Quotes & Sayings About Living Life In The Present

Let today be the day you stop being haunted by the ghost of yesterday. Holding a grudge & harboring anger/resentment is poison to the soul. Get even with people ... but not those who have hurt us, forget them, instead get even with those who have helped us. — Steve Maraboli

Memory, then, not so much as the past contained within us, but as proof of our life in the present. If a man is to be truly present among his surroundings, he must be thinking not of himself, but of what he sees. He must forget himself in order to be there. And from that forgetfulness arises the power of memory. It is a way of living one's life so that nothing is ever lost. — Paul Auster

It is above all the valorizing of the present that requires emphasizing. The simple fact of existing, of living in time, can comprise a religious dimension. This dimension is not always obvious, since sacrality is in a sense camouflaged in the immediate, in the "natural" and the everyday. The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing - even fugitively - in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant. — Mircea Eliade

Each precious moment of your life in which you are frozen with fear is a moment when you are not being all you can be. In the end, that hurts more than anything. Succeeding or failing does not determine if we are surviving or living. Rather it is in our ability to reach beyond our present self-imposed definition of who we are, and to risk becoming more, that we are able to feel fully alive. — Rhonda Britten

Live Today! Do not allow your spirit to be softened of your happiness to be limited by a day you cannot have back or a day that does not yet exist. — Steve Maraboli

Think about it: No matter who you are, the past plays a large part in your life. I am all about living in the present as best as I can. Try as I might, there is only so much I am able to achieve on this front. — Henry Rollins

In whatever position one is in, or in whatever condition in life one is placed, one must find balance. Balance is the state of the present - the here and now. If you balance in the present, you are living in Eternity. — B.K.S. Iyengar

To know your life is to know intimately what you are feeling. Or to put it another way: to be aware of what state of mind predominates in consciousness. The noting of mental states encourages a deeper recognition of what is happening while it is happening. It allows us to be more fully alive in the present rather than living our life as an afterthought. It enables us to watch with mercy, if not humor, the uninvited swirl of "mixed emotions" not as something in need of judgment but as a work in progress. — Stephen Levine

We felt tired to our bones but anointed by life in a durable, companionable way, for at least the present moment. We the living take every step in tandem with death, naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven, whether we can see that or not. We bear it by the grace of friendship, good mels, and if we need them, talking turkey heads. — Barbara Kingsolver

If you're worried that you won't know someone in a few years, you should start living in the present and enjoy the people who are around you now and when the time comes for both of you to part ways... remember that it was a privilege and honor to be part of their life's - even if it was for such a short time. — Tiffany Walker

By letting go of the past with love and gratitude, I am creating beautiful memories, which are living in me, but I am living at present not in memories. — Debasish Mridha

To live in the moment is vastly different than living for it. To be truly present as life unfolds around one is to take fullest advantage of being alive. — April White

The scenes in our life resemble pictures in a rough mosaic; they are ineffective from close up, and have to be viewed from a distance if they are to seem beautiful. That is why to attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and why, though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past. The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite temporary and serving as the only road to our goal. That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have been living the whole time ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely that in expectation of which they lived. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Powder snow skiing is not fun. It is life, fully lived, life lived in a blaze of reality. What we experience in powder is the original human self, which lies deeply inside each of us, still undamaged in spite of what our present culture tries to do to us. Once experienced, this kind of living is recognized as the only way to live - fully aware of the earth and the sky and the gods and you, the mortal, playing among them. — Dolores LaChapelle

It's not life in the present moment that is intolerable; the pain we are avoiding has already happened. We are living in reverse. — Geneen Roth

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

Listen to the present tense gospel in the words of Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ [a statement of historical redemptive fact]. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me [a statement of present redemptive reality]. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me [living in light of the gospel right here, right now]. — Paul David Tripp

No ideals. No illusions. Just reality - but more perfect than you've ever imagined. That's what being mindful and living in the present means. — Lidiya K.

Make life easier by living in the present and believing in the future. — Jonas Eriksson

You try your best to love the world despite obvious flaws in design and execution and you take care of whatever needy things present themselves to you during your passage through it. Otherwise you're worthless. — Charles Frazier

More importantly, I didn't know then that one day I would genuinely be free. That freedom came out of a thousand small steps of obedience, most of which I took during the waiting or limbo time. The more I learned to lean into Him on a daily basis and simply live out my faith in the everyday elements, the more I was prepared for the bigger steps when they arrived. Not only that, I was given the gift of living my life fully in the present, rather than being fixated and frustrated over some distant time or hope. In the crossroads called limbo, you do arrive at mile markers. You become more mature. More healed. Less surprised by or resistant to or unprepared for the good things God is giving you in the ordinary. Your challenge is to begin to embrace the waiting times as part of the overall journey. Limbo is a key part of the healing process! As you are faithful daily, He is working in you powerfully, and it all counts. Every single moment! — Suzanne Eller

Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it, let alone the fright of two creeping-off boys. Her past had been like her present - intolerable - and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color. — Toni Morrison

No person that has ever felt the benefits of being present can consider himself a victim, or unhappy in any way. — Lidiya K.

But I realize now that the art of living in the present is not so much controlling time, it's losing track of time. This is most likely to happen when we surrender to something we love to do: not because it's a demand, or an emergency, or an inability to do anything else. Seeking out what we love so much that we lose track of time when we're doing it - that goes beyond Einstein's theory and puts us into his life. He loved his work so much that he had to be careful while shaving; otherwise, he cut himself when a spontaneous idea struck. That is a hint of the timeless Now. — Gloria Steinem

rather than your enemy. Because many people live habitually as if the present moment were an obstacle that they need to overcome in order to get to the next moment. And imagine living your whole life like that, where always this moment is never quite right, not good enough because you need to get to the next one. That is continuous stress. — Dan Harris

The gift and the presence of the Holy Spirit is the greatest and most wonderful thing which we can experience - we ourselves, the human community, all living things and this earth. For with the Holy Spirit it is not just one random spirit that is present, among all the many good and evil spirits that there are. It is God himself, the creative and life-giving, redeeming and saving God. Where the Holy Spirit is present, God is present in a special way, and we experience God through our lives, which become wholly living from within. We experience whole, full, healed and redeemed life, experience it with all our senses. We feel and taste, we touch and see our life in God and God in our life. — Jurgen Moltmann

If only I woulda done that."
"I really shoulda done that."
"I coulda done that."
I ask, "Do you really know what your life would be like now if you made those choices?" Believing in regret strips away our only chance to create a better future. That chance: what we decide to do today, right now, in the present. — Charles F. Glassman

When we fail to tend to the fragilities of a flower as we become distracted by the noise of our minds, our plant is essentially dying. The quintessence of dying in the sense that we are failing to be mindful of the present moment, for life is the paradox of both living and dying concurrently. Just as we are living each moment, we are dying with every moment, and the essence of living is within each breath that ultimately comprises life as a whole. — Forrest Curran

Not truly living in the present moment and later regretting is like closing your eyes when a peacock is dancing, only to want to see it dance once it is gone.-RVM — R.v.m.

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

We choose to live life to the fullest because it is in our best interest to do so. - Charmainism — Charmaine Smith Ladd

Living in the present moment creates the experience of eternity. — Deepak Chopra

Our lives become the sum of all whom we have loved. It is important not to waste anyone. One task of living out the last half of life is excavating and recovering all of those whom we loved in the first half. Thus, the recovery of lost loves becomes an important way in which the past affects the present. — George Vaillant

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

Are you letting culture, not scripture, determine your sexuality, how you date, how you present yourself, how you engage in certain relationships with members of the opposite sex? We need to be very clear that the way we do life is different than the rest of the world. — Mark Driscoll

By living exclusively for the present, we let ourselves be hemmed in by an ocean of death. Conversely, by reviving the past, we enlarge our living space. — Amin Maalouf

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

When we live as though we were lords of our own life, capable of meeting our own needs, we are living in the flesh. When we treat people, possessions, or achievements as though they were the source of our worth and significance rather than God, we are living in the flesh. In fact, insofar as we live as though God were not present, moment-by-moment, and as though this wasn't the most important aspect of any present moment, we are living in the flesh. — Gregory A. Boyd

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

The startling truth is that our best efforts for civil rights, international
peace, population control, conservation of natural resources, and
assistance to the starving of the earth - urgent as they are - will destroy
rather than help if made in the present spirit. For, as things stand, we
have nothing to give. If our own riches and our own way of life are not
enjoyed here, they will not be enjoyed anywhere else. Certainly they
will supply the immediate jolt of energy and hope that methedrine, and
similar drugs, give in extreme fatigue. But peace can be made only by
those who are peaceful, and love can be shown only by those who love.
No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart,
just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no
capacity for living now. — Alan W. Watts

With all these occurrences of death facing me, I thought about issues of freedom. If government projects the idea that we, as people inhabiting this particular land mass, have freedom, then for the rest of our lives we will go out and find what appear to be the boundaries and smack against them like a heart against the rib cage. If we reveal boundaries in the course of our movements, then we will expose the inherent lie in the use of the word freedom. I want to keep breathing and moving until I arrive at a place where motion and strength and relief intersect. I don't know what's ahead of me in the course of my life and this civilization. I just don't feel I have reached the necessary things inside my history that would ease the pressure in my skull and in my future and in my present. It is exhausting, living in a population where people don't speak up if what they witness doesn't directly threaten them. — David Wojnarowicz

God is life. God is life in action. The best way to say, "I love you, God," is to live your life doing your best. The best way to say, "Thank you, God," is by letting go of the past and living in the present moment, right here and now. Whatever life takes away from you, let it go. When you surrender and let go of the past, you allow yourself to be fully alive in the moment. Letting go of the past means you can enjoy the dream that is happening right now. — Miguel Ruiz

Harness the power of today. Seize the blessings of today! Make something happen, enhance your life, make someone laugh, help a friend, love, love, love! — Steve Maraboli

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

If you concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man. You'll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens ... Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we're living right now. — Paulo Coelho

Intentional living is the art of making our own choices before others' choices make us. — Richie Norton

In such a person, sadness breeds purpose; finding inspiration in the darkness and often times, I believe, they will impress a hell onto their own lives in order to re-create it, that others might suffer the experience from the comfort of their armchairs. - Quote from Her Past's Present. — Michael Poeltl

Take a good look at your life right now. If you don't like something about it, close your eyes and imagine the life you want. Now allow yourself to focus your inner eye on the person you would be if you were living this preferred life. Notice the differences in how you behave and present yourself; allow yourself to spend several seconds breathing in the new image, expanding your energy into this ... — Marianne Williamson

Life can only be experienced in myriad of intricate forms, but can be understood only in abstract.
Here/Now/Present is the doorway to abstract - the divine nothingness — Rashmit Kalra

Simplify your life! Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have ... Don't Destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present; enjoy the present. Simplify! — Henry David Thoreau

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

For this very short time in your life, and possibly never again, you will be given a very unique gift: a supremely rich environment with ample time, space, safety and people to explore whatever interests you intensely, to push yourself, to make mistakes and recover from them, and to live as deeply as you'd like in the hope of finding yourself or, at least, the beginnings of yourself.
Such an opportunity may never present itself again. So, embrace it and ... Carpe College! — Michael Metzler

It's not in the life, it's in the living. — Raheel Farooq

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

Don't get caught in the trap of "Waiting".

When I retire....
When I get off work
When I go that party this weekend

When this happens then I can live.

People miss the present and then wonder where time went. Allow life unfold in its divine sequence by being utterly present. — Matthew Donnelly

Authentic worship means being present to the living God who penetrates the whole of human life. The proclamation of God's word and our response to God's Spirit touches everything that is involved in being human: mind and body, thinking and feeling, work and family, friends and government, buildings and flowers. — Eugene H. Peterson

Some writers might tell you that writing is like a piece of magic - a process of creating something out of nothing, and I guess I used to think about it that way too a long long time ago. But as I've lived my life and loved and lost friends and family, and seen dreams smashed and resurrected, and marveled at the pettiness, drear ambition and ignorance of the herd of which I am a part, I can no longer say that a poem or a story or a script comes from nothing. If it's any good, if it has any power, any potent emotional body, then it's something that a writer has paid for, not only in time, but in all the anxiety that accompanies living and those small fret-filled acts of becoming present that make it possible for us to see beyond our little patch of immediacy. It's not just a reaching out, but a reaching in, into the depths of our being from whence we've sprung. — Billy Marshall Stoneking

I don't live in either my past or my future. I'm interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we're living now. — Paulo Coelho

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

In the fifteenth century, Marsilio Ficino put it as simply as possible. The mind, he said, tends to go off on its own so that it seems to have no relevance to the physical world. At the same time, the materialistic life can be so absorbing that we get caught in it and forget about spirituality. What we need, he said, is soul, in the middle, holding together mind and body, ideas and life, spirituality and the world. — Thomas Moore

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

Can anything be sillier than the point of view of certain people - I mean those who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves very busily engaged in order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making ready to live! They form their purposes with a view to the distant future; yet postponement is the greatest waste of life; it deprives them of each day as it comes, it snatches from them the present by promising something hereafter. The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon the morrow and wastes to-day. You dispose of that which lies in the hands of Fortune, you let go that which lies in your own. — Seneca.

Cherish like a son, a daughter, each irreplaceable moment. — Marty Rubin

You don't understand that one can be an atheist, one can not know whether God exists or why, and at the same time know that man does not live in nature but in history, and that in present-day understanding it was founded by Christ, that its foundation is the Gospel. And what is history? It is the setting in motion of centuries of work at the gradual unriddling of death and its eventual overcoming. Hence the discovery of mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, hence the writing of symphonies. It is impossible to move on in that direction without a certain uplift. These discoveries call for spiritual equipment. The grounds for it are contained in the Gospel. They are these. First, love of one's neighbor, that highest form of living energy, overflowing man's heart and demanding to be let out and spent, and then the main component parts of modern man, without which he is unthinkable
namely, the idea of the free person and the idea of life as sacrifice. — Boris Pasternak

I think the trick to living fully," I said, thinking through each word, "is to appreciate what we have, day by
day, regardless of what we know might come our way." I took a breath and slowly looked from one of my
parents to the other. "If I live in fear of what might be, how can I truly live my life to the full in the present? And
if I do not give myself to the day, to hope, to life, what do I miss?" I raised my eyebrows and shook my head.
"Life itself, I think. At least the way I wanna live it. — Lisa Tawn Bergren

Our lives have been depicted as an enclosure in endlessness (parenthesis). As life is brief, we pass on without bringing anything with us, in this manner the genuine importance of life is to offer and to serve humankind. When we result in these present acknowledgments, it provides us a superior viewpoint in life and how to identify with others. This living is demonstrated to bring enormous returns other than the result of individual gain. — Gladys Adevey

Life is a fragile and awesome gift. — Steve Goodier

No more tomorrows. Today is the day. — Richie Norton

Our actions in the present build the staircase to the future. The question is whether that staircase is going up or down. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Our greatest hope does not rest in the death of suffering. Neither does our help lie in us having a full and perfect life, with no pain, no brokenness, and no Lyme disease. Instead our hope lies in God and we hope in the fact that this is our temporary home and our forever home with Him in Heaven is perfect. This hope- this beautiful and living hope (I Peter 1:3-4) is for the future but also gives us hope for our present days. — Rebecca VanDeMark

Learn to appreciate the things you have in the life you're living. It is your present. — Adem Spahic

Life in New Orleans is all about making the present--this moment, right now--as pleasant as possible. So New Orleanians, by and large, aren't tortured by the frenzy to achieve, acquire, and manage the unmanageable future. Their days are built around the things that other Americans have pushed out of their lives by incessant work: art, music, elaborate cooking, and--most of all--plenty of relaxed time with family and friends. Their jobs are really just the things they do to earn a little money; they're not the organiing principle of life. While this isn't a worldview particularly conducive to getting things done, getting things done isn't the most important thing in New Orleans. Living life is. Once you've tasted that, and especially if it's how you grew up, life everywhere else feels thin indeed. — Dan Baum

It will not be possible for me to escape the past. But if I go back there, it will only be to find ways to make rich my present. To accept that there are no villains in my life, just broken people, trying to heal, stumbling in darkness and breaking each other...To stop living what has been, until now, this pale imitation of life. — Petina Gappah

My advice for life: dance and sing your song while the party is still on. — Rasheed Ogunlaru

When you come across someone colorful and vibrant maybe in the present it isn't so interesting, but, in the past, it sheds a wonderful light onto living life. — Garrett Hedlund

When we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," we are, in a measure, shutting tomorrow out of our prayer. We do not live in tomorrow but in today. We do not seek tomorrow's grace or tomorrow's bread. They thrive best, and get most out of life, who live in the living present. They pray best who pray for today's needs, not for tomorrow's, which may render our prayers unnecessary and redundant by not existing at all! — E. M. Bounds

The music
the making of music and the performing of music
produced memories, many good, some bad, some difficult. But he knew for sure that he'd spent too much of that time living not in the present moment of creating or playing music but in the expectation or hope of some reward, some success. He had always been waiting for his life to start when that happened, when the recognition came. It had taken him twenty years to realize how utterly wrongheaded that was.
It was as if the twenty years didn't amount to much, that he hadn't actually been present for so much of his life. — Graham Joyce

Human nature presents human minds with a puzzle which they have not yet solved and may never succeed in solving, for all that we can tell. The dichotomy of a human being into 'soul' and 'body' is not a datum of experience. No one has ever been, or ever met, a living human soul without a body ... Someone who accepts - as I myself do, taking it on trust - the present-day scientific account of the Universe may find it impossible to believe that a living creature, once dead, can come to life again; but, if he did entertain this belief, he would be thinking more 'scientifically' if he thought in the Christian terms of a psychosomatic resurrection than if he thought in the shamanistic terms of a disembodied spirit. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Those who are truly alive are kindly and unsuspecting in their human relationships and consequently endangered under present conditions. They assume that others think and act generously, kindly and helpfully, in accordance with the laws of life. This natural attitude, fundamental to healthy children as well as primitive man, inevitably represents a great danger in the struggle for a rational way of life as long as the emotional plague subsists, because the plague-ridden impute their own manner of thinking and acting to their fellow men. A kindly man believes that all men are kindly, while one infected with the plague believes that all men lie and cheat and are hungry for power. In such a situation, the living are at an obvious disadvantage. When they give to the plague-ridden they are sucked dry, then ridiculed or betrayed. — Wilhelm Reich

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

God doesn't want meaningless gifts. In fact, God doesn't need your gifts. He doesn't need your weekly tithe. He doesn't need you to help your neighbor shovel. He doesn't need anything from you. But He wants your heart. He loves you. He doesn't want you to feel obligated to do something for Him, but if you love Him, you will want to do things for Him. You'll want to serve, to help, to live your life with open hands. The gifts you present won't be meaningless - they will be out of love. It will be a sweet aroma to God and He will be pleased. Not because you're following a routine but because you're pouring out love. — Tania Goody

One lives in the very present moment; lives intently. There is no urge to be doing: being is the highest good. — Patrick O'Brian

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

The only way to live life is to live in the present. You can't put things off thinking you'll have time later. There may not be a later. - Katarina Kozlov — Dannika Dark

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

Don't spend too much time grieving for me, Elena. I know you're probably a little sad as you're reading this, since that means I'm dead and you're having to learn how to go on in a new way. I would be sad if you didn't miss me, so I won't tell you not to, but I will tell you to keep on living. The world is full of beautiful music, flowers, places, and experiences. Enjoy it all as much as you can. Just remember it's the people in your life that make it worthwhile...People and memories, not things are what's important in the end. Nothing else matters as much as that. — M. Reed McCall

Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are. — Epicurus

Existing is going through the motions of life with no zeal and feeling you have no control; living means embracing all that this large world has to offer and not being afraid to take chances. The beauty of living is knowing you can always start over and there's always a chance for something better. — J'son M. Lee

If I were going to give my life as a servant of the King, I had to know that King. What was he like? In what could I trust him? In the same way I could trust a set of impersonal laws? Or could I trust him as a living leader, as a very present commander in battle? The question was central. Because if he were a king in name only, I would rather go back to the chocolate factory. I would remain a Christian, but I would know that my religion was only a set of principles, excellent and to be followed, but hardly demanding devotion. — Brother Andrew

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

I've spent most of my life perfecting the craft of living history. I have no practice at living in the present. — Leila Sales

You said that you would've taken back that day if you were given a chance. But I ask you why? All things happen for a reason, right? We don't understand the details of our lives because we're so busy living day to day. We need to take a few steps back and take the whole picture in. — Amy Astorga

The spiritual freedom we seek cannot be found by grasping at, retreating to, or protecting our perceived safe spaces. Our freedom lies in remaining open continuously, not only to Life's changes but also to the Divine Light within us and others. This is our choice. Although often perceived as a weakness, being open and surrendering to the experience of the present moment is our greatest strength. By authentically living Life in the Now, we submit to Divine guidance where we find the freedom to see everything equally and sacred in Truth. — Peter Santos

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

You are present in your life on earth at this moment for the purposes of living, loving, learning, and growing. Be assured that life can reliably provide a wide variety of adventures, experiences, and situations that may require you to draw from the depths of your being. Your level of self-awareness and manner of expression can determine the quality of living you experience. Why? Because you get back what you give out. — John Templeton

Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their lives. They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? — Seneca.

As it usually happened after an engagement, a heavy sadness was coming down over his spirits. To some degree it was the prodigious contrastbetween two modes of life: in violent hand-to-hand fighting threr was no room for time, reflexion, enmity or even pain unless it was disabling; everything moved with extreme speed, cut and parry with a reflex as fast as a sword-thrust, eyes automatically keeping watch on three or four men within reach, arm lunging at the first hint of a lowered guard, a cry to warn a friend, a roar to put an enemy off his stroke; and all this in an extraordinarily vivid state of mind, a kind of fierce exaltation, an intense living in the most immediate present. — Patrick O'Brian

If you saw her in these moments, you might think she was collecting her thoughts in order to go forward. But I see it another way: Her mind is being overwhelmed by two processes that must simultaneously proceed at full steam. One is to deal with and live in the present world. The other is to re-experience and mourn something that happened long ago. It is as though her lightness pulls her toward heaven, but the extra gravity around her keeps her earthbound. — Steve Martin

There is a very real danger present when we suppress our feelings to act on inspiration in exchange for the "safety" of the status quo. We risk sacrificing the opportunity to live a more fulfilling and purpose driven life. We risk sacrificing the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others. We risk sacrificing the beautiful blessing of finding a greater sense of meaning in our own lives.
In short, we run the very real risk living a life of regret. — Richie Norton

In Mexico, I first encountered the attitude that was missing from the optimistic sense of living in the United States: a tragic sense of life. Such a sense doesn't force us into a somber cone of depression and futility; it urges the opposite. The tragic sense opens a human being to the exuberant joys of the present. To laughter, carnal ity, the comical varieties of love, to music and art, to the small human glories of the day. — Pete Hamill