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.
-- Dale Carnegie
We are always getting ready to live but never living.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We may make our future by the best use of the present. There is no moment like the present.
-- Maria Edgeworth
We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time.
-- Art Buchwald
What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind.
-- Buddha
When I am anxious it is because I am living in the future. When I am depressed it is because I am living in the past.
-- Author Unknown
When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
-- Alexander Graham Bell
Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
-- Francis Bacon
Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have - so spend it wisely.
-- Kay Lyons
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is God's gift, that's why we call it the present.
-- Joan Rivers
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.
-- Jan Glidewell
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this.
-- Henry David Thoreau
Present Moment quotes can be paraphrased as ‘be here now.’ All that exists is in this instant. “The past is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present.” Author unknown.
More Present Moment Quotes
Annie Dillard reminds us, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Your future is truly the result of what you are thinking and doing right now. Make the most of each instant!
Look lovingly at the present, for it holds the only things that are forever true.
A Course in Miracles
It is in awareness that we bring everything to life that lives within us. There is no time like the present to give birth to creativity.
Kathleen Anderson
Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
Guillaume Apollinaire
Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path of joy.
Sarah Ban Breathnach
We have only this moment, sparking like a star in our hand…and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late.
Marie Beynon
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Buddha
What you are is what you have been. What you'll be is what you do now.
Buddha
Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher place. Start right where you are.
Julia Cameron
Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach out children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.
Pablo Casals
You should live every day like it's your last day because one day you're gonna be right.
Ray Charles
Do not carry the burden of the past; do not live in the future. The only important thing is that one lives in the present authentically and fully. Whatever your current life is, be the most you can be by living in the moment.
Chan Chih
Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.
Pema Chodron
We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment, but it is transient. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. If we share with caring, lightheartedness, and love, we will create abundance and joy for each other. And then this moment will have been worthwhile.
Deepak Chopra
These are great days.
Winston Churchill
We can escape the prison of our own beliefs and enter the Palace of Possibilities when we allow ourselves to be astonished by everything.
Gary Craig
Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
Simone de Beauvoir
Right now, and in every now-moment, you are either closing or opening. You are either stressfully waiting for something – more money, security, affection – or you are living from your deep heart, opening as the entire moment, and giving what you most deeply desire to give, without waiting.
David Deida
If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.
Taisen Deshimaru
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Annie Dillard
Not doing is not about immobility or giving up in despair. It is first and foremost about being able to be with, to accept fully, what is in this moment.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Present-moment living, getting in touch with your now, is at the heart of effective living. When you think about it, there really is no other moment you can live. Now is all there is, and the future is just another present moment to live when it arrives.
Wayne Dyer
You’ll seldom experience regret for anything that you’ve done. It is what you haven’t done that will torment you. The message, therefore, is clear. Do it! Develop an appreciation for the present moment. Seize every second of your life and savor it. Value your present moments. Using them up in any self-defeating ways means you’ve lost them forever.
Wayne Dyer
Write in your heart that every day is the best day of the year.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Now is the time to know that all that you do is sacred.
Hafiz
Be part of the miraculous moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Find joy and peace in this very moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh
At any moment you have a choice that either leads you closer to your spirit or further away from it.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Life can be found only in the present moment. 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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The point of power is always in the present moment.
Louise Hay
The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is exactly what it is: a miracle and unrepeatable.
Storm Jameson
Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Love the moment, and the energy of that moment will spread beyond all boundaries.
Corita Kent
Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.
Omar Khayyam
You have the power in the present moment to change limiting beliefs and consciously plant the seeds for the future of your choosing. As you change your mind, you change your experience.
Serge Kahili King
We're all stumbling toward the light with varying degrees of grace at any given moment.
Bo Lozoff
Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have – so spend it wisely.
Kay Lyons
I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
Abraham Maslow
Always now - just now - come into being. Always now - just now - give yourself to death. Practicing this is Zen practice.
Soko Morinaga
We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it’s gone—its value is incontestable.
Joyce Carol Oates
Today is a gift I honor by fully living it.
Mary Anne Radmacher
Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.
Gilda Radner
Begin doing what you want to do now. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand – and melting like a snowflake.
Marie Beyon Ray
Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.
Maria Robinson
Gratitude helps us to return to our natural state of joyfulness, where we notice what's right instead of what's wrong. It makes us feel complete, that we have everything we need, at least in this moment.
M. J. Ryan
It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.
Vita Sackville-West
Now is the operative word. Everything you put in your way is just a method of putting off the hour when you could actually be doing your dream.
Barbara Sher
We know nothing of tomorrow; our business is to be good and happy today.
Sydney Smith
The best things in life are the nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you.
Robert Lewis Stevenson
Each moment is a place you've never been.
Mark Strand
We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still.
Lewis Thomas
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the now the primary focus of your life.
Eckhart Tolle
Don't live in the past, don't ponder about the future, stay at the PRESENT moment NOW...always.
Mark Twain
A sobering thought: what if, at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential.
Jane Wagner
Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
Alan Watts
I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.
William Allen White
There is no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.
Alexander Woollcott