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Now

the present time

Now is a word which usually refers to the present time (as it is being spoken or declared), or an indefinite range of times which have arrived, in the experiences of those who make use of it.

What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter. ~ Sri Aurobindo

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · Anon - The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle · See also · External links

A

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Joy! Joy! I triumph! Now no more I know
Myself as simply me. I burn with love
Unto myself, and bury me in love. ~ Attar of Nishapur
  • A young man who had been troubling society with impalpable doctrines of a new civilization which he called "the Kingdom of Heaven" had been put out of the way; and I can imagine that believer in material power murmuring as he went homeward, "it will all blow over now." Yes. The wind from the Kingdom of Heaven has blown over the world, and shall blow for centuries yet.
    • Æ, in The Economics of Ireland and the Policy of the British Government (1921), p. 23
  • Joy! Joy! I triumph! Now no more I know
    Myself as simply me. I burn with love
    Unto myself, and bury me in love.
    • Attar of Nishapur, in "The Triumph of the Soul" as translated by Margaret Smith in The Persian Mystics
  • What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter. The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities. Because this temporal universe was a paradox and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of His being.
  • "I exist" does not follow from "there is a thought now." The fact that a thought occurs at a given moment does not entail that any other thought has occurred at any other moment, still less that there has occurred a series of thoughts sufficient to constitute a single self. As Hume conclusively showed, no one event intrinsically points to any other. We infer the existence of events which we are not actually observing, with the help of general principle. But these principles must be obtained inductively. By mere deduction from what is immediately given we cannot advance a single step beyond. And, consequently, any attempt to base a deductive system on propositions which describe what is immediately given is bound to be a failure.

B

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Initiation leads to the mount whence vision can be had, a vision of the eternal Now, wherein past, present, and future exist as one. ~ Alice Bailey
 
I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could've walked through the walls. ~ Peter S. Beagle
 
All which we shall see, with all which we have seen and are seeing, exists already in an eternal now … all those places are home to us which in the pattern of our life are twisting, in past, present and future, tendrils of remembrance round our heart-strings. ~ E. C. Bentley
 
I never look back, darling; it distracts from the now. ~ Edna Mode in The Incredibles
 
Now does ride in on the curl of the wave,
And you will dance with me in the sunlit pools. ~ John Carder Bush
  • Initiation leads to the mount whence vision can be had, a vision of the eternal Now, wherein past, present, and future exist as one. p. 13
  • The majority of us control our physical bodies consciously, making them carry out our behests upon the physical plane. Some of us control our emotions consciously, but very few of us can control the mind. Most of us are controlled by our desires, and by our thoughts. But the time is coming when we shall consciously control our threefold lower nature. Time will then not exist for us at all. We shall have that continuity of consciousness upon the three planes of being—physical, emotional, and mental—which will enable us to live as does the Logos, in that very metaphysical abstraction, the Eternal Now.
  • I, who have not cried since my childhood, I cry now like a child because of all that I shall never have. I cry over lost beauty and grandeur. I love everything that I should have embraced.
    • Henri Barbusse, in The Inferno (1917), L'Enfer, as translated by Edward J. O'Brien (1918), Ch. XVII
  • I have searched, I have indistinctly seen, I have doubted. Now, I hope.
    • Henri Barbusse, in Light (1919), Clarté, as translated by Fitzwater Wray, Ch. XXII
  • [Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal return] is what makes moments caught up in the immanence of return suddenly appear as ends. In every other system, don’t forget, these moments are viewed as means: Every moral system proclaims that “each moment of life ought to be motivated.” Return unmotivates the moment and frees life of ends.
  • Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. "Where have you been?" Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shining beetle, but this time it was the unicorn's old dark eyes that looked down. "I am here now," she said at last. Molly laughed with her lips flat. "And what good is that to me that you're here now? Where were you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you come to me now, when I am this?"
  • The skull was laughing again; this time making a thoughtful, almost kindly noise. "Remember what I told you about time," it said. "When I was alive, I believed — as you do — that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could've walked through the walls."
  • Schmendrick stepped out into the open and said a few words. They were short words, undistinguished either by melody or harshness, and Schmendrick himself could not hear them for the Red Bull's dreadful bawling. But he knew what they meant, and he knew exactly how to say them, and he knew that he could say them again when he wanted to, in the same way or in a different way. Now he spoke them gently and with joy, and as did so he felt his immortality fall from him like an armour, or like a shroud.
  • There are some places which, seen for the first time, yet seem to strike a chord of recollection. "I have been here before," we think to ourselves, "and this is one of my true homes." It is no mystery for those philosophers who hold that all which we shall see, with all which we have seen and are seeing, exists already in an eternal now; that all those places are home to us which in the pattern of our life are twisting, in past, present and future, tendrils of remembrance round our heart-strings.
  • The Now, that indivisible point which studs the length of infinite line
    Whose ends are nowhere, is thine all, the puny all thou callest thine.
  • Come over here to where When lingers,
    Waiting in this empty world,
    Waiting for Then, when the lifespray cools.
    For Now does ride in on the curl of the wave,
    And you will dance with me in the sunlit pools.
    We are of the going water and the gone.
    We are of water in the holy land of water
    And all that's to come runs in
    With the thrust on the strand.

C

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Never was man brought into contact with reality save through the evanescent emotions and sensations of that single moment, that infinitesimal fraction of a second, which was passing now… ~ James Branch Cabell
 
So shut your Bibles up and show me how
The Christ you talk about
Is living now. ~ Sydney Carter
 
Now I see there is a people risen that I cannot win with gifts or honours, offices or places; but all other sects and people I can. ~ Oliver Cromwell
 
seeming's enough for slaves of space and time
—ours is the now and here of freedom. Come ~ E. E. Cummings
 
the cunning the craven
… they live for until
though the sun in his heaven
says Now ~ E. E. Cummings
  • To-day alone was real. Never was man brought into contact with reality save through the evanescent emotions and sensations of that single moment, that infinitesimal fraction of a second, which was passing now — and it was in the insignificance of this moment, precisely, that religious persons must believe. So ran the teachings of all dead and lingering faiths alike. Here was, perhaps, only another instance of mankind's abhorrence of actualities; and man's quaint dislike of facing reality was here disguised as a high moral principle. That was why all art, which strove to make the sensations of a moment soul-satisfying, was dimly felt to be irreligious. For art performed what religion only promised.
  • Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. There's a wonderful formula that the Buddhists have for the Bodhisattva, the one whose being (sattva) is illumination (bodhi), who realizes his identity with eternity and at the same time his participation in time. And the attitude is not to withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but to realize that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder and to come back and participate in it.
  • Your holy hearsay is not evidence.
    Give me the good news in the present tense.
    What happened nineteen hundred years ago
    May not have happened.
    How am I to know?
    So shut your Bibles up and show me how
    The Christ you talk about
    Is living now.
  • What a sublime doctrine it is, that goodness cherished now is eternal life already entered on!
    • William Ellery Channing, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 210
  • In our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation — it is a convention. The curse against God is Exercise I in the primer of minor poetry.
  • The cause which is blocking all progress today is the subtle scepticism which whispers in a million ears that things are not good enough to be worth improving. If the world is good we are revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be conservatives. These essays, futile as they are considered as serious literature, are yet ethically sincere, since they seek to remind men that things must be loved first and improved afterwards.
    • G. K. Chesterton, "In Defence Of A New Edition" - Preface to the second edition of The Defendant (1902)
  • Spirituality tells the seeker not to live in the hoary past, not to live in the remote future, but to live in the immediacy of today, in the eternal Now.
  • If you really want to love humanity, then you have to love humanity as it is now.
  • Anton Chigurh: What time do you close?
Gas Station Proprietor: Now. We close now.
Anton Chigurh: Now is not a time. What time do you close?
  • Impermanence becomes vivid in the present moment; so do compassion and wonder and courage. And so does fear.
    • Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (1997)
  • The natural quality of mind is clear, awake, alert, and knowing. Free from fixation. By training in being present, we come to know the nature of our mind. So the more you train in being present - being right here - the more you begin to feel like your mind is sharpening up. The mind that can come back to the present is clearer and more refreshed, and it can better weather all the ambiguities, pains, and paradoxes of life.
    • Pema Chödrön, How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind (2008)
  • The principle of nowness is very important to any effort to establish an enlightened society.
    • Pema Chödrön, How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind (2008)
  • Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
    But an eternal Now does always last.
  • Now I see there is a people risen that I cannot win with gifts or honours, offices or places; but all other sects and people I can.
  • on forever's very now we stand
  • —tommorow is our permanent address
    and there they'll scarcely find us(if they do,
    we'll move away still further:into now
  • more each particular person is(my love)
    alive than every world can understand
    and now you are and i am now and we're
    a mystery that will never happen again, a miracle which has never happened before—
    and shining this our now must come to then
  • dreamtree,truthtree tree of jubilee:with aeons of (trivial merely)existence,all when may not measure a now of your treasure

D

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  • The whole time of my life may be divided into an infinity of parts, each of which is in no way dependent on any other; and, accordingly, because I was in existence a short time ago, it does not follow that I must now exist, unless in this moment some cause create me anew as it were, — that is, conserve me.
  • Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the third of November. They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?
  • The line it is drawn
    The curse it is cast
    The slow one now
    Will later be fast
    As the present now
    Will later be past
    The order is rapidly fadin’
    And the first one now will later be last
    For the times they are a-changin’.
    • Bob Dylan, in "The Times They Are a-Changin'", on The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964)

E

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The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end.
 
Now he had form and substance.
He had become a personality, something they had filtered out of the system many decades ago. ~ Harlan Ellison
  • In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.
 
We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize. ~ Thích Nhất Hạnh

F

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Building your dream has to start now,
There's no other road to take… ~ Kira, in Xanadu (1980)
 
Here and Now are needles which Sew a pattern black as pitch, Waiting for the rocket's light. ~
  • Miles above the Earth we know,
    Fancy's rocket roars. Below,
    Here and Now are needles which
    Sew a pattern black as pitch,
    Waiting for the rocket's light.
  • Now we have lit a candle to the power
    Of atoms; now we know we're heirs of light
    Itself...
    • Philip José Farmer, in "Sestina of the Space Rocket" first published in Startling Stories (February 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)
  • Caught Beauty, held to light, now apes
    A good, now evil, thing — the shifting sign
    And spectrum of archaic, psychic shapes.
    • Philip José Farmer, in "Job's Leviathan" in JD Argassy #58 (1961); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)
  • Building your dream has to start now,
    There's no other road to take
    You won't make a mistake, I'll be guiding you.

G

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Seize the time, Meribor. Live now. Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again. ~ Jean-Luc Picard, in The Inner Light
  • Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; and now I know it.
    • John Gay, in My Own Epitaph, inscribed on Gay’s monument in Westminster Abbey; also quoted as "I thought so once; but now I know it".
  • I create each hour’s newness by forgetting yesterday completely. Having been happy is never enough for me. I don’t believe in dead things. What’s the difference between no longer being and never having been?
    • André Gide, Ménalque in The Immoralist, R. Howard trans., p. 111
  • I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.
    • This, and variants of it, have been been widely circulated as a Quaker saying since at least 1869, and attributed to the Quaker activist Stephen Grellet since at least 1893. W. Gurney Benham in Benham's Book of Quotations, Proverbs, and Household Words (1907) states that though sometimes attributed to others, "there seems to be some authority in favor of Stephen Grellet being the author, but the passage does not appear in any of his printed works." It appears to have been published as an anonymous proverb at least as early as 1859, when it appeared in Household Words : A Weekly Journal. It has also often become attributed to the more famous Quaker William Penn, as well as others including Mahatma Gandhi and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Some anecdotes related to this are at in "Truth : I Expect To Pass Through This World But Once" by M D Magee at Ask Why (14 October 2009)

H

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  • I would like to offer one short poem you can recite from time to time, while breathing and smiling:
    Breathing in, I calm my body.
    Breathing out, I smile.
    Dwelling in the present moment
    I know this is a wonderful moment.
  • We tend to be alive in the future, not now. We say, "Wait until I finish school and get my Ph.D. degree, and then I will be really alive." When we have it, and it wasn't easy to get, we say to ourselves, "I have to wait until I have a job in order to be really alive." And then after the job, a car. After the car, a house. We are not capable of being alive in the present moment. We tend to postpone being alive to the future, the distant future, we don't know when. Now is not the moment to be alive. We may never be alive at all in our entire life. Therefore, the technique, if we have to speak of a technique, is to be in the present moment, to be aware that we are here and now, and the only moment to be alive is the present moment.
  • The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.
  • I would like to offer one short poem you can recite from time to time, while breathing and smiling:
    Breathing in, I calm my body.
    Breathing out, I smile.
    Dwelling in the present moment
    I know this is a wonderful moment.
  • We tend to be alive in the future, not now. We say, "Wait until I finish school and get my Ph.D. degree, and then I will be really alive." When we have it, and it wasn't easy to get, we say to ourselves, "I have to wait until I have a job in order to be really alive." And then after the job, a car. After the car, a house. We are not capable of being alive in the present moment. We tend to postpone being alive to the future, the distant future, we don't know when. Now is not the moment to be alive. We may never be alive at all in our entire life. Therefore, the technique, if we have to speak of a technique, is to be in the present moment, to be aware that we are here and now, and the only moment to be alive is the present moment.
  • The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.
  • The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen.
  • There are ways to really live in the present moment. What's the alternative? It is always now. However much you feel you may need to plan for the future, to anticipate it, to mitigate risks, the reality of your life is now. This may sound trite … but it's the truth. … As a matter of conscious experience, the reality of your life is always now. I think this is a liberating truth about the human mind. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand about your mind than that, if you want to be happy in this world. The past is a memory. It's a thought arising in the present. The future is merely anticipated, it is another thought arising now. What we truly have is this moment. And this. And we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth. Repudiating it. Fleeing it. Overlooking it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfillment there because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future, and the future never arrives.
  • And if not now, when?
  • Time will bring to light whatever is hidden; it will cover up and conceal what is now shining in splendor.

I

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The Pythagoreans called the monad "intellect" because they thought that intellect was akin to the One; for among the virtues, they likened the monad to moral wisdom; for what is correct is one. And they called it … the instant now in time," and moreover they call it "ship," "chariot," "friend," "life," "happiness". ~ Iamblichus
  • The Pythagoreans called the monad "intellect" because they thought that intellect was akin to the One; for among the virtues, they likened the monad to moral wisdom; for what is correct is one. And they called it "being," "cause of truth," "simple," "paradigm," "order," "concord," "what is equal among the greater and the lesser," "the mean between intensity and slackness," "moderation in plurality," "the instant now in time," and moreover they call it "ship," "chariot," "friend," "life," "happiness."
    • Iamblichus of Chalcis, in The Theology of Arithmetic, as translated by Robin Waterfield, as The Theology of Arithmetic : On the Mystical, Mathematical and Cosmological Symbolism of the First Ten Numbers (1988)
  • The Godhead, according to Eckhart, is the universal and eternal Unity comprehending and transcending all diversity. "The Divine nature is Rest," he says in one of the German discourses; and in the Latin fragments we find: "God rests in Himself, and makes all things rest in Him." … The ideal world was not created in time; "the Father spake Himself and all the creatures in His Son"; "they exist in the eternal Now" —"a becoming without a becoming, change without change." "The Word of God the Father it the substance of all that exists, the life of all that lives, the principle and cause of life."
    • William Ralph Inge in Light, Life, and Love: Selections from the German Mystics of the Middle Ages (1904), p. xx

J

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K

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All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, in Zorba the Greek
 
Consider now the token of the covenant which God gave to Noah. It was the rainbow. What is the rainbow? Sunlight turned back to our eye, through drops of falling rain. What sign could be more simple? And yet what sign could be more perfect? ~ Charles Kingsley

  • Always thought that life was just a drag
    Now this daisy's got a brand new bag
    Hey world take a good look at me.

    Though I'm flying high as a kite,
    What turns me on is the sight of life,
    The grooviest trip of all —
    Best kick I've ever had,
    So tell me what's so bad about feeling good?

  • O! hearken well, for soon the song sings through
    And, would we hear it, we must hear it now.
    The bird of life is singing in the sun,
    Short is his song, nor only just begun,—
    A call, a trill, a rapture, then—so soon!—
    A silence, and the song is done—is done.
    Yea! what is man that deems himself divine?
    Man is a flagon, and his soul the wine;
    Man is a reed, his soul the sound therein;
    Man is a lantern, and his soul the shine.
    Would you be happy! hearken, then, the way:
    Heed not tomorrow, heed not yesterday;
    The magic words of life are here and now—
    O fools, that after some tomorrow stray!
  • Truly, if at one time it was difficult to become a Christian, I believe now it becomes more difficult year by year, because it has now become so easy to become one; there is a bit of competition only in becoming a speculative thinker. … The thesis that God has existed in human form, was born, grew up; is certainly the paradox in the strictest sense, the absolute paradox.
  • Consider now the token of the covenant which God gave to Noah. It was the rainbow. What is the rainbow? Sunlight turned back to our eye, through drops of falling rain. What sign could be more simple? And yet what sign could be more perfect? … Do not fear the clouds and storm and rain; look at the bow in the cloud, in the very rain itself. That is a sign that the sun, though you cannot see it, is shining still. That up above, beyond the cloud, is still sunlight, and warmth, and cloudless blue sky. Believe in God's covenant. Believe that the sun will conquer the clouds, warmth will conquer cold, calm will conquer storm, fair will conquer foul, light will conquer darkness, joy will conquer sorrow, life conquer death, love conquer destruction and the devouring floods; because God is light, God is love, God is life, God is peace and joy eternal and without change, and labours to give life, and joy, and peace, to man and beast and all created things. This was the meaning of the rainbow. Not a sudden or strange token, a miracle, as men call it, like as some voice out of the sky, or fiery comet, might have been; but a regular, orderly, and natural sign, to witness that God is a God of order.
    • Charles Kingsley, in "God's Covenants", Sermon 42 of The Works of Charles Kingsley (1885), Vol. 22, p. 424

L

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The present! it is but a drop from the sea In the mighty depths of eternity. ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon
 
*Whose knocking do I hear? It is you, fugitive!.. You tried to lose yourself in earthly sounds of flute and strings. To where did you flee? Now you stand before Me, And I say: you have returned to Me, You have found My door. You saw how your mind had lost its light, how dispersed was your joy. And you now understand that the knocking one will be admitted. And the admitted one will be forgiven... ~ Maitreya
  • Our religious friends argue much about heaven and hell and are terribly afraid of the latter indeed it would sometimes almost seem as though they were afraid of the former as well, from the manner in which they exert themselves to avoid going there. In the future no questions or disputes about these conditions will be possible, because man will see for himself that there is no hell, though he will also see very clearly that those who live an evil life are by that fact storing up for themselves very undesirable results and a very unpleasant time in the astral life. The glories of the heaven world will also be open to his sight, and he will realize that man needs only a development of faculty in order to place him at once, here and now, in the midst of all the bliss that that wondrous life can give.

M

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Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system! ~ Monty Python and the Holy Grail
  • Whose knocking do I hear? It is you, fugitive! Now I shall tell you, You have been fleeing from Me with the same persistence you manifested before, when building My Abodes. You fled, attempting to hide yourself within the sanctuaries of the world’s temples. Behind the steps of thrones did you conceal yourself. Changing your appearance, you did secrete yourself beneath the folds of tents. You tried to lose yourself in earthly sounds of flute and strings. To where did you flee? Now you stand before Me, And I say: you have returned to Me, You have found My door. You saw how your mind had lost its light, how dispersed was your joy. And you now understand that the knocking one will be admitted. And the admitted one will be forgiven. And you have now found the better door, and have come, seeing the futility of your flight. And I will admit you who knock and say to you: I have preserved for you your joy. Take up your chalice, and work... You know now that flight is in vain. You stand there now, approaching the door, And your chalice awaits you. (338)
  • Oh, Mercy — now I understand: The secret behind your actions, the thread that binds all these seemingly random events. … There's no great or small! No question of size or importance! Each act of compassion — however minor it may appear to our blind eyes — affects all Creation; shakes it to its roots!
  • The first thing necessary for a constructive dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. For psychologically speaking, this present moment is all we have. The past and future have meaning because they are part of the present: a past event has existence now because you are thinking of it at this present moment, or because it influences you so that you, as a living being in the present, are that much different. The future has reality because one can bring it into his mind in the present. Past was the present at one time, and the future will be the present at some coming moment. To try to live in the "when" of the future or the "then" of the past always involves an artificiality, a separating one's self from reality; for in actuality one exists in the present. The past has meaning as it lights up the present, and the future as it makes the present richer and more profound.
    • Rollo May, in Man's Search for Himself (1953), p. 227
 
The day you are happy for no reason whatsoever, the day you find yourself taking delight in everything and in nothing, you will know that you have found the land of unending joy called the kingdom.
The Way to Love : The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello
 
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another. ~ Robert Oppenheimer
 
We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. ~ George Orwell
  • If you want to know what it means to be happy, look at a flower, a bird, a child; they are perfect images of the kingdom. For they live from moment to moment in the eternal now with no past and no future. So they are spared the guilt and anxiety that so torment human beings and they are full of the sheer joy of living, taking delight not so much in persons or things as in life itself. As long as your happiness is caused or sustained by something or someone outside of you, you are still in the land of the dead. The day you are happy for no reason whatsoever, the day you find yourself taking delight in everything and in nothing, you will know that you have found the land of unending joy called the kingdom.

N

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  • Now we will no longer concede so easily that anyone has the truth; the rigorous methods of inquiry have spread sufficient distrust and caution, so that we experience every man who represents opinions violently in word and deed as any enemy of our present culture, or at least as a backward person. And in fact, the fervor about having the truth counts very little today in relation to that other fervor, more gentle and silent, to be sure, for seeking the truth, a search that does not tire of learning afresh and testing anew.
  • Ye are my believers: but of what account are all believers! Ye had not yet sought yourselves: then did ye find me. So do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account. Now do I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when ye have all denied me, will I return unto you.

O

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  • We knew the world would not be the same. Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
    • Robert Oppenheimer, in an interview about the Trinity nuclear explosion, first broadcast as part of the television documentary The Decision to Drop the Bomb (1965), produced by Fred Freed, NBC White Paper; Oppenheimer is quoting from the 1944 Vivekananda-Isherwood translation of the Gita (ch. XI verse 32). The line is spoken to Arjuna by Krishna, who is revered in Hindu traditions as one of the major incarnations of Vishnu; some assert that the passage would be better translated "I am become Time, the destroyer of worlds."
 
Time, which is the sequence of the modifications of the mind, likewise terminates, giving place to the Eternal Now. ~ Patanjali

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The time will come when every change shall cease, This quick revolving wheel shall rest in peace: No summer then shall glow, not winter freeze;
Nothing shall be to come, and nothing past, But an eternal now shall ever last. ~ Petrarch
 
A SCREAMING COMES ACROSS THE SKY. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now. ~ Thomas Pynchon
 
The more you dwell in the past and in the future, the thicker your bandwidth, the more solid your persona. But the narrower your sense of Now, the more tenuous you are. ~ Thomas Pynchon
  • Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed time of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; The wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.
  • A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the event of a few months.
  • THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
  • The far and the near, the home counties and the back, the rich and the poor, will suffer or rejoice alike. The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy.
  • Now our time and turn is come, and perhaps the finishing stroke is reserved for us. When we look back on the dangers we have been saved from, and reflect on the success we have been blessed with, it would be sinful either to be idle or to despair.
  • Time, which is the sequence of the modifications of the mind, likewise terminates, giving place to the Eternal Now.
  • Sometimes I think your life and mine are under the protection of some supreme being or fate, because, after many years of parallel thought, we find ourselves in the positions we now occupy.
  • A good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution applied ten minutes later.
    • George S. Patton, as quoted in "The Unknown Patton" (1983) by Charles M. Province, p. 165
  • I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.
  • When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
    And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
  • The time will come when every change shall cease,
    This quick revolving wheel shall rest in peace:
    No summer then shall glow, not winter freeze;
    Nothing shall be to come, and nothing past,
    But an eternal now shall ever last.
  • A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.
    It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theatre.
  • Do not think
    I’ve reached where I am now
    by slipping like a landslide
    or evaporating like a cloud.
  • "Personal density," Kurt Mondaugen in his Peenemünde office not too many steps away from here, enunciating the Law which will one day bear his name, "is directly proportional to temporal bandwidth."
    "Temporal bandwidth," is the width of your present, your now. It is the familiar "∆ t" considered as a dependent variable. The more you dwell in the past and in the future, the thicker your bandwidth, the more solid your persona. But the narrower your sense of Now, the more tenuous you are.
  • The knife cuts through the apple like a knife cutting an apple. Everything is where it is, no clearer than usual, but certainly more present. So much has to be left behind now, so quickly.
  • The true moment of shadow is the moment in which you see the point of light in the sky. The single point, and the Shadow that has just gathered you in its sweep ..."
    Always remember.
    The first star hangs between his feet.
    Now —

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God contemplates Himself and all things in an Eternal Now that has neither beginning nor end. ~ John Ruysbroeck
 
The past is now. ~ Kiley Rossetter & Christopher Monfette
 
Now is the only moment. ~ Kiley Rossetter & Christopher Monfette
  • However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.
    If we use the resources we now have, we and the world itself may move in one fullness. Moment to moment, we can grow, if we can bring ourselves to meet the moment with our lives.
    • Muriel Rukeyser, in The Life of Poetry (1949), Chapter One : The Fear of Poetry
  • Move backward to go forward. Shatter to mend. The past is now.
  • Now is the only moment.
    • Elnor (played by Evan Evagora in Star Trek: Picard Season 2 Episode 3 Assimilation (March 17, 2022) written by Kiley Rossetter & Christopher Monfette

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Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now — always… ~ Albert Schweitzer
 
What counts now is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us — what convictions, what courage, what faith — win or lose. ~ Adlai Stevenson
  • We're stumbling around in a very dark age basically trying not to kill each other. So it hurts me when you say "So what?" Because you are not just different, Jeremy, I think you have a mind that we won't evolve to for like thousands of years — you're maybe the man of the future right here and now.
  • Everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?
    • William Saroyan, in a statement to the Associated Press, five days before his death of cancer (13 May 1981)
  • I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
    For now hath time made me his numbering clock    :
    My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar
    Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
    Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
    Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
  • From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?
  • Three days: Today, Tomorrow and Yesterday, I know,
    Yet if the past were cancelled within the here and now
    And then the future hidden, I could regain that Day
    Which I, before I was, had lived in God's own way.
    • Angelus Silesius, in The Cherubinic Wanderer (1657; 1674) as translated in Cherubinischer Wandersmann of Angelus Silesius (1944), by Julia Bilger
  • What counts now is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us — what convictions, what courage, what faith — win or lose. A man doesn't save a century, or a civilization, but a militant party wedded to a principle can.
    • Adlai Stevenson, in an address to the Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois (21 July 1952); published in Speeches of Adlai Stevenson (1952), p. 17
  • We are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man — war, poverty, and tyranny — and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each.
    • Adlai Stevenson, in his acceptance speech, Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois (26 July 1952)
  • There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.
    • Adlai Stevenson, as quoted in The Stevenson Wit (1965) edited by Bill Adler.

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A state of consciousness totally free of all negativity ... is the liberated state to which all spiritual teachings point. It is the promise of salvation, not in an illusory future but right here and now. ~ Eckhart Tolle
 
To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. ~ Eckhart Tolle
  • Forgiveness of the present is even more important than forgiveness of the past. If you forgive every moment - allow it to be as it is - then there will be no accumulation of resentment that needs to be forgiven at some later time... It seems that most people need to experience a great deal of suffering before they will relinquish resistance and accept - before they will forgive. As soon as they do, one of the greatest miracles happens: the awakening of Being - consciousness through what appears as evil, the transmutation of suffering into inner peace. The ultimate effect of all the evil and suffering in the world is that it will force humans into realizing who they are beyond name and form. Thus, what we perceive as evil from our limited perspective is actually part of the higher good that has no opposite. This, however, does not become true for you except through forgiveness. Until that happens, evil has not been redeemed and therefore remains evil.
  • Through forgiveness, which essentially means recognizing the insubstantiality of the past and allowing the present moment to be as it is, the miracle of transformation happens not only within but also without. A silent space of intense presence arises both in you and around you. Whoever or whatever enters that field of consciousness will be affected by it, sometimes visibly and immediately, sometimes at deeper levels with visible changes appearing at a later time. You dissolve discord, heal pain, dispel unconsciousness - without doing anything - simply by being and holding that frequency of intense presence.
  • "Forgiveness" is a term that has been in use for 2,000 years, but most people have a very limited view of what it means. You cannot truly forgive yourself or others as long as you derive your sense of self from the past. Only through accessing the power of the Now, which is your own power, can there be true forgiveness. This renders the past powerless, and you realize deeply that nothing you ever did or that was ever done to you could touch even in the slightest the radiant essence of who you are. The whole concept of forgiveness then becomes unnecessary.... When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. You do not need it anymore. Presence is the key. The Now is the key.
  • The most important, the primordial relationship in your life is your relationship with the Now, or rather with whatever form the Now takes, that is to say, what is or what happens. If your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, that dysfunction will be reflected in every relationship and every situation you encounter. The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment. It is at this moment that you can decide what kind of relationship you want to have with the present moment. p. 122
  • The decision to make the present moment into your friend is the end of the ego. The ego can never be in alignment with the present moment, which is to say, aligned with life, since its very nature compels it to ignore, resist, or devalue the Now. Time is what the ego lives on. The stronger the ego, the more time takes over your life. Almost every thought you think is then concerned with past or future, and your sense of self depends on the past for your identity and on the future for its fulfillment. Fear, anxiety, expectation, regret, guilt, anger are the dysfunctions of the timebound state of consciousness.
  • To the ego, the present moment is, at best, only useful as a means to an end. It gets you to some future moment that is considered more important, even though the future never comes except as the present moment and is therefore never more than a thought in your head. In other words, you aren't ever fully here because you are always busy trying to get elsewhere.
  • At worst... the present moment is treated as if it were an enemy. When you hate what you are doing, complain about your surroundings, curse things that are happening or have happened, or when your internal dialogue consists of shoulds and shouldn'ts, of blaming and accusing, when you are arguing with what is, arguing with that which is always already the case you are making Life into an enemy and Life says, “War is what you want, and war is what you get.”
  • If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves. The recognition of illusion is also its ending. Its survival depends on your mistaking it for reality.... All that is required to become free of the ego is to be aware of it, since awareness and ego are incompatible. Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. p. 50
  • To sum up: Enjoyment of what you are doing, combined with a goal or vision that you work toward, becomes enthusiasm. Even though you have a goal, what you are doing in the present moment needs to remain the focal point of your attention; otherwise, you will fall out of alignment with universal purpose. Make sure your vision or goal is not an inflated image of yourself and therefore a concealed form of ego, such as wanting to become a movie star, a famous writer, or a wealthy entrepreneur. Also make sure your goal is not focused on having this or that, such as a mansion by the sea, your own company, or ten million dollars in the bank. An enlarged image of yourself or a vision of yourself having this or that are all static goals and therefore don't empower you. Instead, make sure your goals are dynamic, that is to say, point toward an activity that you are engaged in and through which you are connected to other human beings as well as to the whole. Instead of seeing yourself as a famous actor and writer and so on, see yourself inspiring countless people with your work and enriching their lives. Feel how that activity enriches or deepens not only your life but that of countless others. Feel yourself being an opening through which energy flows from the unmanifested Source of all life through you for the benefit of all.
    • Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, (2005)
  • “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth,” writes the biblical prophet (Revelation 21:1). The foundation for a new earth is a new heaven – the awakened consciousness. The earth – external reality – is only its outer reflection. The arising of a new heaven and by implication a new earth are not future events that are going to make us free. Nothing is going to make us free because only the present moment can make us free. That realization is the awakening.
    • Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, (2005)
  • Awakening as a future event has no meaning because awakening is the realization of Presence. So the new heaven, the awakened consciousness, is not a future state to be achieved. A new heaven and a new earth are arising within you at this moment, and if they are not arising at this moment, they are no more than a thought in your head and therefore not arising at all.
    • Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, (2005)
  • The outward movement into form does not express itself with equal intensity in all people. Some feel a strong urge to build, create, become involved, achieve, make an impact upon the world.... Others, after the natural expansion that comes with growing up has run its course, lead an outwardly unremarkable, seemingly more passive and relatively uneventful existence. They are more inward looking by nature, and for them the outward movement into form is minimal. They would rather return home than go out. They have no desire to get strongly involved in or change the world... Some may feel drawn toward living in a spiritual community or monastery. Others may become dropouts and live on the margins of society they feel they have little in common with. Some turn to drugs because yhey find living in this world too painful. Others eventually become healers or spiritual teachers, that is to say, teachers of Being... On the arising new earth, however, their role is just as vital as that of the creators, the doers, the reformers. Their function is to anchor the frequency of the new consciousness on his planet. I call them the frequency holders. They are here to generate consciousness through the activities of daily life, through their interactions with others as well as through “just being.”

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I said, "Isaac is up in Heaven now." That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. ~ Kurt Vonnegut
  • All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have 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.
    When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."
  • I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great, spectacularly prolific writer and scientist, Dr. Isaac Asimov in that essentially functionless capacity. At an A.H.A. memorial service for my predecessor I said, "Isaac is up in Heaven now." That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. It rolled them in the aisles. Mirth! Several minutes had to pass before something resembling solemnity could be restored.

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A Rainbow of Promise now shines on the world,
And the universe thrills at the sight. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 
From now on it will be you and I,
And our ribbon in the sky,
Ribbon in the sky,
A ribbon in the sky for our love. ~ Stevie Wonder
  • This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.
  • All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me,
    Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
  • Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams,
    Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
    You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.
  • I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand — nor am I now…
  • A new composite orchestra, binder of years and climes, ten-fold renewer,
    As of the far-back days the poets tell, the Paradiso,
    The straying thence, the separation long, but now the wandering done,
    The journey done, the journeyman come home,
    And man and art with Nature fused again.
  • My heart leaps up when I behold
    A rainbow in the sky!
    So was it when my life began;
    So is it now I am a man    ;
    So be it when I shall grow old,
    Or let me die!

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Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. ~ Zhuangzi
  • Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things.

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Ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. ~ Anonymous
 
The time for change is now. No longer shall the people be oppressed by corruption. ~ Anonymous (group)
  • I predict that Anonymous and entities like it will become far more significant over the next few years than is expected by most of our similarly irrelevant pundits — and this will, no doubt, turn out to be just as much of an understatement as anything else that has been written on the subject. … This is the future, whether one approves or not, and the failure on the part of governments and media alike to understand, and contend with the rapid change now afoot, ought to remind everyone concerned why it is that this movement is necessary in the first place.

The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle (1997)

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  • Hope keeps you focused on the future, and this continued focus perpetuates your denial of the Now and therefore your unhappiness.
  • A state of consciousness totally free of all negativity ... is the liberated state to which all spiritual teachings point. It is the promise of salvation, not in an illusory future but right here and now.
  • Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future.
  • When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace—and you do so now... When you think about the future, you do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is “borrowed” from the Now.
  • The moment your attention turns to the Now, you feel a presence, a stillness, a peace. You no longer depend on the future for fulfillment and satisfaction—you don’t look to it for salvation.
  • The pain that you create now is always some form of non acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering - and free of the egoic mind.
  • Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.

See also

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  •   Encyclopedic article on Now on Wikipedia
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