T. S. Eliot Quotes

Time is an illusion. Time only exists when we think about the past and the future. Time doesn't exist in the present here and now.

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.

The present moment dies every moment to become the past , is reborn every moment into the future. All experience is now. Now never ends.

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.

The future is foretold from the past and the future is only possible because of the past. Without past and future, the present is partial. All time is eternally present and so all time is ours. There is no sense in forgetting and every sense in dreaming. Thus the present is made rich.

Eternity is not future or past. Eternity is a dimension of now.

The meeting of two eternities, the past and future....is precisely the present moment.

It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.

The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today.

The future never comes. Life is always now.

Even time is a concept. In reality we are always in the eternal present. The past is just a memory, the future just an image or thought. All our stories about past and future are only ideas, arising in the moment. Our modern culture is so tyrannized by goals, plans, and improvement schemes that we constantly live for the future. But as Aldous Huxley reminded us in his writings, "An idolatrous religion is one in which time is substituted for eternity...the idea of endless progress is the devil's work, even today demanding human sacrifice on an enormous scale.

The river is everywhere at the same time . . . everywhere and the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.

All time is now, and time can do no better. Nothing can ever be more now than now, and before this nothing was.

And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.

Today is, after all, today, but yesterday is of the same substance as tomorrow.

Today is always here,' said Sethe. 'Tomorrow, never.

this present moment never comes to be and it never ceases to be, it is simply our minds that construct the continuity of thoughts we call time. In the present moment is nirvana.

The future is an infinite succession of presents.

Past and future exist only in our memory. The present moment, though, is outside of time, it's Eternity.

There is no before. There is only now, and what comes next.

There is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present.

On the surface it seems that the present moment is only one of many, many moments. Each day of your life appears to consist of thousands of moments where different things happen. Yet if you look more deeply, is there not only one moment, ever? Is life ever not this moment? This one moment, now, is the only thing you can never escape from. The one constant factor in your life. No matter what happens. No matter how much your life changes. One thing is certain. Its always now. Since there is no escape from the now, why not welcome it, become friendly with it.

Nunc fluens facit tempus,nunc stans facit aeternitatum.(The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity.)

Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.