William James Quotes

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.

We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.

It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.

There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again.

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.

NOW is All There is & the Future is Just Another Present Moment to Live when it Arrives

We are seeing, then, that our experience is altogether momentary. From one point of view, each moment is so elusive and so brief that we cannot even think about it before it has gone. From another point of view, this moment is always here, since we know no other moment than the present moment. It is always dying, always becoming past more rapidly than imagination can conceive. Yet at the same time it is always being born, always new, emerging just as rapidly from that complete unknown we call the future. Thinking about it almost makes you breathless.

Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.

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.

So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding.

Nobody really lives in the present.

I am not in yesterday; I am not in tomorrow. I am right now.

We always project into the future or reflect in the past, but we are so little in the present.

You can be aware of the passing of time without being nostalgic.

What I have learned over the years is to try to stay in the moment. I want to feel it all because I've realized nothing lasts.

The only thing that holds true happiness is that moment when you're in it. Nothing can be controlled.

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.

The present moment, if you think about it, is the only time there is. No matter what time it is, it is always now.

It's hard enough just staying in the present. I can't tell you what's going to happen tomorrow.

She sat back on her heels and nodded. The thought experiment she proposed was certainly odd, but her point was simple. Everything in the universe was constantly changing, and nothing stays the same, and we must understand how quickly time flows by if we are to wake up and truly live our lives. That’s what it means to be a time being, old Jiko told me, and then she snapped her crooked fingers again. And just like that, you die.

Organismic awareness is awareness of the Present only - you can't taste the past, smell the past, see the past, touch the past, or hear the past. Neither can you taste, smell, see, touch or hear the future. In other words, organismic consciousness is properly timeless, and being timeless, it is essentially spaceless.

He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives.

We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.

All you really have... is now.