Living In The Past And Future Quotes & Sayings

Extraordinary change can happen in your life, but it will take extraordinary people, extraordinary courage and extraordinary faith to believe that this won't be a repeat of your past. — Shannon L. Alder

You should never fall in love with your own press clippings, because it is very much the nature of the beast that the same journalists who build you up between Monday and Friday tear you down for weekend fun ... My family's habit of living in the past seems to me pathological, even dangerous. If all greatness lies in the past, what is the point of the future? — Stephen L. Carter

I am grateful to God for all the good and bad that has given me, Without reproach the past, without waiting in the future I continue, just living in the moment makes me completely happy! — Ebelsain Villegas

I thought about him trying not to laugh at the 'Molahonkey Song' on a night when the snow drifted gold past the window. I thought about the warm skin and soft hair and hands of someone living, someone who was far cleverer and funnier than I would ever be and who still couldn't see a better future than to obliterate himself. And finally, my head pressed into the pillow, I cried, because my life suddenly seemed so much darker and more complicated than I could ever have imagined, and I wished I could go back, back to when my biggest worry was whether Frank and I had ordered in enough Chelsea buns. — Jojo Moyes

The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make. — William Morris

There exists [a] word in German, Geschichte, which designates not accomplished history, but history in the present, doubtless determined in large part, yet only in part, by the already accomplished past; for a history which is present, which is living, is also open to a future that is uncertain, unforeseeable, not yet accomplished, and therefore aleatory. Living history obeys only a constant (not a law): the constant of class struggle. Marx did not use the term 'constant', which I have taken from Levi-Strauss, but an expression of genius: 'tendential law', capable of inflecting (but not contradicting) the primary tendential law, which means that a tendency does not possess the form or figure of linear law, but that it can bifurcate under the impact of an encounter with another tendency, and so on ad infinitum. At each intersection the tendency can take a path that is unforeseeable because it is aleatory. — Louis Althusser

Our mind is always subject to being distracted by thoughts of what happened in the past and ideas of what could happen in the future, but the living experience is what is happening NOW. — Sakyong Mipham

PAYING ATTENTION TO GOD We bless GOD, oh yes - we bless him now, we bless him always! PSALM 115:18, THE MESSAGE Prayer is the most thoroughly present act we have as humans, and the most energetic: it sockets the immediate past into the immediate future and makes a flexible, living joint of them. The Amen gathers what has just happened into the Maranatha of the about to happen and produces a Benediction. We pay attention to God and lead others to pay attention to God. It hardly matters that so many people would rather pay attention to their standards of living, or their self-image, or their zeal to make a mark in the world. The reality is God: worship or flee. THE CONTEMPLATIVE PASTOR — Eugene H. Peterson

Stop a minute, Ambrose!" interrupted Master Nathaniel. "I've got a sudden silly whim that we should take an oath I must have read when I was a youngster in some old book ... the words have suddenly come back to me. They go like this: We (and then we say our own names), Nathaniel Chanticleer and Ambrose Honeysuckle, swear by the Living and the Dead, by the Past and the Future, by Memories and Hopes, that if a Vision comes begging at our door we will take it in and warm it at our hearth, and that we will not be wiser than the foolish nor more cunning than the simple, and that we will remember that he who rides the Wind needs must go where his Steed carries him. — Hope Mirrlees

A long-standing commitment to living in the present - because screw the past. She was a done deal. And screw the future cuz she was a fickle bitch. — River Jaymes

Before yoga, my life was filled with regret about choices I'd made in the past, and fears about choices I'd make in the future. Yoga teaches us how to be present in the present. Once you learn how to live in the now, you realize that the past is a memory and the future doesn't exist. Yoga will help anyone facing anxiety issues, separation and attachment issues (moms, I'm talking to you here!), or serious illnesses such as cancer and depression. It's a practice that slims your body while expanding your heart. — Kathryn E. Livingston

I think there's a greater detriment with our escalating progression toward the opposite extremity - the increasingly common ideology that assures people they're right about what they believe. And note that I used the word "detriment." I did not use the word "danger," because I don't think the notion of people living under the misguided premise that they're right is often dangerous. Most day-to-day issues are minor, the passage of time will dictate who was right and who was wrong, and the future will sort out the past. It is, however, socially detrimental. It hijacks conversation and aborts ideas. It engenders a delusion of simplicity that benefits people with inflexible minds. It makes the experience of living in a society slightly worse than it should be. — Chuck Klosterman

You can't let your past define your future. Once you get that figured out, you begin to understand the joy of living in the present. And the present is full of tiny gifts that we can only see when we stop looking behind and ahead of us. Sometimes, these gifts land right at our feet. Sometimes, it's our feet that carry us toward them, running at full-speed until our hearts nearly give out. Either way, never stop noticing them, and never stop wishing. — Cassia Leo

Mind can never be intelligent - only no-mind is intelligent. Only no-mind is original and radical. Only no-mind is revolutionary - revolution in action. The mind gives you a sort of stupor. Burdened by the memories of the past, burdened by the projections of the future, you go on living - at the minimum. You dont live at the maximum. Your flame remains very dim. Once you start dropping thoughts, the dust that you have collected in the past, the flame arises - clean, clear, alive, young. Your whole life becomes a flame, and a flame without any smoke. That is what awareness is. — Rajneesh

To learn from the past is good, but to live there is a waste. To plan for the future is good, but to live there is a waste. You are happiest and most productive in life when you are living in the present. — Kenneth H. Blanchard

Stop living in the past, and stop letting your past dictate your future. Learn from your mistakes and move on. — Joy Lincoln

Don't grieve over the past,
It's all gone!
Don't worry about the future, It may never come!
Live in the present,
And enjoy every moment — Mouloud Benzadi

Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future. — Eric Berne

Nothing good comes out of living in the past: it only kills the present and aborts the future. — Chandrakant Kaluram Mhatre

When regret dominates your past and worry occupies your future, there is no room to live in your present. — Charles F. Glassman

One possible solution to the grandfather paradox is the theory of multiverse originally set forth by Hugh Everett. According to multiverse theory, every version of our past and future histories exists, just in an alternate universe.

For every event at the quantum level, the current universe splits into multiple universes. This means that for every choice you make, an infinite number of universes exist in which you made a different choice.

The theory neatly solves the grandfather paradox by posting separate universes in which each possible outcome exists, thereby avoiding a paradox.

In this way we get to live multiple lives.

There is, for example, a universe where Samuel Kingsley does not derail his daughter's life. A universe where he does derail it but Natasha is able to fix it. A universe where he does derail it and she is not able to fix it. Natasha is not quite sure which universe she's living in now. — Nicola Yoon

I can't really tell how old I am, only that I'm too young to wonder if I asked the right questions in the past, and too old to wish the future will bring me all the answers. — Gabriel Ba

People are born in the past,... most people will say that they are living in the present?! But it's not possible, just saying "I'm living in the present", there is milliseconds like 1.,2.,3.,4.,5 and seconds which are 1..,2..,3..,4..,5..,6..,7... so you probably won't live in the present even and in now... YOu live in "Bowl" let's said it??
Or I will call it like this, you die in the future... what's now is the future you have died there or will die! — Deyth Banger

Personality Self/ Ego Spiritual Self /Higher Soul/God Not recognizing the divinity in yourself or others Recognizing divinity in self and all living things Seeing yourself as separate from everything Knowing you are connected to everything Focuses on differences Recognizes similarities Intellect (Mind) Intuition (Heart) Hostility Compassion Re-Action Responding with awareness Past or Future Fully in the present moment Fear (false evidence appearing real) Courage Judgment Acceptance Right/Wrong Everything is an experience to learn from, both negative and positive. Better/Worse Everything has value. — Sabrina Reber

Life is happening at this very moment; it is not behind us or before us. The past is full of memories and future is full of expectations. — Debasish Mridha

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. — Alan W. Watts

The only living life is in the past and future - the present is an interlude - strange interlude in which we call on past and future to bear witness that we are living. — Eugene O'Neill

To feel safe is to stop living in my head and sink down into my heart and feel liked and accepted ... not having to hide anymore and distract myself with books, television, movies, ice cream, shallow conversation ... staying in the present moment and not escaping into the past or projecting into the future, alert and attentive to the now ... feeling relaxed and not nervous or jittery ... no need to impress or dazzle others or draw attention to myself. ... Unself-conscious, a new way of being with myself, a new way of being in the world ... calm, unafraid, no anxiety about what's going to happen next ... loved and valued ... just being together as an end in itself. — Brennan Manning

I did not act in this fashion deliberately; I did not prefer this kind of relationship with people. I wanted a life in which there was a constant oneness of feeling with others, in which the basic emotions of life were shared, in which common memory formed a common past, in which collective hope reflected a national future. But I knew that no such thing was possible in my environment. The only ways in which I felt that my feelings could go outward without fear of rude rebuff or searing reprisal was in writing or reading, and to me they were ways of living. — Richard Wright

Are you, are you happy?"
I am today," she said.
Maybe that's what really mattered? Living in the now, and all that crap about the past being over? The future hasn't happened, and today is forever? These aren't the kinds of statements that belonged beside question marks. — Stephanie Klein

Rehashing thoughts of painful events from the past or imagining negative events of the future is self-abuse and can be more destructive than physical harm. — Maddy Malhotra

Living in the present moment or commonly know as Mindfulness is being aware and conscious of your surroundings. From awareness, we evolve into the moment rather than regretting the past or fearing the future. It leads to full consciousness, even intuition. — Suresh Devnani

I understood that the attachment to myself and my image ... was actually taking me away from my self, away from this wonderful opportunity to just sit, just breathe, just feel the warm animal of my body, just feel the soft, sultry heat of June. The density of my attachment was making it impossible for me to have a truly satisfying experience of life in my body just as it was in the moment. When under the sway of this obsession, my mind's attention was always in the fantasized future, or the idealized or devalued past - never present to the reality of the moment. — Stephen Cope

If I'd found out that Norman Mailer liked me, I'd have killed myself. I think he was too hung up. I'm glad Kurt Vonnegut didn't like me either. He had problems, terrible problems. He couldn't see the world the way I see it. I suppose I'm too much Pollyanna, he was too much Cassandra. Actually I prefer to see myself as the Janus, the two-faced god who is half Pollyanna and half Cassandra, warning of the future and perhaps living too much in the past - a combination of both. But I don't think I'm too over optimistic. — Ray Bradbury

Past is gone and there's no way to travel in time. Future is unforeseeable and there's no guarantee what will happen next. So why losing now. Thinking about past memories & events would mostly causes you sadness. Thinking of future and what may happen would causes you anxiety. Present is the time you're living in and you can do anything right Now. So think about it, what have you done? What will you do? Or what to do now? — Russ

Some sense of ongoing, of "next," is always with us. But this sense of movement, of happening, Greg lacked; he seemed immured, without knowing it, in a motionless, timeless moment. And whereas for the rest of us the present is given its meaning and depth by the past (hence it becomes the "remembered present," in Gerald Edelman's term), as well as being given potential and tension by the future, for Greg it was flat and (in its meager way) complete. This living-in-the-moment, which was so manifestly pathological, had been perceived in the temple as an achievement of higher consciousness. G — Oliver Sacks

The insecurities from your past are not the truth in your life either. As we look at our doubts and develop confident hearts, it's going to be important to recognize negative emotions from our past that keep us from living confidently in our present and future. — Renee Swope

A person functioning exclusively in the Cartesian mode may be free from manifest symptoms but cannot be considered mentally healthy. Such individuals typically lead ego-centred, competitive, goal-oriented lives. Overpreoccupied with their past and their future, they tend to have a limited awarenessof the present and thus a limited ability to derive satisfaction from ordinary activities in everyday life. They concentrate on manipulating the external world and measure their living standard by the quantity of material possessions, while they become ever more alienated from their inner world and unable to appreciate the process of life. For people whose existence is dominated by this mode of experience no level of wealth, power, or fame will bring genuine satisfaction — Fritjof Capra

Living in the past or living in the future - those aren't real. The moment is now, and that's where safety and comfort and all that good stuff is. — Marc Jacobs

Forgiving isn't forgetting. At the core of forgiveness is the understanding that the hatred and bitterness we hold onto destroys us.
Forgiving isn't meekness. It is letting go of the past, living in the present, and paving the way for the future.
In order to forgive, we must first grieve for what could've been and what never was. To forgive others, we must also forgive ourselves.
Perhaps, that is the hardest forgiveness of all."

Excerpt From: Kelly, Kathryn. "Misbehavior." iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright. — Kathryn Kelly

Nostalgia
How often we use this word reminiscing about the past - our childhood, school days, college days..
We feel nostalgic, we dwell in the memories of the past, we talk about how great those days were and how we would do anything to just go back in time and live those days again..
Perhaps we fail to realize the fact that tomorrow we will say the same things about today, about the days we are living in now, about the emotions we are feeling now, about the time we are spending now..
I love this day. I love this weird feeling I feel today. I belong here. — Sanhita Baruah

Sometimes we let our thoughts of tomorrow take up too much of today. Daydreaming of the past and longing for the future may provide comfort but will not take the place of living in the present. This is the day of our opportunity, and we must grasp it — Thomas S. Monson

God is real. God is here now. God is this moment revealed. For the most part, we are lost in the past and future world of the mind. To experience the living Presence of God in all things present, we will have come to where God is. We will have to become fully present. Otherwise we have no choice but to believe in God or disbelieve in God and neither is true, for the truth is beyond belief! — Leonard Jacobson

Let me but live my life from year to year,
With forward face and unreluctant soul,
Not hastening to, nor turning from the goal;
Nor mourning things that disappear
In the dim past, nor holding back in fear
From what the future veils; but with a whole
And happy heart, that pays its toll
To youth and age, and travels on with cheer.
So let the way wind up the hill or down,
Through rough or smooth, the journey will be joy,
Still seeking what I sought when but a boy
New friendship, high adventure, and a crown,
I shall grow old, but never lose life's zest,
Because the road's last turn will be the best. — Henry Van Dyke

I wonder if I talk like a dead man. My daughter once came home from school very excited about some lecture -this was years ago, before I died, though just right before- and she said her English teacher had talked about what the dead sound like in Dante. This funny thing about Dante's dead, which is that they know the past, and even the future, but they don't know the present. About the present they have all these questions for Dante. And that somehow is what being alive is, to be suspended in the time. She seemed to feel that really meant something. That and also that the dead know themselves better than the living do. — Rivka Galchen

Life flows at ease whenever a person ceases complaining about the past, worrying about the future, lives in the now without resisting pain, and accepts the moral sublimity of living in a state of grace. — Kilroy J. Oldster

There is a wise being living inside of you. It is your intuitive self. Focus your awareness into a deep place in your body, a place where your "gut feelings" reside. You can communicate with it by silently talking to it, making requests, or asking questions. Then relax, don't think too hard with your mind, and be open to receiving answers. They are usually very simple and relate to the present moment, not the past or the future, and they feel right. — Shakti Gawain

Living in the land of, "What if ... ?" leads to emotional paralysis. It sets the stage for doom and gloom thinking. It prevents us from experiencing the beauty of the present moment. Happiness resides in the here and now. It can not thrive in a prison of the past or in the worry of future outcomes that may or may not, happen. We need to trust that we have the divine wisdom within ourselves and through the support of others, to climb the treacherous terrain this human existence brings. It is worth the struggle. The view from the top is extraordinary. Onward and upward! — Jaeda DeWalt

Anyone with a long-term partner, anyone with a long-term lover, if that lover dies, you could easily see yourself in a situation where you couldn't see your future and you would be living entirely in the past. It's about that loss. — Tom Ford

I was surrounded by heaven. The sun, the moon, the earth, and all those living stars. They wen't static like in pictures taken from impossibly far away- they breathed, they glowed. They were future and past, possibility and memory. They were beautiful.
"I never knew there were so many," I whispered. We are merely pieces of a grander design, even more insignificant than I imagined. When the earth ceases to be, all those stars will shine on. Out deaths will mean nothing to them.
"I feel so small." No one replied. I wondered as I watched the stars, really seeing them for the fist time, whether they could see me, too. — Shaun David Hutchinson

Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Set God-sized goals. Pursue God-ordained passions. Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention. Keep asking questions. Keep making mistakes. Keep seeking God. Stop pointing out problems and become part of the solution. Stop repeating the past and start creating the future. Stop playing it safe and start taking risks. Expand your horizons. Accumulate experiences. Enjoy the journey. Find every excuse you can to celebrate everything you can. Live like today is the first day and last day of your life. Don't let what's wrong with you keep you from worshiping what's right with God. Burn sinful bridges. Blaze new trails. Don't let fear dictate your decisions. Take a flying leap of faith. Quit holding out. Quit holding back. Go all in with God. Go all out for God. — Mark Batterson

History, the winnowing wind, never halts. We see the chaff rise, forget the waiting grain, seed of the future, fallen to the threshing floor. We never learn, but live on, slit-narrow, as if our living were a pencil line traced upon paper, behaving as trapped denizens of a flat world hemmed in by the bigoted horizon of our own making. Yet the meaning of living is a pushing back, a pulling down of the great walls and domes of fear and ignorance, is relinquishing the nest for the sky, ignorance for understanding. The look back is also a look forward. — Han Suyin

So it is with the mind, Nandini. Allow it to be in balance. Avoid extremes: the middle way is better. Neither force the mind too hard into concentration nor let it wander aimlessly. Meditation is to pay attention, to be aware of your breathing, your posture, your feelings, your perceptions, your thoughts, and all that passes through your mind and the mind itself; whatever is going on within you and between you and the universe. Meditation is not just sitting for an hour here or an hour there; meditation is a way of life. It is practiced all the time. There is no separation between meditation and everyday living. When you have ceased to be bound by the past or by the future, when you are fully present in the here and now, then it is meditation. — Satish Kumar

Immediate, glad obedience to God sets our course on the sea of happiness. Disobedience drops anchor in the sea of despair.Godly living means no regrets about yesterday, no embarrassments today, no schemes for tomorrow. Trust and let the One who holds both the past and future be your Guide for the present. — Woodrow Kroll

Daydreaming of the past and longing for the future may provide comfort but will not take the place of living in the present. — Thomas S. Monson

I believe in living in the present and making each day count. I don't pay much attention to the past or the future. — Matthew McConaughey

I've spent my entire existence trying to create this perfect fairytale happy ever after future; bending fate to the way I thought it should be, or living in a past I was never supposed to have. I've never lived in the present, and cherished the moments I'm in. — Christine Zolendz

Children are often envied for their supposed imaginations, but the truth is that adults imagine things far more than children do. Most adults wander the world deliberately blind, living only inside their heads, in their fantasies, in their memories and worries, oblivious to the present, only aware of the past or future. — Dara Horn

What libraries give you is all three tenses - the past tense - the present tense in which we live and the future that we can only imagine. These places have teachers who are living and dead and we are lucky to have them. If I sit here and read Aristotle, he is speaking to me across a thousand years - more than a thousand years. That sense that I am in the company of the great greatest people who ever lived is a humbling experience but a liberating experience. — Pete Hamill

I prefer to see myself as the Janus, the two-faced god who is half Pollyanna and half Cassandra, warning of the future and perhaps living too much in the past-a combination of both. — Ray Bradbury

We live in the moment. We're not thinking about the future right now. We're not thinking about the past, you know. We're living in this moment right here and it's a sweet moment to live in. — Dwyane Wade

In a tired time, with the light outside drifting away for another day and the lights inside flickering as they come to life, I cup my hands together and prepare to give thanks ... to the life of a day given to me. A day shared with past and present, living and dying, of body and not, and a realization that in everything that is, there is something that was. — R.J. Heller

Posterity will never hear of you. You will be lifted clean out from the stream of history. We shall turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you; not a name in a register, not a memory in a living brain. You will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future. You will never have existed. — George Orwell

We fall back into the past, we jump ahead into the future, and in this we lose our entire lives. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I don't compare shows. It's very simple. I don't live in the past. If there's any secret to my longevity, it's living in the future. And a little bit in the present. — Harold Prince

My point is that focusing on the past, present or future can have both positive and negative effects. Excessive worry about the future can be bad, while hopes and dreams can be good. Regret because of the past can be destructive, but learning lessons from previous events and having good memories can be great. Focusing intently on the present is usually stress-relieving and liberating, but sometimes the present moment is too sad or horrible to dwell on. — Gudjon Bergmann

When his hand came down across my bottom the first time I thought I was going to die. But the pain passed, transmuted as if my some alchemical wizardry, and for a moment I experienced a surreal satisfaction in being bent over in this way without rights or choices, past or future. In pain you are living in the present and as the pain passes there is pleasure from having endured the pain. — Chloe Thurlow

Our goal over the next few chapters is to address the origin of complex structures - including, but not limited to, living creatures - in the context of the big picture. The universe is a set of quantum fields obeying equations that don't even distinguish between past and future, much less embody any long-term goals. How in the world did something as organized as a human being ever come to be? — Sean Carroll

Because I am an officer and a gentleman they have given me my notebooks, pen, ink and paper. So I write and wait. I am committed to no cause, I love no living person. The fact that I have no future except what you can count in hours doesn't seem to disturb me unduly. After all, the future whether here or there is equally unknown. So for the waiting days I have only the past to play about with. I can juggle with a series of possibly inaccurate memories, my own interpretation, for what is worth, of events. There is no place for speculation or hope, or even dreams. Strangely enough I think I like it like that. — Jennifer Johnston

As the hours, the days, the weeks, the seasons slip by, you detach yourself from everything. You discover, with something that sometimes almost resembles exhilaration, that you are free. That nothing is weighing you down, nothing pleases or displeases you. You find, in this life exempt from wear and tear and with no thrill in it other than these suspended moments, in almost perfect happiness, fascinating, occasionally swollen by new emotions. You are living in a blessed parenthesis, in a vacuum full of promise, and from which you expect nothing. You are invisible, limpid, transparent. You no longer exist. Across the passing hours, the succession of days, the procession of the seasons, the flow of time, you survive without joy and without sadness. Without a future and without a past. Just like that: simply, self evidently, like a drop of water forming on a drinking tap on a landing. — Georges Perec

He was becoming something the world had never seen before - a dream animal - living at least partially within a secret universe of his own creation and sharing that secret universe in his head with other, similar heads. Symbolic communication had begun. Man had escaped out of the eternal present of the animal world into a knowledge of past and future. The unseen gods, the powers behind the world of phenomenal appearance, began to stalk through his dreams. — Loren Eiseley

Time that is spent dwelling on the past will surely continue in your present moment - and the future. — Michelle Cruz-Rosado

The time and moment of Ancient and Medieval is gone, a new change is sought from within by the lifeforce a moment that is for NOW and not holding on the Past which though Primordial is eternally in the present living for the Future. — Maitreya Rudrabhayananda

The Bible admonishes us to live each day fully - not living in the past or the future. But God never intends for us to walk blindly from day to day. He expects us to discern what He is doing and what He desires. He intends for us to have a capacity to see beneath the surface of life and to expose and analyze the unseen. — Charles F. Stanley

I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard.
I don't know where you are, but you're living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I'm touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we'll walk through and we'll be full of a future and of a past and we'll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can't meet now, I don't know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we'll be caught in something so bright ... and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet. — Richard Bach

The tragic sense of life is ironically not tragic at all, at least in the Big Picture. Living in such deep time, connected to past and future, prepares us for necessary suffering, keeps us from despair about our own failure and loss, and ironically offers us a way through it all. We are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us. The tragic sense of life is not unbelief, pessimism, fatalism, or cynicism. — Richard Rohr

If there is anything certain in life, it is this. Time doesn't always heal. Not really. I know they say it does, but that is not true. What time does is to trick you into believing that you have healed, that the hurt of a great loss has lessened. But a single word, a note of a song, a fragrance, a knife point of dawn light across an empty room, any one of these things will take you back to that one moment you have never truly forgotten. These small things are the agents of memory. They are the sharp needle points piercing the living fabric of your life.

Life, my children, isn't linear where the heart is concerned. It is filled with invisible threads that reach out from your past and into your future. These threads connect every second we have lived and breathed. As your own lives move forward and as the decades pass, the more of these threads are cast. Your task is to weave them into a tapestry, one that tells the story of the time we shared. — Stephen Lee

Living in the moment works sometimes, but when alone, it clouds over your memories and dreams, and those are what I need to survive. — D.S. Mixell

On a motorcycle, I learned to let go of the vast uncertainty and focus instead on what is in front of me: the surface of the road and the curve of it, the vehicles in front and behind, the wind and the rain and the wildlife peeking out of the grass. There are times when I struggle to manage every last detail as it whips pat me, to hold on to past and present and future simultaneously, but they're not mine to understand, or control. I have to remind myself, again and again, that only this is mine: this moment, this heartbeat, this decision. — Lily Brooks-Dalton

Yesterday and today and tomorrow are not an arrow that shoots from past to present to future; rather all tenses, and sleeping and waking, mix and cohabit in an atemporal duration beyond clocks and calendars. The Aboriginal world began long ago when the Ancestors sang in Dreamtime the cosmic rhythms that give shape to the things we see, and it is the beginning right now, when a living Tiwi sings the Dream songs that continue, or are, the world. — Huston Smith

A race that is solely dependent upon another for economic existence sooner or later dies. As we have in the past been living upon the mercies shown by others, and by the chances obtainable, and have suffered there from, so we will in the future suffer if an effort is not made now to adjust our own affairs. — Marcus Garvey

For living men, the units of time always have a value, which increases in ratio to the strength of the internal resources of the person living through them; but for us, hours, days, months spilled out sluggishly from the future into the past, always too slowly, a valueless and superfluous material, of which we sought to rid ourselves as soon as possible ... For us, history had stopped. — Primo Levi

Chasing your tale? Sometimes we relive past accomplishments, failures and or past relationships to the point of exhaustion. When we do this, I liken it to a dog chasing its tail, just spinning round and round and going nowhere fast. Constantly chasing our own tales has the same effect on us. It leaves us in a state of dizzying immobility. When we wrap our arms so firmly around our past we leave little room to embrace our present future and that, my friends, is a sad tale to tell. ~Jason Versey — Jason Versey

If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world. — Alan W. Watts

Your life will contribute to a grand and wonderful story no matter what you do. You have been spoken. You are here, existing, choosing, living, shaping the future and carving the past. Your physical matter and your soul exist, not out of necessity, not voluntarily, and not under their own strength. There is absolutely nothing that you or I can do to guarantee that we will continue to exist. You aren't doing anything that makes you be. We aren't the Author. You and I are spoken. We have been called into this art as characters, born into this thread of occurrence tumbling downstream in the long Niagara of loss set in motion by the trouble that faced our first father and first mother. We will contribute to this narrative. But how? — N.D. Wilson

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. — Marcus Aurelius

Jesus no longer belongs to the past but lives in the present and is projected toward the future; Jesus is the everlasting "today" of God. This is how the newness of God appears to the women, the disciples, and all of us: as victory over sin, evil, and death - over everything that crushes life and makes it seem less human. And this is a message meant for me and for you, dear sister, you, dear brother. How often does Love have to tell us, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" Our daily problems and worries can wrap us up in ourselves, in sadness and bitterness...and that is where death is. That is not the place to look for the One who is alive! — Pope Francis

It occurred to me to look up and around at the stars in the clear sky, at the trees in the dark, at the half moon. I was missing them because I was caught in my head. I wasn't living right now. I was thinking to the future, to the past. I wasn't present. This is one of my greatest weaknesses, and one I have a greater realization of, only because I allowed some of my past to die so that my present could rush in to fill it. — Jennifer DeLucy

Start living right here, in each present moment. When we stop dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, we're open to rich sources of information we've been missing out on - information that can keep us out of the downward spiral and poised for a richer life. — Mark Williams

This is what true love is and yes it seems very small, and something that a person wouldn't think would be a sign of True Love, but I think that all of the important and meaningful signs come to us in "small signs" that we all tend to ignore it as something that isn't meaningful, because we all live life like we are in a rush to get somewhere and we never stop and actually pay more attention to "Now", if we all started to "live in the now" then I feel that life would become more important to everyone, and the majority of people could find happiness out of just living in the "Now" instead of living in the past or the future.
All that matters is Today, Right now is your life, take control of your happiness by living right now. — Austin V. Songer

While I principally agree with the NOW movement I also challenge their thinking to a degree. There are plenty of exceptions to the being-present-rule. I have for example worked with cancer patients who were going through very trying times in their therapy, and they couldn't stand to think about the present moment, they needed to envision a better future or remember an enjoyable time from their past to feel slightly better. The present moment was simply a torment. This can be true in a number of other situations where the present moment is simply too awful and painful to intently focus on. — Gudjon Bergmann

They would no longer be time-bound, that they were free to live in the future, the past, in fantasy.
She had been a woman preparing to live, not living. — Kiana Davenport

People have reflected on the quality of time ever since they've been writing. I suppose I have thought about and written about the question of living in the present - but it only lasts for an instant, and then everything becomes the past. The future, you know nothing about, except for some anticipations you have. — James Salter

Letting go doesn't just mean letting go of the past, but letting go of an unknown future; and embracing NOW. — Michelle Cruz-Rosado

The negative feelings of anger, bitterness, guilt, regret, resentment, and sadness represent a failure of a person to accept that the past is an event that holds no power over the present. The thought that the future will bring salvation is an illusion. We must exist in the present. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Create a trophy room in your heart. Each time you experience a victory, place a memory on the shelf. Before you face a challenge, take a quick tour of God's accomplishments. Look at all the paychecks he has provided, all the blessings he has given, all the prayers he had answered. Imitate the shepherd boy David. Before he fought Goliath, the giant, he remembered how God had helped him kill a lion and a bear (1 Samuel 17:34-36). He faced his future by revisiting the past. — Max Lucado

[We] have a tendency during meetings to let our minds run wild and cycle through a plethora of thoughts about the past and the future, destroying any aspirations for Zen-like calm and preventing us from being in the here and now: Did I turn off the stove? What will I do for lunch? When do I need to leave here in order to get to where I need to be next?
What if you could rely on others in your life to handle these things and you could narrow your attentional filter to that which is right before you, happening right now? ... A professional musician friend ... describes this state as "happily lost." He doesn't need to look at his calendar more than a day in advance, allowing each day to be filled with wonder and possibility. — Daniel J. Levitin

And though the implication is that I am the sort who is always careful and preparing, I that that's not right, either' in fact I feel I have not really been living anywhere or anytime, not for the future and not in the past and not at all of-the-moment, but rather in a lonely dream of an oblivion, the nothing-of-nothing drift from one pulse beat to the next, which is really the most bloodless marking-out, automatic and involuntary. [pp. 320-321] — Chang-rae Lee

If you can cut yourself - your mind - free of what other
people do and say, of what you've said or done, of the things
that you're afraid will happen, the impositions of the body
that contains you and the breath within, and what the whirling
chaos sweeps in from outside, so that the mind is freed from
fate, brought to clarity, and lives life on its own recognizance
- doing what's right, accepting what happens, and speaking
the truth
If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind,
free of the future and the past - can make yourself, as
Empedocles says, "a sphere rejoicing in its perfect
stillness," and concentrate on living what can be lived
(which means the present) ... then you can spend the time
you have left in tranquillity. And in kindness. And at peace
with the spirit within you. — Marcus Aurelius

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people spend their days either living in the dead past or the imagined future. This sort of mental activity cheats a person out of the most precious time we have ... NOW. Give everything you have to what you are doing NOW and life will richly reward you. — Bob Proctor