The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted and spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly managed past.
The Golden Age never was the present Age.
The future is the worst thing about the present.[L’avenir est ce qu’il y a de pire dans le présent.]
The future is no more uncertain than the present.
The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.
So eager are our people to obliterate the present.[So bereit ist man bei uns, die Gegenwart auszulöschen.]
Remember also that every man lives only this present moment, which is a fleeting instant: the rest of time is either spent or quite unknown.[Kαὶ ἔτι συμμνημόνευε, ὅτι μόνον ζῇ ἕκαστος τὸ παρὸν τοῦτο, τὸ ἀκαριαῖον: τὰ δὲ ἄλλα ἢ βεβίωται ἢ ἐν ἀδήλῳ.]
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.[La vraie générosité envers l’avenir consiste à tout donner au présent.]
Perhaps that’s why I find myself looking backward. The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present.
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.
Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, in complaining of the present, in fearing future.
