Present Quotes

The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

Edgar Allan Poe

I came into the world either too early or too late at present, I am good for nothing.

Prince Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar von Metternich

The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.

Alfred North Whitehead

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

One day at a time - This is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.

Ida Scott Taylor.

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

Herbert Beerbohm Tree

I know patriotism exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward.

George Washington

Our first responsibility is not to build the Church or even to get souls saved - - It is to represent Christ and to bring His message to the world. As God beholds us in Christ, so the world must behold Christ in us. As Christ represents us before the Father, so we must represent Christ before the world.

Cornelius Stam

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

Benjamin Disraeli

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

If the present world go astray, the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought.

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

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

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

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

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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Maya Angelou

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

Most people my age are dead at the present time.

Casey Stengel

Be intent upon the perfection of the present day.

William Law

The present is theirs the future, for which I really worked, is mine.

Nikola Tesla

Art can only be truly Art by presenting an adequate outward symbol of some fact in the interior life.

Margaret Fulle

The future depends on what we do in the present.

Mahatma Gandhi

Leaders are the ones who keep faith with the past, keep step with the present and keep the promise to posterity.

Harold J. Seymore

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

The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.

Robert Green Ingersoll

The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it.

Paul Klee

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

Aristotle

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer Present or Not Guilty.

Theodore Roosevelt

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.

I consider it useless and tedious to represent what exists, because nothing that exists satisfies me. Nature is ugly, and I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial.

Charles Baudelaire

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

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

Charles Dickens

Real generosity toward the future consists in giving all to what is present.

Albert Camus

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

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

Alfonso the Wise

You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.

Plato, Dialogues, Theatetus