Present Quotes

Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Charles Dickens

Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.

Albert Einstein

To live in the past or in the future may be less satisfying than to live in the present, but it can never be as disillusioning.

R. D. Laing

The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are for loving in the present.

Barbara de Angelis

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Edmund Burke, Speech to the electors of Bristol. 3 Nov. 1774

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, Meditations, 200 A. D.

There has never been an age that did not applaud the past and lament the present.

Lillian Eichler Watson

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present.

English Prove

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, this is no other life but this.

Henry David Thoreau

It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.

Frank Herbert, Dune

No mind is much employed upon the present recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.

Samuel Johnson

We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.

Jeseph Joubert

In this present moment we are either smaller than we once were or else are on our knees.

Alan Moore, Birth Caul

The true felicity of life is to be free from anxieties and perturbations to understand and do our duties to God and man, and to enjoy the present without any serious dependence on the future.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.

Albert Einstein

Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.

Alfonso the Wise

Life is divided into three terms - That which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the future.

William Wordsworth

Past and to come seem best things present worst.

Mary Bertone

Not only the studying and writing of history but also the honoring of it both represent affirmations of a certain defiant faith - A desperate, unreasoning faith, if you will - But faith nevertheless in the endurance of this threatened world - Faith in the total essentiality of historical continuity.

George Frost Kennan

I was born old and get younger every day. At present I am sixty years young.

Herbert Beerbohm Tree

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Aristotle

As the same fire assumes different shapes When it consumes objects differing in shape, So does the one Self take the shape Of every creature in whom he is present.

Maitri Upanishads

Each present joy or sorrow seems the chief.

William Shakespeare

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Albert Einstein

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.

Eckhart Tolle

Since I do not foresee that atomic energy is to be a great boon for a long time, I have to say that for the present it is a menace. Perhaps it is well that it should be. It may intimidate the human race into bringing order into its international affairs, which, without the pressure of fear, it would not do.

Albert Einstein

Most successful men have not achieved their distinction by having some new talent or opportunity presented to them. They have developed the opportunity that was at hand.

Bruce Marton

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Anais Nin

Most people live ninety percent in the past, seven percent in the present, and that only leaves three percent for the future.

John Steinbeck, The Winter of our Discontent

If there were a verb meaning to believe falsely, it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.

Ludwig Wittgenstein