Quotes About Not Being Present

#1. Often, the price for not being present is pain. Now,

Kamal Ravikant

#2. There's a void inside most people.
It's been created by not being contented with who we are, not being happy with what we have, not being present and looking for something more, better, more exciting out there.
And we've always been trying to fill this void with something external.

Lidiya K.

#3. The moment of drifting into thought has been so clipped by modern technology. Our lives are filled with distraction with smartphones and all the rest. People are so locked into not being present.

Glen Hansard

#4. What she liked the most about drinking was not being present, that feeling of self-evasion, of disconnection, of liberation, of escape. Alcohol offered her an excellent alternative to being herself without actually dying.

Laura Esquivel

#5. The musician of the present day, not being able to give us what is beautiful, torments himself to give us what is new.

Henri Frederic Amiel

#6. My activism did not spring from being black ... The racial injustice that was present in this country during my youth was a challenge to my belief in the oneness of the human family.

Bayard Rustin

#7. The best gift we can have is living in the present moment and really enjoying it for what it is; and, not being in our heads and getting sidetracked.

Amy Smart

#8. An extrapolation of its present rate of growth reveals that in the not too distant future Physical Review will fill bookshelves at a speed exceeding that of light. This is not forbidden by general relativity since no information is being conveyed.

David Mermin

#9. The fascination exerted by one human being over another is not what he emits of his personality at the present instant of encounter but a summation of his entire being which gives off this powerful drug capturing the fancy and attachment.

Anais Nin

#10. Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time - past and future - the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.

Eckhart Tolle

#11. I realized that for the time being I could not trust myself to present a coherent face to the world.

Joan Didion

#12. In each of us there is internal knowledge, a gentle voice, beckoning us
toward well-being. It tells us to let go, to stay in the river of present experience, not to dam up our lives by worrying about potential futures or bemoaning past mistakes.

Marcey Shapiro

#13. Be Here Now is all about being present and not fearing what you don't know.

Andy Whitfield

#14. The almost egregiously English couple, Cedric and Rosamund Chailey, had slipped quietly away when the conversation turned to God. It had not seemed polite to be present when anything so American was being discussed.

Michael Frayn

#15. I am no one's agent. I am the agent of the law. All the conspiracies pass through my hands. The Committee, you know, draws its present unity from being conspired against. I do not know what would happen if the policy of believing in conspiracies were changed.

Hilary Mantel

#16. Happiness at work is not about eliminating all the bad stuff from your job. It's about being happy at work even though some of these bad things are present. It's about building your skills and your energy to fix the problems, and to create more and more positive experiences at work.

Alexander Kjerulf

#17. A form of consciousness beyond the veils of discursive thought, a space forever present for those who seek it, not in some far-off wilderness, but in our inner most hearts. When that realization dawns in the depths of one's being, the world effortlessly transforms into that which was sought.

Ian Baker

#18. None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time. Not even when we
try to understand the things that happen to us. Close the door, change the record, clean the house. Stop being who you were, become who you are NOW.

Paulo Coelho

#19. In sickness and in sickness. That is what I wish for you. Don't seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other's pain, and being present for it.

Jonathan Safran Foer

#20. Existing is going through the motions of life with no zeal and feeling you have no control; living means embracing all that this large world has to offer and not being afraid to take chances. The beauty of living is knowing you can always start over and there's always a chance for something better.

J'son M. Lee

#21. Animism is far from primitive, nor is it about pre-modernity because animism does not serve as a precursor to modernity. Rather animism is one of the many vitally present and contemporary other-than-modern ways of being human.

Graham Harvey

#22. From the contemplative point of view, being lost in thoughts of any kind, pleasant or unpleasant, is analogous to being asleep and dreaming. It's a mode of not knowing what is actually happening in the present moment. It is essentially a form of psychosis.

Sam Harris

#23. Most people think of love as a feeling, but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present.

David Richo

#24. We struggled against apartheid because we were being blamed and made to suffer for something we could do nothing about. It is the same with homosexuality. The orientation is a given, not a matter of choice. It would be crazy for someone to choose to be gay, given the homophobia that is present.

Desmond Tutu

#25. Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

Viktor E. Frankl

#26. It was about more fully inhabiting the life I have, not creating a new one.

Patti Digh

#27. It is not quite right to describe One Taste as a "consciousness" or an "awareness," because that's a little too heady, too cognitive. It's more like the simple Feeling of Being. You already feel this simple Feeling of Being: it is the simple, present feeling of existence.

Ken Wilber

#28. Bernard had become, not so much important to her as he was natural to her whole being. He was as much a part of her thoughts as breath, food, and sleep. At once present and not present, conspicuous with his absence and filling her with a sense of completion when he was there.

Jim Butcher

#29. There's so much more (to say) about being young and being a woman, but I feel like not a lot of those stories are being told, so you have to grab onto what ever small truths you can find and present it in the most honest way you can.

Jena Malone

#30. I'm not surprised people are being slaughtered, people are being martyred. Our hope isn't in this world as believers, it's in the eternity. To be absent of body is to be present with the Lord, so they are dying for something that is real and will last forever.

Russell Okung

#31. That's what I think is the biggest challenge, is just being still and learning how to just be present in that stillness and not over do it, not over act.

Andy Serkis

#32. I needed to step away from music because the truth was I couldn't be the dad I wanted to be to my kids. My truth was that I could not reconcile the two worlds - the entertainment world and being the dad I wanted to be in the present. You can't substitute time, you just can't.

Corey Hart

#33. Being in the moment means not being distracted by the melodrama and hysteria around you. Present-moment awareness allows solutions to emerge.

Deepak Chopra

#34. They are being offered a narrative, an historical story whose hope of 'salvation' lies not in a flight from history but in a great convulsive change within history, a transformation in which there will be continuity with the present as well as discontinuity.

N. T. Wright

#35. What keeps me going is that quest for just being able to be present and be myself. Not for people, but for me.

Janet Mock

#36. Men wrongly lament the flight of time, blaming it for being too swift; they do not perceive that its passage is sufficiently long, but a good memory, which nature has given to us, causes things long past to seem present.

Leonardo Da Vinci

#37. Jesus did not define the kingdom as being in the hearts of the Pharisees or anyone else. The kingdom is an objective reality when the King is present.

Dr. J. Otis Yoder

#38. In basketball - as in life - true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way.

Phil Jackson

#39. How do we meditate? It is not thinking about the past or future. It starts with being present.

Ilchi Lee

#40. He listened to their opinions, stated his own, and supported them with reasons; and from his being constantly occupied with such meditations, it resulted, that when in command no complication could ever present itself with which he was not prepared to deal.

Niccolo Machiavelli

#41. Race is the San Andreas Fault of our culture as well as our history. Its fissures are forever present and not that far beneath the surface of every day life. To deny that is to risk being labeled delusional.

Mike Barnicle

#42. For the rest, silence or good music, not much food, a lot of solitude, walks on the Heath, the time to think while others ... well, often fall apart. Not so bad, not so bad at all. Being queer and self-sufficient is the best present at this season.

Will Self

#43. Miss the present and you live in boredom. BE in the present and you will be surprised that there is no boredom at all. Start by looking around a little more like a child. Be a child again! That's what meditation is all about: being a child again - a rebirth, being innocent again, not-knowing.

Rajneesh

#44. I ought not to have stirred, I was swept into the dance, caught up in the whirling movement of things. Being in Time means running after the present. You run after things, you run with things, you flow away.

Eugene Ionesco

#45. We ought not to READ the scriptures, but listen to them, for our Beloved is present and speaks to us through them. (vs. it being like a love letter sent to us from afar).

M. Basil Pennington

#46. A dream is a creation of the intelligence, the creator being present but not knowing how it will end.

Cesare Pavese

#47. To the being of fully alive, the future is not ominous but a promise; it surrounds the present like a halo.

John Dewey

#48. To be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender ...

Rebecca Solnit

#49. Thomas Aquinas said of suffering, as Aristotle had said of shame, that it was a thing not good in itself; but a thing which might have a certain goodness in particular circumstances. That is to say, if evil is present, pain at recognition of the evil, being a kind of knowledge, is relatively good.

C.S. Lewis

#50. This is the sleep: being absent, being not present to the present moment, being somewhere else.

Rajneesh

#51. God is present in the moment of choice, not in order to watch but in order to be chosen. Therefore, each person must choose. Terrible is the battle, in a person's innermost being, between God and the world. The crowning risk involved lies in the possession of choice.

Soren Kierkegaard

#52. Dhyana is retaining one's tranquil state of mind in any circumstance, unfavorable as well as favorable, and not being disturbed or frustrated even when adverse conditions present themselves one after another.

D.T. Suzuki

#53. Live in the mysterious. Accepting and being fully at peace with not knowing what's going to happen in the future will allow us to be fully present and more peaceful in the present.

Matthew Donnelly

#54. It is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.

Karl Marx

#55. When you are not making the present moment into a means to an end, you also are not making every human being you meet - in your business and even at home, in your family - into a means to an end.

Eckhart Tolle

#56. I do think that we have this incredible opportunity because being on-line - the Internet is a relatively new space - we do have this incredible opportunity to change that dynamic, to make sure that women are present in all sorts of spaces, not just women-only spaces.

Jessica Valenti

#57. A prophet is one who sees what is happening and being done in the present that they can tell us what will happen to us if we do not change now, immediately, turning from our present course.

Megan McKenna

#58. While writing books about the past, I think about the present. It's not intentional, but somehow my books end up being written under the sign of a political mood.

Rick Perlstein

#59. A lot of exercise is mindless; you can have music or the radio on and not be aware. But if you're aware in anything you do - and it doesn't have to be yoga - it changes you. Being present changes you.

Mariel Hemingway

#60. The Righteous Salaf were as fearful of their good deeds being squandered, or not being accepted, as the present generation is certain that their neglect would be forgiven.

Hasan Of Basra

#61. Most people are either sleep walking through their waking life or wake walking through their sleeping life. either way they're not getting much out of it.

Waking Life

#62. I am afraid that I do not believe that any body of men can have enough knowledge of the past, the present and the future to establish "development priorities" which presumably means procuring some developments as being good and prohibiting others as being bad.

John James Cowperthwaite

#63. You're all murdering life ... You're all trying to change yourselves, all trying to change what is, and thus you're never actually living what is. You're killing who you are every day of your lives by not being who you are ... where you are.

Luke Rhinehart

#64. Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God's being present in the mess of our unfixedness. (Messy Spirituality)

Mike Yaconelli

#65. Anxiety is not fear, being afraid of this or that definite object, but the uncanny feeling of being afraid of nothing at all. It is precisely Nothingness that makes itself present and felt as the object of our dread.

William Barrett

#66. The softer your heart is the less that your past is forming your present and your future. When there is openness and softness of heart, what forms the present and the future is not your past but the reality of your own being.

John De Ruiter

#67. I wish to understand in such a way that everything that is inexplicable shall present itself to me as being necessarily inexplicable, and not as being something I am under an arbitrary obligation to believe.

Leo Tolstoy

#68. Let today be the day you stop being haunted by the ghost of yesterday. Holding a grudge & harboring anger/resentment is poison to the soul. Get even with people ... but not those who have hurt us, forget them, instead get even with those who have helped us.

Steve Maraboli

#69. Wayne Grudem, my friend and seminary professor, put it well: "God does not have size or spatial dimensions and is present at every point of space with His whole being, yet God acts differently in different places."19

James MacDonald

#70. Meditation is not meant to help us avoid problems or run away from difficulties. It is meant to allow positive healing to take place. To meditate is to learn how to stop - to stop being carried away by our regrets about the past, our anger or despair in the present, or our worries about the future.

Nhat Hanh

#71. Some people say it is hard to live in such a way, being completely one with the present moment. Of course, it is not hard. The opposite is hard. Not being one with life is hard, and that is how most people live.

Eckhart Tolle

#72. The individual needs the return to spiritual values, for he can survive in the present human situation only by reaffirming that man is not just a biological and psychological being but also a spiritual being, that is creature, and existing for the purposes of his Creator and subject to Him.

Peter Drucker

#73. Most commercial products that contain organic molecules possess at least one carbon-carbon double bond, or if one is not present, it is likely that an olefin was used in its preparation. This being the case, the potential applications of olefin metathesis are endless.

Robert H. Grubbs

#74. but the older he got, the better he understood; forgiveness was an act done after the fact - a piece of the bad deeds future - and if you point the people's eyes to the future they might not see what is being done to hurt them in the present.

Yaa Gyasi

#75. It's too hard to present an opinion on something that's not true to who you are. It's much easier to base opinions and debates off of fact and your true heart on things. To me that just comes quite naturally, and it's also about being open to what the debate is about and hearing the other side.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck

#76. Inspiration is very nice when you get it. It's like being given a present you weren't expecting. You don't hand the present back and say, 'My birthday's not till November.' You take it and run.

Jan Mark

#77. Past, present and future are not amenities of language. Time unfolds into the seamsof being. It passes through you, making and shaping.

Don DeLillo

#78. It is not necessary to teach others, to cure them or to improve them; it is only necessary to live among them, sharing the human condition and being present to them in love.

Charles De Foucauld

#79. We don't have in our culture a healthy understanding and respect for the value of Being, which is simply being present in the moment, not trying to go somewhere, not trying to accomplish anything but, just present.

Shakti Gawain

#80. In sexual abandon as in danger we are impelled, however briefly, into that vital present in which we do not stand apart from life, we ARE life, our being fills us, in ecstasy with another being, loneliness falls away into eternity. But in other days, such union was attainable through simple awe.

Peter Matthiessen

#81. He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future. Things persisted in not being what they seemed.

Frank Herbert

#82. On the off-chance you won't live forever, maybe you should try being happy now.

Janice Kaplan

#83. Listening is about being present, not just about being quiet. I meet others with the life I've lived, not just with my questions.

Krista Tippett

#84. If someone is not spiritually present during a time when you need their help, then how will their physical presence make a difference?

Shannon L. Alder

#85. What possible good does it do to resent any moment for unfolding as it does, to wish it didn't happen? Does it change the moment in any positive way? No it does not.

Guy Finley

#86. -make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being ...

Aldous Huxley

#87. I am fully present wherever I am. Why bother being in a community or neighborhood and not being fully present? I think that's colonization. I'm not interested in that.

Mark Bradford

#88. You're watching your kids playing football, and you're not present. It's like the worst ... it's horrible. I despise myself for it. I think it's a particularly male thing. Being present and in the moment with your kids is something a lot of men struggle with.

Andy Serkis

#89. Let us think today of the prospect of sharing in a sublime and blessed existence such as is portrayed in the text of the Apocalypse before us, and let us ask ourselves whether it should or should not make any difference in our present state of being.

Henry Parry Liddon

#90. It's all a matter of paying attention, being awake in the present moment, and not expecting a huge payoff. The magic in this world seems to work in whispers and small kindnesses.

Charles De Lint

#91. Thou wouldst be loved? - then let thy heart From its present pathway part not; Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace, thy more than beauty, Shall be an endless theme of praise. And love a simple duty.

Edgar Allan Poe

#92. While I'm frustrated at the amount I'm expected to take on in the present, the 1950s woman was frustrated by being excluded - not being allowed to take things on at all.

Sara Sheridan

#93. Reading is being present yesterday and tomorrow, but not right now. Traveling is being present right now, but not right here. Writing is all about reading and traveling, anytime, anywhere.

Sonnia Kemmer

#94. The future is an ever-shifting maze of possibilities until it becomes the present. The future I have shown you tonight is not yet fixed. But it is more likely to become so with the passing of every day because nothing is being done to turn it aside. If you would change it, do as I have told you.

Terry Brooks

#95. If humor is not present, I tend to be concerned about the artist, or distrusting of what they're presenting - unless there is an obvious tragedy being talked about.

Scott Avett

#96. Awareness is not an idea about awareness, as it is not thought at all. Awareness allows you to feel life as it's happening, as it is in perception that consciousness and all spiritual qualities are manifest.

Belsebuub

#97. Nothing is ever truly gone ...
Not for me, nor for any human being. We can only go forward, unless we are guests in some enchantment that is not is ours. We are condemned to an endless present, and we can never go back-the source of all our joy, and all our sorrow.
-Hem at Zelika's grave

Alison Croggon

#98. It is He who manifests as both matter and consciousness. There is no place where God is not. In every atom, in every living being He alone is present.

Rama Swami

#99. One of the privileges of being an athlete is that on days when I have practice and games, I'm present whether I'm present or not. It's not fair, but that's the system. What can I do about it?

Erin O'Riordan

#100. Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony.

Ludwig Wittgenstein