Top 100 No Present Sayings
#1. Time was just a hangover from the past with no present meaning
Norman Maclean
#2. History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.
John F. Kennedy
#3. Wisely the Hebrews admit no Present tense in their language;
While we are speaking the word, it is is already the Past.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#4. There's no present, there's no future, I don't even know about the past.
Ozzy Osbourne
#6. I don't want a future, I want a present. To me this appears of greater value. You have a future only when you have no present, and when you have a present, you forget to even think about the future.
Robert Walser
#7. For Nautzera there was no present, only the clamour of a harrowing past and the threat of a corresponding future. For Nautzera, the present had receded to a point, had become the precarious fulcrum whereby history leveraged destiny. A mere formality.
R. Scott Bakker
#8. There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now.
Eugene O'Neill
#9. There's no time like the present,
No present like time.
And life can be over in the space of a rhyme.
There's no gift like friendship
And no love like mine.
Give me your love to treasure through time.
Georgia Byng
#10. Without the past, there would be no present. No future. I don't regret a moment of it. It all brought us here. To this place. To this moment. To this love.
Sarah MacLean
#11. For him there is no present; there is only the past of what has been formulated and seen and the future of what has been formulated and not seen. The present is surrendered to the past and the future.
Walker Percy
#12. There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.
George Carlin
#13. One moment you can say the words 'I am'. And the next, you have no first person, no present tense, and no entitlement, as a subject, to act on verbs of any kind.
Lynne Truss
#14. There can be no present, without past actions committed
C.J. Haines
#15. For if the will has nothing to employ it and love has no present object with which to busy itself, the soul finds itself without either support or occupation, its solitude and aridity cause it great distress and its thoughts involve it in the severest conflict.
Teresa Of Avila
#16. But don't forget that memory is like salt: the right amount brings out the flavour in food, too much ruins it. If you live in the past all the time, you'll find yourself with no present to remember.
Paulo Coelho
#17. I see no present solution of a great and intricate problem but that the rich should realize their duty to the poor.
Gertrude Atherton
#18. When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#19. I am any man's suitor,
If any will be my tutor:
Some say this life is pleasant,
Some think it speedeth fast,
In time there is no present,
In eternity no future,
In eternity no past.
We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die.
Who will riddle me the how and the why?
Alfred Lord Tennyson
#20. But the world, in its present state, is no place for princesses
Muriel Barbery
#21. If today shows no results, that doesn't mean the past wasn't working or the present isn't working. It just means we see only part of the picture. Faith believes God is working in every part of the process.
Deb Brammer
#22. You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.
Henry David Thoreau
#23. There is giving, and there is knowingness. Some have generosity and compassion but no true knowledge. Some have knowledge but no self-sacrifice. When both are present, that person is blessed and prosperous. Such a being is truly incomparable.
Rumi
#24. In ancient times people mistook us for gods, but we peculiars are no less mortal than common folk. Time loops merely delay the inevitable, and the price we pay for using them is hefty - an irrevocable divorce from the ongoing present.
Ransom Riggs
#25. As however the ancients say that in case of necessity any Christian lay person can administer the sacrament of Baptism, so Luther says the same thing about absolution in case of necessity, where no priest is present.
Martin Chemnitz
#26. I am not going to spend any time whatsoever in attacking the Foreign Secretary. If we complain about the tune, there is no reason to attack the monkey when the organ grinder is present.
Aneurin Bevan
#27. There exists only the present instant ... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.
Meister Eckhart
#28. Not only can no one predict the future, we don't understand the present - and there isn't even any certainty about the past.
Harry Browne
#29. Physicists now say there is no such thing as time: everything co-exists. Chronology is entirely artificial and essentially determined by emotion. Contiguity suggests layers of things, the past and present somehow coalescing or co-existing.
W.G. Sebald
#30. No sophistry, no jugglery in figures can explain away the evidence that the skeletons in many villages present to the naked eye.
Mahatma Gandhi
#31. A reliable indicator we have entered present moment awareness is if our experience, no matter how comfortable or uncomfortable it may feel at any given moment, is infused with gratefulness.
Michael Brown
#32. The sling is to a rifle what the holster is to a pistol. If you have a sling, chances are you will keep the rifle with you. If there is no sling present, you will set the rifle down. When you are at the absolutely farthest point away from the rifle that you can possibly get, you'll need it.
Clint Smith
#33. Perhaps that's why I find myself looking backward. The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present.
Kristin Hannah
#34. Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future.
Susan Sontag
#35. Trust no future, however pleasant! Let the dead past bury its dead! Act
act in the living Present! Heart within and God overhead.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#36. The present time of believers is no longer determined by the past. It takes its definition from the future.
Jurgen Moltmann
#37. I have no time to look back. My heart is dancing in the present moment feeling the joy of life.
Debasish Mridha
#38. There was no way to grasp the reality of the present which slid away each second, invisible as air; reality only existed after the fact, in one's vision of the past.
Paula Fox
#39. If there were a clear prospect that such evils were part of a barbarian past, then at least we might find a small crumb of comfort. No such prospect exists: no scientific analysis can even remotely answer or account for past and present horrors of human behaviour.
Simon Conway Morris
#40. Society has provided [children] no rituals by which they become members of the tribe, of the community. All children need to be twice born, to learn to function rationally in the present world, leaving childhood behind.
Joseph Campbell
#41. Dangerous because your present Administration and its specialized agencies by all accounts know no restraint in hitting out at any perceived enemy of America, and nobody or nothing can protect one from their vindictiveness.
Breyten Breytenbach
#42. There is no correlation between the degree of comfort enjoyed and the achievement of a civilization. On the contrary, absorption in ease is one of the most reliable signs of present or impending decay.
Richard M. Weaver
#43. No man ever did, nor ever shall, truly go forth to convert the nations, nor to prophesy in the present state of witnesses against Antichrist, but by the gracious inspiration and instigation of the Holy Spirit of God.
Roger Williams
#44. When we say something, our subjective intention or situation is always involved. So there is no perfect word; some distortion is always present in a statement.
Shunryu Suzuki
#45. The young should not think of themselves as immature and the elderly need not view themselves as feeble. Our minds control our bodies. Have no age, transcend both past and future, and enter into naka-ima - the eternal present.
H.E. Davey
#46. I'm no longer interested in making political films. There's something old-fashioned about them. Young people now don't care for politics. It isn't present in life as it used to be. And increasingly I like films which reflect present-day reality.
Bernardo Bertolucci
#47. Admitting pain humbles us to the reality of our personal histories and our present conditions. We no longer have to pretend we are something that we are not.
Steven Franssen
#48. Guston tacked toward celebrating the crap of life not for its own ironic sake, but as the ever-present still life that surrounds the embarrassingly, even tragically human. No Duchampian object is ever tragic. Many if not most of Guston's objects, even the most hilarious, are.
Ross Feld
#49. I am no friend of present-day Christianity, though its Founder was sublime.
Vincent Van Gogh
#50. I'm living in the present. I have no ambition. It's true. But I want to live.
Gerard Depardieu
#51. I knew it," she snapped. "You're no different from all men. You're just another jerk pretending to be single! I didn't wanna wrap a lie into a Christmas present anyway.
Maha Erwin
#52. A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#53. My favorite anything is always relative to the context of present time, place and mood. When I finish a book and want to immediately find another by the same author and no other, that author is elevated to my favorite.
Amy Tan
#54. In socialism, private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism, private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present.
George Bernard Shaw
#56. I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards 'apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data' but in reality the situation is no quite so simple.
Keith Briffa
#57. Every soul has a past
Every soul lives a present
And every soul deserve a future
no judging on one's past
because its might be your future
Hlovate
#58. There is no past, memory paints it,' " the pope recited. " 'There is no future, for hope shapes it. There is only the present, but it is always escaping us.
David I. Kertzer
#59. No amount of study of present forms [of life] would permit us to infer [the existence of] dinosaurs
Max Delbruck
#60. Enough to tempt me; I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by
Jane Austen
#61. There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.
Simone Weil
#62. Notwithstanding my present incompetency, I am beginning to translate the New Testament, being extremely anxious to get some parts of Scripture, at least, into an intelligible shape, if for no other purpose than to read, as occasion offers, to the Burmans I meet with.
Adoniram Judson
#63. Whitman's poems present no trace of rhyme, save in a couple or so of chance instances. Parts of them, indeed, may be regarded as a warp of prose amid the weft of poetry,
Walt Whitman
#64. One lives in the very present moment; lives intently. There is no urge to be doing: being is the highest good.
Patrick O'Brian
#65. There is no bad.. nor good.. there just is.. and that is the present moment. How does that look.. depends on where you are along the journey.. Blink.. and the perception can change.
Jonathan Bailey
#66. I have no perfect panacea for human ills. And even if I had I would not attempt to present a system of philosophy between the soup and fish.
Elbert Hubbard
#67. When you forgive those that hurt you, they no longer have control over your future happiness. Their anger keeps them a prisoner to your past, while you enjoy the present.
Shannon L. Alder
#68. There is no mystery. Truth is here - always present. Mystery is in the mind and mind is a myth.
Rashmit Kalra
#69. The 'what should be' never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no 'what should be,' there is only what is.
Lenny Bruce
#70. If I could only teach you one thing about the world, it would be to Appreciate and be as present as possible in every moment. Take everything in and try and learn from it. No matter how tangled things get, there is always a lesson to be learned in the untangling of those things.
Bethany Brookbank
#71. Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.
Oscar Wilde
#72. We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible.
Simone De Beauvoir
#73. We must help each other to be present and compassionate. Remember that we have no idea what the person next to us is going through; compassion is the only choice.
Alysia Reiner
#74. No man bears more responsibility for the present worldwide financial crisis and coming depression than Alan Greenspan.
Bill Bonner
#75. History dies without the present. There is no future without the path made to it by the past.
Aidan Chambers
#76. No one can or will ever feel your pain as much as you. Forgive yourself for the past, seize the gift of the present moment.
K.J. Kilton
#77. Poison ivy, because who needed a case of that on your pecker). We're all here in Derry. No camp, no relatives, no vacations, no AWAY. All right here. Present and accounted for. There's
Stephen King
#78. This was my attempt to deter cold callers: "There's no past, there's no future, just one pulsating present ... Please leave your message after the tone."
Bill Bailey
#79. If you take good care of the present, there is no need to worry about the future.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#80. I myself, to be sure - I have as yet seen no great man. That which is great, the acutest eye is at present insensible to it. It is the kingdom of the populace.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#81. The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant.
Kate Chopin
#82. But for me to have the opportunity to stand in front of a bunch of executives and present myself, I had to hustle in my own way. I can't tell you how frustrating it was that they didn't get that. No joke - I'd leave meetings crying all the time.
Kanye West
#83. Religious teachings and teachers have conditioned us to think of faith as a magic catalyst that makes God work for us. In no way does faith make God work nor does it release some kind of miracle power. Faith simply tunes into and turns on the divine flow that has always been present
Eric Butterworth
#84. In one thing you have not changed, dear friend," said Aragorn: "you still speak in riddles."
"What? In riddles?" said Gandalf. "No! For I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#85. No matter how happy I had been in the past I do not long for it. The present is always the moment for which I love.
Jamaica Kincaid
#86. Where there is no hope in the future, there is no power in the present.
John C. Maxwell
#87. Art can no longer be art today if it does not reach into the heart of our present culture and work transformatively within it that is, an art which cannot mould society - and through this naturally operate upon the core questions of our society - is not art.
Joseph Beuys
#88. It is not the function of religion to answer all the questions about God's moral government of the universe, but to give us courage through faith to go on in the face of questions to which we find no answer in our present status.
Harold B. Lee
#89. But the love of sisters needs no words. It does not depend on memories, or mementos, or proof. It runs as deep as a heartbeat. It is as ever present as a pulse.
Lisa Wingate
#90. The oldest thing of all is the present, because there's never been anything else but present. No one has ever lived in the past, and no one lives in the future, either.
Harry Mulisch
#91. Art is a continuous activity with no separation between past and present.
Henry Moore
#92. And I will never again underestimate the power of anticipation. There is no better boost in the present than an invitation into the future.
Caroline Kepnes
#93. If you feel stuck in your present life, if you feel no enthusiasm for anything, if you think you have no purpose or that you lost that purpose somewhere along the way, I guarantee you are living in a dungeon made of stories. And that none of those limiting stories are true.
Martha Beck
#94. I can't help it; present me with a situation, and I have to think about both sides of it. I can try to suppress it, but I cannot shut off the way I think. Once knowledge is gained, there's no going back to ignorance. I think about what the other feels. I can't stop it,
Mercedes Lackey
#95. I would alter nothing of the journey made for it is in this road travelled that the sweetest of lessons are learnt.
Truth Devour
#96. As far as you are concerned the present is your point of action, focus and power, and from that point of volition you form both your future and past. Realizing this, you will understand that you are not at the mercy of a past over which you have no control.
Seth
#97. I had an argument with my students on why they want to present their work in an iBook, it's like your sister who has no design training, put on some outfits in the bedroom, took some pictures, sent them to Apple and after paying 40 quid, you have a portfolio! I can't believe it.
Louise Wilson
#98. At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit ... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise; as the laws of man's own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness.
Henry David Thoreau
#99. Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle.
Charles Darwin
#100. There are those nights where you are just so emotionally present that you crack yourself open. And it works. And on the nights when you don't have it in you because you're tired or you've got no voice, you still are able to do your job and tell the story that people have come to hear.
Staceyann Chin
