Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not for the merits of who receives them.
Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.
What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.
We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible.
The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer.
The future is no more uncertain than the present.
So eager are our people to obliterate the present.
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.[La vraie générosité envers l’avenir consiste à tout donner au présent.]
One hurries through, even though there’s time; the past, the continent, is behind; the future is the glowing mouth in the side of the ship; the dim, turbulent alley is too confusedly the present.
Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come.
It’s what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.
