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The Present Quotes and Quotations
 This is not a dress rehearsal. This is It.  Only when your consciousness is totally focused on the moment you are in can you receive whatever gift, esson, or delight that moment has to Seize the day, and put the least possible trust in tomorrow. - Horace Tomorrow's life is too late. Live today. - Martial One today is worth two tomorrows. Half of today is better than all of tomorrow. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy it today, you can do it again, tomorrow. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. The present moment is significant, not as the bridge between past and future, but by reason of its contents, which can fill our emptiness and become ours, if we are capable of receiving them 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. It's not that "today is the first day of the rest of my life," but that now is all there is of my life. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today. Now is the only time we own; give, love, toil with a will. And place no faith in tomorrow, for the clock may then be still. Enjoy yourself, drink, call the life you live today your own-but only that; the rest belongs to chance. You are younger today than you ever will be again. Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow. If we are ever to enjoy life, now is the time, not tomorrow or next year. ... Today should always be our most wonderful day. Live now, believe me, wait not till tomorrow, gather the roses of life today. So often we rob tomorrow's memories by today's economies. You had better live your best and act your best and think your best today; for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows that follow. Happy the man, and happy he alone He can call today his own. He who, secure within can say, "Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today." Forget mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day. Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow wood. Only today does the fire burn brightly. One of these days is none of these days. This is the day which the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. - Bible He growled at morning, noon, and night, And trouble sought to borrow; Although today the sky was bright, He knew t'would storm tomorrow; A thought of joy he could not stand, And struggled to resist it; Though sunshine dappled all the land This sorry pessimist it. To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings. The here-and-now is no mere filling of time, but a filling of time with God. In the present, every day is a miracle. Life is only this place, this time, and these people right here and now. I believe that only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present. There is one thing we can do, and the happiest people are those who do it to the limit of their ability. We can be completely present. We can be all here. We can ... give all our attention to the opportunity before us. 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. Act-act in the living Present! Are not my days few? Cease then, and let me alone, that I may take comfort a little, Before I go to the place from which I shall not return. - Bible Now or never was the time. And now, Lord, what wait I for? - Bible The future belongs to those who live intensely in the present. The present is elastic to embrace infinity. The present is the living sum-total of the whole past. The present is an eternal now. The present is all the ready money Fate can give. The present is an edifice which God cannot rebuild. The present is the blocks with which we build. The present is the symbol and vehicle of the future. The present is all you have for your certain possession. We are here and it is now. Further than that, all knowledge is moonshine. 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. This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it. The time is always right to do what is right. One realm we have never conquered: the pure present. He who lives in the present lives in eternity. I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve. The present offers itself to our touch for only an instant of time and then eludes the senses. - Plutarch A life uncommanded now is uncom-manded; a life unenjoyed now is unenjoyed; a life not lived wisely now is not lived wisely. The word "now" is like a bomb thrown through the window, and it ticks. Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got. It is now, and in this world, that we must live. Who cares about great marks left behind? We have one life.... Just one. Our life. We have nothing else. This-the immediate, everyday, and present experience-is IT, the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe. Let us live today. Work accomplished means little. It is in the past. What we all want is the glorious and living present. Yesterday is a cancelled check. Tomorrow is a promissory note. Today is cash in hand. Spend It! Today Relative to Yesterday or Tomorrow The future is made of the same stuff as the present. Yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow is only a vision. But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day, for it is life, the very life of life. Be glad today. Tomorrow may bring tears. Be brave today. The darkest night will pass. And golden rays will usher in the dawn. Do not look back on happiness, or dream of it in the future. You are only sure of today; do not let yourself be cheated out of it. Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future. I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today. The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future. There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future. With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now. Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us. The past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, nor just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending. It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden, too, can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits. Reappraise the past, reevaluate where we've been, clarify where we are, and predict or anticipate where we are headed. 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. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes today. Tomorrow I will live, the fool does say; today itself's too late, the wise lived yesterday. - Martial The cares of today are seldom those of tomorrow. Yesterday is a cancelled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have-so spend it wisely. Everyman's life lies within the present, for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain. The flesh endures the storms of the present alone, the mind those of the past and future as well. - Epicurus I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That's where the fun is. No mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments. The only living life is in the past and future-the present is an interlude- strange interlude in which we call on past and future to bear witness that we are living. Past, and to come, seems best; things present, worst. The past cannot be regained, although we can learn from it; the future is not yet ours even though we must plan for it. ... Time is now. We have only today. Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart. No longer forward nor behind I look in hope or fear; but grateful, take the good I find, the best of now and here. The present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come. We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly in to the future; but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today. The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation. Be satisfied, and pleased with what thou art, Act cheerfully and well thy allotted part; Enjoy the present hour, be thankful for the past, And neither fear, nor wish, the approaches of the last. - Martial It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future and impossible to live in the past. If you have one eye on yesterday, and one eye on tomorrow, you're going to be cockeyed today. Yesterday has gone. Tomorrow may never come. There is only the miracle of this moment. Savor it. It is a gift. Don't waste today regretting yesterday instead of making a memory for tomorrow. Light tomorrow with today. I just take one day. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not come. We have only today to love Jesus. Patterns of the past echo in the present and resound through the future. Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past. If we spend our time with regrets over yesterday, and worries over what might happen tomorrow, we have no today in which to live. Now is all we have. Everything that has ever happened to you, and anything that is ever going to happen to you, is just a thought. The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future. If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future. Few of us ever live in the present, we are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone. The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, nor to anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly. - Buddha When we have a world of only now, with no shadows of yesterdays or clouds of tomorrow, then saying what we can do will work. 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. I have realized that the past and the future are real illusions, that they exist only in the present, which is what there is and all that there is. There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now. Today was once the future from which you expected so much in the past. Today is yesterday's pupil. Today is yesterday's effect and tomorrow's cause. Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow's joy is possible only if today's makes way for it; that each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one. The present is the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past. I have everything I need to enjoy my here and now-unless I am letting my consciousness be dominated by demands and expectations based on the dead past or the imagined future. Today is the blocks with which we build. In order to be utterly happy, the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future. Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys. You don't need endless time and perfect conditions. Do it now. Do it today. Do it for twenty minutes and watch your heart start beating. Do not manage as if you had ten thousand years before you. Look you, death stands at your elbow; make the most of your minute, and be good for something while it is in your power. And if not now, when? - Talmud As we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so. Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation! When shall we live if not now? We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, "here and now," without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank. Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time. Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present. Freedom from worries and surcease from strain are illusions that always inhabit the distance. Study as if you were to live forever. Live as if you were to die tomorrow. The best preparation for a better life next year is a full, complete, harmonious, joyous life this year. If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine. Some people are making such thorough preparation for rainy days that they aren't enjoying today's sunshine. The greater part of our lives is spent in dreaming over the morrow, and when it comes, it, too, is consumed in the anticipation of a brighter morrow, and so the cheat is prolonged, even to the grave. It is cheap generosity which promises the future in compensation for the present. Who knows if the gods above will add tomorrow's span to this day's sum? - Horace Defer not till tomorrow to be wise, tomorrow's sun to thee may never rise. My head is buried in the sands of tomorrow, while my tail feathers are singed by the hot sun of today. Today, well lived, will prepare me for both the pleasure and the pain of tomorrow. The future belongs to those who live intensely in the present. Every moment that I am centered in the future, I suffer a temporary loss of this life. We know nothing of tomorrow; our business is to be good and happy today. We are always beginning to live, but are never living. - Manilius Live wastes itself while we are preparing to live. I have always been waiting for something better-sometimes to see the best I had snatched from me. Men spend their lives in anticipation, in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other-it is our own.... We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age. You do well to have visions of a better life than of every day, but it is the life of every day from which the elements of a better life must come. The most effective way to ensure the value of the future is to confront the present courageously and constructively. The habit of looking into the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts. You don't save a pitcher for tomorrow. Tomorrow it may rain. Very strange is this quality of our human nature which decrees that unless we feel a future before us we do not live completely in the present. Just do your best today and tomorrow will come ... tomorrow's going to be a busy day, a happy day. Do today's duty, fight today's temptation; do not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward to things you cannot see, and could not understand if you saw them. The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today. Live for today. Multitudes of people have failed to live for today. ... What they have had within their grasp today they have missed entirely, because only the future has intrigued them. Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages. Light tomorrow with today. A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is, but often prompts us to rearrange the past. The man least dependent upon the morrow goes to meet the morrow most cheerfully. - Epicurus Today's egg is better than tomorrow's hen. T'were too absurd to slight for the hereafter, the day's delight! The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come. It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity. The prospect of being pleased tomorrow will never console me for the boredom of today. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's. The past and present are only our means; the future is always our end. Thus we never really live, but only hope to live. 
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