Alain de Botton Quotes

Each day is a new life. Each moment is really a new life. What we call memories are really present thoughts. What we call anticipations are really present thoughts. No one has ever lived in any moment except the present.

Forget the past. You can never predict what the future is going to be. Live for the moment.

Your life is right now! It's not later! It's not in that time of retirement. It's not when the lover gets here. It's not when you've moved into the new house. It's not when you get the better job. Your life is right now. It will always be right now. You might as well decide to start enjoying your life right now, because it's not ever going to get better than right now-until it gets better right now!

You have an appointment with life, an appointment that is in the here and now.

I literally have no idea what's to come. I try to just stay in the moment.

I teach you that there is no other aim than to live with such totality that each moment becomes a celebration. The very idea of "aim" brings future into the mind, because any aim, any end, any goal, needs future. All your goals deprive you of your present, which is the only reality you have. The future is only your imagination, and the past is just footprints left in the sands of your memory. Neither is the past real anymore, nor is the future real yet. This moment is the only reality.

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.

You have to live in the present; not on memories.

I try, in the present, to not exalt the past because I think that's such a way of diminishing the present. And it's hard to live like that.

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.

No matter what happens, it’s always now.

The reality is there is only each present moment: You are called to give a talk. You get out of a building and into a car. You look out of the window. You arrive at the venue. You sit in the chair; you wait; you step out onto the stage. Every movement is simple. There is only that.

I personally believe this: We have only today; yesterday's gone and tomorrow is uncertain. That's why they call it the present. And sobriety really is a gift... for those who are willing to receive it.

Too often we spend our time in the past or the future. We need to learn to live now - mentally as well as physically and spiritually.

Enjoy the present day, as distrusting that which is to follow.

life is the moment we're living right now.

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

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

Live for today. Multitudes of people have failed to live for today.... What they have had within their grasp today they have missed entirely, because only the future has intrigued them.

That is the simple secret of happiness. Whatever you are doing, don’t let past move your mind; don’t let future disturb you. Because the past is no more, and the future is not yet. To live in the memories, to live in the imagination, is to live in the non-existential. And when you are living in the non-existential, you are missing that which is existential. Naturally you will be miserable, because you will miss your whole life.

Best to take the moment present as a present for the moment. . .

My focus, my life, my world is now. You just can't plan the future.

I try to live in the moment and let that moment carry me to the next great place.

A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.

Don't worry about the past and don't try to solve the future.