Erica Jong Quotes

Do not worry about whether or not the sun will rise. Be prepared to enjoy it.

It is a simple but sometimes forgotten truth that the greatest enemy to present joy and high hopes is the cultivation of retrospective bitterness.

The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.

Nothing is a bigger waste of time than regretting the past and worrying about the future.

For the first time in a long time, he didn't think of the past. And of all the things he'd lost. He thought only of the present, and what he had. And how it was so much more than he deserved. And he prayed then that he would never, ever lose it.

And that works for me. So that if this is it, you better take it at its right proportion. That there are serious things, but most things are temporal and ephemeral, and you should cultivate that attitude. That joy and love and all the verities are what counts. So I try not to take too many things seriously, and if I find myself caught up in the seriousness of the moment, within a period of time, I'm able to cajole myself out of it.

Just write the best you can about the things that concern you most. I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.

The world that was not mine yesterday now lies spread out at my feet, a splendor. I seem, in the middle of the night, to have returned to the world of apples, the orchards of Heaven. Perhaps I should take my problems to a shrink, or perhaps I should enjoy the apples that I have, streaked with color like the evening sky.

It is the very wantonness of folly for a man to search out the frets and burdens of his calling and give his mind every day to a consideration of them. They belong to human life. They are inevitable. Brooding only gives them strength.

Our appointment with life is in the present moment. If we do not have peace and joy right now, when will we have peace and joy?

But I don't think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age.

The happy man is he who turns his soul Unto the light of joys that he can find; And pays each day its just demand of toll, But shuts the future troubles from his mind.

To live in the past or in the future may be less satisfying than to live in the present, but it can never be as disillusioning.

This, in my judgment, is the highest philosophy: First, do not regret having lost yesterday; second, do not fear that you will lose tomorrow; third, enjoy today.

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.

Don't worry about something going away; enjoy it while it's happening. And don't worry about something that's not even real.

Enjoy the present hour, Be thankful for the past, And neither fear nor wish Th' approaches of the last.

Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.

Please, don't worry so much. Because in the end, none of us have very long on this Earth. Life is fleeting.

Expect nothing and life will be velvet.

If you separate from . . . everything you have done in the past, everything that disturbs you about the future . . . and apply yourself to living the life that you are living-that is to say, the present-you can live all the time that remains to you until your death in calm, benevolence, and serenity.

What you can do is embrace what you have right now and to allow it to fill the vacancies of what you didn't get yesterday.

My rule is, when you are unhappy, think about it. But when you're happy, don't. Why spoil it? You're probably happy for some ridiculous reason and you'd just spoil it to know it.

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.

It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.