Townes Van Zandt Quotes

Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.

Unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.

I'm always 20 minutes ahead of myself in my head. But being present - it's beautiful when it happens.

We all spend so much time worrying about the future that the present moment slips right out of our hands. And so all we have left is retrospection and anticipation, retrospection and anticipation. In which case what's left to recall but past anticipation? What's left to anticipate but future retrospection?

Only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present. Most of us spend fifty-nine minutes an hour living in the past, with regret for lost joys or shame for things badly done (both utterly useless and weakening) or in a future which we either long for or dread. . . . There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute, here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle. Which is exactly what it is-a miracle and unrepeatable.

Although she had resisted this knowledge all her life, had lived determinedly in the future focused there by ambition, she understood at last that this was the real condition of humanity: The dance of life occurred not yesterday or tomorrow, but only here at the still point that was the present. This truth is simmple, sel-evident, but difficult to accept, for we sentimentalize the past and wallow in it, while we endure the moment and in every waking hour dream of the future.

If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man.

The present moment is really all that we have. The only place you can really love another person is in the present. Love in the past is a memory. Love in the future is a fantasy. To be really alive, love - or any other experience - must take place in the present.

Engage yourself in the living present. The future will take care of itself.

For it is only by forgetting that we ever really drop the thread of time and approach the experience of living in the present moment, so elusive in ordinary hours.

Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn't exist and never shall. There is only now.

I'm trying to be present, not thinking and worrying about the past or the future. That's such a waste of time, you know?

How can we live if there is no more here and everything is now?

Act in the moment, live in the present, slowly slowly don't allow the past to interfere And you will be surprised that life is such an eternal wonder, such a mysterious phenomenon and such a great gift that one simply feels constantly in gratitude. So this is my message for you: live in the moment, herenow. That's why I call it divine purity

Each minute we spend worrying about the future and regretting the past is a minute we miss in our appointment with life - a missed opportunity to engage life and to see that each moment gives us the chance to change for the better, to experience peace and joy.

The past was gone and the future had yet to unfold, and he knew he should focus his life on the present. Yet his day-to-day existence suddenly struck him as endless and unbearable.

I've always been hopelessly stuck in the present.

I've always been someone who's really tried to live in the here and now. My memory isn't very good so maybe that's why, but it just seems like I've been living this life, my current chapter, for a really long time and I don't really remember what it was like before. It's just been sort of ingrained in me. What I deal with day to day.

If you are always talking about the past, then you don't really have much in the present.

Past and future have no power over you. Just the present - and even that can be minimized.

I really don't look at my past and I really don't look too much to the future because I find that's sort of redundant. I really live right in the present. I live right in the now.

Die to the past every moment. You don't need it. Only refer to it when it is absolutely relevant to the present. Feel the power of this moment and the fullness of Being. Feel your presence.

Live in the present. The past is gone; the future is unknown -- but the present is real, and your opportunities are now. You must see these opportunities; they must be real for you. The catch is that they can't seem real if your mind is buried in past failures, if you keep reliving old mistakes, old guilts, old tragedies. Fight your way above the many inevitable Traumatizations of your ego, escape damnation by the past, and look to the opportunities of the present. I don't mean some vague moment in the present -- next week or next month, perhaps. I mean today, this minute.

Practice being in the present. Do what you're doing 100%.

Balance lives in the present. The surest way to lose your footing is to focus on what dreadful things might happen.