Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.
— George OrwellImagination sees the complete reality, - it is where past, present and future meet... Imagination is limited neither to the reality which is apparent - nor to one place. It lives everywhere. It is at a centre and feels the vibrations of all the circles within which east and west are virtually included. Imagination is the life of mental freedom. It realizes what everything is in its many aspects ... Imagination does not uplift: we don't want to be uplifted, we want to be more completely aware.
— Kahlil GibranLive for today. Multitudes of people have failed to live for today. ... What they have had within their grasp today they have missed entirely because only the future has intrigued them.
— William Allen WhiteForgiveness empties the past of its power to empty the present of its peace.
— L.R. KnostThe gift of prayer is priceless gift.
— Lailah Gifty AkitaThe present offers itself to our touch for only an instant of time and then eludes the senses.
— PlutarchYou are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn't a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terribleness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terribleness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better.
— Andrew SolomonBy taking control of the present, you are choosing to alter the past you are making for yourself, and your future too.
— Innocent MwatsikesimbeThe present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.
— Zora Neale HurstonThe past and future are what's complicated. It's the present that's simple.
— David Levithan