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“Confine thyself to the present.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Who controls the past . . . controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell, 1984
“The past is consumed in the present and the present is living only because it brings forth the future.” James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
“I don't live in either my past or my future. I'm interested only in the present.” Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.” George Eliot, Middlemarch
“Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.” James Joyce, Ulysses
“what necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer—the Future so much brighter?” Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“You have to know the past to understand the present.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the present moment.” H. G. Wells, The Time Machine
“Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.” George Orwell, 1984
“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.” John Green, Looking for Alaska
“Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.” Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.” Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
“For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose a thing if he has it not. Remember that all is opinion.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we...” Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union Address
“It's in vain . . . to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.” Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
“For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez faire for others.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
“The struggle of to-day is not altogether for to-day; it is for a vast future also. With a reliance on Providence all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us.” Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union Address
“it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden
“We gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.” Edgar Allan Poe, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt
“The true nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, and all that was not present did not exist.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“Economy is the method by which we prepare to-day to afford the improvements of to-morrow.” Calvin Coolidge, State of the Union Address
“It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies.” Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
“The truth is that no mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.” Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
“The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better.” Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“He doesn’t know which is worse, a past he can’t regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there’s the future. Sheer vertigo.” Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
“The future, good or ill, was not forgotten, but ceased to have any power over the present. Health and hope grew strong in them, and they were content with each good day as it came, taking pleasure in every meal, and in every word and song.” J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
“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.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion
“Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present.” Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
“Everything was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. The present was only a bridge and on this bridge they are still groaning, as the world groans, and not one idiot ever thinks of blowing up the bridge.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
“We are always getting away from the present moment. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave.” H. G. Wells, The Time Machine
“Don't think of what's past! . . . I am not going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who knows what to-morrow has in store?” Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles
“How do we know that his future will not be equal to our present?” Confucius, Analects
“Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.” John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“It is a chain of recollections—an idea which carries you back to other times, to other places—which, very likely, have no connection with the present time and place.” Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
“In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“Why us for that matter? Why anything ? Because this moment simply is.” Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
“The letters I had just inscribed on it were not even dry yet and already they belonged to the past.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“I’ve lived out my melancholy youth. I don’t give a fuck any more what’s behind me, or what’s ahead of me. I’m healthy. Incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today!” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“he to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives.” Oscar Wilde, Intentions
“Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come.” George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

Related topics

opinion future past moment hope time memory existence control life knowledge focus death pain freedom understanding living government suffering woman

Related authors

Marcus Aurelius (3)
Kurt Vonnegut (3)
George Orwell (2)
Paulo Coelho (2)
Abraham Lincoln (2)
James Joyce (2)
H. G. Wells (2)
John Green (2)
Jean-Paul Sartre (2)
Henry Miller (2)
J. R. R. Tolkien (1)
Oscar Wilde (1)
George Eliot (1)
Carl Sagan (1)
George R. R. Martin (1)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1)
John Steinbeck (1)
Confucius (1)
Charles Dickens (1)
Alexandre Dumas (1)

Related sources

Slaughterhouse-Five (3)
Meditations (3)
State of the Union Address (3)
Nausea (2)
1984 (2)
The Alchemist (2)
The Time Machine (2)
Cosmos (1)
The Count of Monte Cristo (1)
Middlemarch (1)
Analects (1)
Jane Eyre (1)
Intentions (1)
This Side of Paradise (1)
East of Eden (1)
The Fault in Our Stars (1)
Tropic of Cancer (1)
The Fellowship of the Ring (1)
Ulysses (1)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1)