Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Our whole energy remains blocked either in the past or in the future. When you withdraw all your energy from past and future a tremendous explosion 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?

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

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.

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.

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.

But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

You know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.

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.

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

Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.

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

If you change your relationship with time, you will change your life. The most important time of your life is right now.

Bliss cannot be found by remembering the past or anticipating the future.

Which is worse, past or future? Neither. I will fold up my mind like a leaf and drift on this stream over the brink.

The past isn't real because it's history, and the future isn't because it hasn't happened yet. I like it, it hints at virtual reality, which I think is how we sort of feel about life sometimes.

Because I don't live in either my past or my future.I'm interested only in the present".

It is no more possible to live in the future than it is to live in the past. If life is not now, it is never.

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

To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it - who are you?

There is neither Past nor Future. There is only the Present.

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.

If we live with possibilities we are exiles from the present which is given us by God to be our own, homeless and displaced in a future or a past which are not ours because they are always beyond our reach. The present is our right place, and we can lay hands on whatever it offers us.

It's harder to build than destroy. To build is to engage and change. In jazz, we call progressing harmonies changes. Changes are like obstacles on a speed course. They demand your attention and require you to be present. They are coming...they are here..... and then they are gone. It's how life comes. Each moment is a procession from the future into the past and the sweet spot is always the present. Live in that sweet spot. Be present.