quotes about Now

Abraham Lincoln:
The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.
Anais Nin:
The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.
Anais Nin:
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
Anne Frank:
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Arthur Miller:
The word now is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.
Babatunde Olatunji:
Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present.
Brenda Peterson:
The Hopi Indians of Arizona believe that our daily rituals and prayers literally keep this world spinning on its axis. For me, feeding the seagulls is one of those everyday prayers.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman:
Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.
Corita Kent:
Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.
Corita Kent:
Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
Light tomorrow with today!
Emily Dickinson:
Who has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.
God’s residence is next to min,
His furniture is love.
Gwendolyn Brooks:
Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical guise.
Henry Ford:
History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.
Hugh Prather:
To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.
James Oppenheim:
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.
Joanna Russ:
Faith is not contrary to the usual ideas, something that turns out to be right or wrong, like a gambler’s bet: it’s an act, an intention, a project, something that makes you, in leaping into the future, go so far, far, far ahead that you shoot clean out of time and right into Eternity, which is not theend of time or a whole lot of time or unending time, but timelessness, the old Eternal Now.
Kalidasa:
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
Marcus Aurelius:
Every man’s life lies within the present; for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain.
Margaret Bonnano:
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.
Mary Wollstonecraft:
The beginning is always today.
Matthew Arnold:
Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done…
Pema Chodron:
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.
Robert Frost:
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Robert Louis Stevenson:
The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
Soren Kierkegaard:
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
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.
Thomas F. Healey:
Don’t strew me with roses after I’m dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow,
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!
Thornton Wilder:
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate — that’s my philosophy. The Skin of Our Teeth, 1942
W. E. B. Du Bois:
Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season.
It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year.
It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow.
Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.