John Buchan Quotes

The important thing is, that I guess I don't spend any time thinking about what I am or what we do means. I spend my time doing it.

Stick to what's in front of you - idea, action, utterance.

Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

Life is a process, and you just take it a day at a time, and you can't live in tomorrow, and you can't reach back and be in yesterday. No matter how much you want to, you just have what's right there in front of you.

If you think about the future, you lose perspective of the present.

There's definitely times when I'm tempted to look at the future, like any of us are. I'd be lying if that wasn't the case. But you have to reel back in and stay in the present.

But a knife ain't just a thing, is it? It's a choice, it's something you do. A knife says yes or no, cut or not, die or don't. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again.

First decide what you got to do, then go out and do it. All we can do is to see each other through it.

Don't look for the next opportunity, the one you have in hand is the opportunity.

What will happen from now on? It doesn't matter. I can only focus on what's happening to me in this moment.

We have our own brains.

To do today's work well and not to bother about tomorrow is the secret of accomplishment

On the way to work, concentrate on the way - not the work.

Begin where you are; work where you are; the hour which you are now wasting, dreaming of some far off success may be crowded with grand possibilities.

Learn that the present hour alone is man's.

People who live in the now; those people make things happen.

For the Warrior of the Light, there are no abstractions.

Worrying is worthless. When you stop focusing on what has already happened and what may never happen, then you'll be in the present moment. Then you'll begin to experience joy in life.

It's all Ati. Now, let's be practical.

The weight of the world is on our shoulders, its vision is through our eyes; if we blink or look aside, or turn back to finger what Plato said or remember Napoleon and his conquests, we inflict on the world the injury of some obliquity. This is life.

Decisions exist only in the present.

Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious attempt to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try.

If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish them quickly so I can go and have dessert, I will be equally incapable of enjoying my dessert. With the fork in my hand, I will be thinking about what to do next, and the texture and flavor of the dessert, together with the pleasure of eating it, will be lost. I will always be dragged into the future, never able to live in the present moment.