Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.
In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.
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Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.
The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Nor is it right to say there are three times: past, present and future. Perhaps it would be more correct to say: there are three times: a present of things past, a present of things present, a present of things future.
The present is not a potential past; it is the moment of choice and action.
Whoever you are, here is your master: He is, was or will be.
Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us.
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.
The time present of things past is memory; the time present of things present is direct experience; the time present of things future is expectation.
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
Your life is short. You must turn to profit the present by the aid of reason and justice.
The present is big with the future; the future could be read in the past; the distant is expressed in the near.
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.
The present alone is true and real: it is time as it is really fulfilled and our existence lies exclusively in it.
If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.
I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.
There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future.
I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.
How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.
It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.
We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present.
I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.
The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.
It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.
Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.
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Background photo by Andrii Podilnyk on Unsplash
