Thornton Wilder Quotes

It's not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather our concern must be to live while we're alive.

Don't let your life just go in one eye and out the other.

Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.

Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live.

If you are not living this moment, you are not really living.

Suddenly, you are very much in the present, and you learn it's really the place where you should always live.

Perhaps I’ve been rushing my whole entire life, jumping into things headfirst without thinking them through. Running through the days without noticing the minutes.

Even in a moment of stress, you can say, "OK, can I enjoy the doing itself? Can I enjoy the flow of energy of this moment?" And of course you can!

If we do not find happiness in the present moment, in what shall we find it?

Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.

Life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or of a longer life, are not necessary.

Every man's life lies within the present; for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain.

Whatever happens, whatever you experience, feel, think, do - it's always now. It's all there is. And if you continuously miss the now - resist it, dislike it, try to get away from it, reduce it to a means to an end, then you miss the essence of your life, and you are stuck in a dream world of images, concepts, labels, interpretations, judgments - the conditioned content of your mind that you take to be yourself.

If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything. When a child presents himself to you with his smile, if you are not really there - thinking about the future or the past, or preoccupied with other problems - then the child is not really there for you. The technique of being alive is to go back to yourself in order for the child to appear like a marvellous reality. Then you can see him smile and you can embrace him in your arms.

These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.

If you have your full attention in the moment, you will see only love.

I try to just take in every moment of being alive.

Every day we do things, we are things that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our life..., our way of looking at things, we will know ohw to make peace right in the moment, we are alive.

One of the things I love about yoga is that it brings you into the present moment. You aren't worried about what will happen tomorrow and you aren't thinking about what happened yesterday. It's about opening your heart and living from your heart.

I always live in the present. I don’t know the future and no longer have the past. The former oppresses me as the possibility of everything, the latter as the reality of nothing.

To meditate is to be aware of what is going on - in our bodies, our feelings our minds, and in the world. When we settle into the present moment, we can see the beauties and wonders before our eyes.

Our thoughts are always pulling us into the future or the past, away from the present. But it is in the present moment that we find Spirit, our essential being and the force that animates all life.

Every drop of water in an ocean contains the flavor of the whole ocean. So too, every moment in time contains the flavor of eternity, if you could live in that moment, but most people do not live in the moment which is the only time they really have.

We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive. Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment.