Momentariness Quotes

There is in life only one moment and in eternity only one. It is so brief that it is represented by the fleeting of a luminous mote through the thin ray of sunlight - and it is visible but a fraction of a second. The moments that preceded it have been lived, are forgotten and are without value; the moments that have not been lived have no existence and will have no value except in the moment that each shall be lived. While you are asleep you are dead; and whether you stay dead an hour or a billion years the time to you is the same.

There is only this now. It does not come from anywhere; it is not going anywhere. It is not permanent, but it is not impermanent. Though moving, it is always still. When we try to catch it, it seems to run away, and yet it is always here and there is no escape from it. And when we turn around to find the self which knows this moment, we find that it has vanished like the past.

life is the moment we're living right now.

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.

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.

You can't halt time.

Take your delight in momentariness, Walk between dark and dark a shining space With the grave 's narrowness, though not its peace.

When you live completely in each moment, without expecting anything, you have no idea of time.

You're never promised your next breath.

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.

I don't take success very well, because I know it's fleeting. And the next day, it can all fall apart. I know that, too. So I don't get too high, and I don't get too low. You get through the world a lot easier that way.

Something that can be so vital at one point can be inconsequential at another. I'm just intrigued by that phenomenon.

Oh, how swiftly the glory of the world passes away!

Alice: "How long is forever?" White Rabbit: "Sometimes, just one second."

It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.

In television, everything is gone with the speed of light, literally. It is no field for anybody with intimations of immortality.

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.

Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future.

I feel very much aware of my mortality. I'm here, and then I'm not. It's the same thing with everything else: the movie comes out, and then it's gone. Everything is changing all the time, and I'm not going to stress out and spend my entire time chasing something that ultimately doesn't exist.

Time is the devourer of all things.

I feel like I wanna have a series of moments. It's scary when they say you're having a moment, because moments are momentary.

The temporal quality of all things was being firmly impressed upon me.

The reason why time plays a great part in so many of my tales is that this element looms up in my mind as the most profoundly dramatic and grimly terrible thing in the universe.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live.

Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present.