Passing Moments Quotes

• Has it ever struck you ... that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going? It’s really all memory ... except for each passing moment.

  Eric Kandel

  Inspirational, Life, Time

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• With each passing moment, a Soul sets off to find Itself.

  Rumi

  Soul, Passings, Moments

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• To live fully is to let go and die with each passing moment, and to be reborn in each new one.

  Jack Kornfield

  Life, Letting Go, Reborn

  Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield (2001). “Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation”, p.177, Shambhala Publications

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• But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future.

  John F. Kennedy

  Time, Art, Past

  Kennedy, John F. (1964). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963”, p.517, Best Books on

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• I'm beginning to think that life is about passing moments and small celebrations. Without them there's only pain, fear, ambition, and, for some of us, foolish hope.

  Kyra Davis

  Pain, Ambition, Thinking

  Kyra Davis (2013). “Just One Night, Part 2: Exposed”, p.64, Simon and Schuster

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• The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Life, Common Sense, Mindfulness

  W. Somerset Maugham (2010). “The Summing Up”, p.50, Random House

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• I have the happiness of a passing moment, and what more can mortal ask?

  George Gissing

  Happiness, Passings, Mortals

  George Gissing (2016). “The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft”, p.55, The Floating Press

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• I'm weird; I have a very strange emotional memory. I really somehow hold on to even passing moments with people.

  Marc Maron

  Memories, Emotional, People

  Interview with Kyle Dowling, www.believermag.com.

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• We have to keep an eye on the future with a sense of the past in every passing moment of the present.

  Amanda Harlech

  Eye, Past, Passings

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• To snatch the passing moment and examine it for signs of eternity is the noblest of occupations.

  Louis J. Halle

  Occupation, Eternity, Passings

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• Children have an anxious concern for living beings, and the satisfaction of this instinct fills them with delight. It is therefore easy to interest them in taking care of plants and especially of animals. Nothing awakens foresight in a small child such as this. When he knows that animals have need of him, that little plants will dry up if he does not water them, he binds together with a new thread of love today's passing moments with those of the morrow.

  Maria Montessori

  Children, Animal, Dry Up

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• Live each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance toward the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point. So climb slowly, enjoying each passing moment; and then the view from the summit will serve a more rewarding climax for your journey.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Life, Motivational, Beautiful

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• Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" or "life" or "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever.

  John Knowles

  Powerful, Mean, Past

  John Knowles (2014). “A Separate Peace”, p.33, Simon and Schuster

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• As wave is driven by wave
  And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead,
  So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows,
  Always, for ever and new. What was before
  Is left behind; what never was is now;
  And every passing moment is renewed.

  Ovid

  Time Flies, Wave, Driven

  Ovid (1998). “Metamorphoses”, OUP Oxford

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• Swift flies our time on pinions fleet, Like vapours on the breeze; The transient bliss we now call sweet, The passing moments seize. The gilded joy, the present hour, Soon wing themselves away; Departing like the fading flower That pleas'd us Yesterday.

  William Muir

  Sweet, Flower, Wings

  William Muir (1818). “Poems on Various Subjects”, p.91

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• Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this loss or suspension of the power to deal with unaccustomed things, and to keep up with the swiftness of the passing moment. [Speaking of self-posed isolation in old age.]

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Loss, Self, Giving

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• Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment, 'Stay, thou art so fair.

  Robert Kennedy

  Art, Ambition, Soul

  Robert F. Kennedy (1998). “Make Gentle the Life of the World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy”, Harcourt

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• If eternity had a season, it would be midsummer. Autumn, winter, spring are all change and passage, but at the height of summer the year stands poised. It's only a passing moment, but even as it passes the heart knows it cannot change.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Summer, Spring, Heart

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2009). “Powers”, p.74, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• True conformity to the dictates of nature requires reverence for the past and solicitude for the future. 'Nature' is not simply the sensation of the passing moment; it is eternal, though we evanescent men experience only a fragment of it. We have no right to imperil the happiness of posterity by impudently tinkering with the heritage of humanity.

  Russell Kirk

  Past, Men, Humanity

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.57, Regnery Publishing

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• Since eternity means happiness for you, what does it matter if some of these passing moments are unpleasant?

  Pio of Pietrelcina

  Mean, Heaven, Doe

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• A sketch book freezes time. It is an instantaneous form of meditation focusing us on the worth of every passing moment.

  Julia Cameron

  Wise, Book, Meditation

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• And I too wanted to be. That is all I wanted; and this is the last word. At the bottom of all these attempts which seemed without bounds, I find the same desire again: to drive existence out of me, to rid the passing moments of their fat, to twist them, dry them, purify myself, harden myself, to give back at last the sharp, precise sound of a saxophone note. That could even make an apologue: there was a poor man who got in the wrong world.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Men, Giving, Desire

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• People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it's quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colors. Waxy yellows, cloud-spot blues. Murky darkness. In my line of work, I make it a point to notice them.

  Markus Zusak

  Clouds, Color, People

  Markus Zusak (2013). “The Book Thief: Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition”, p.4, RH Childrens Books

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• Old age likes to dwell in the recollections of the past, and, mistaking, the speedy march of years, often is inclined to take the prudence of the winter time for a fat wisdom of, midsummer days. Manhood is bent to the passing cares of the passing moment, and holds so closely to his eyes the sheet of, "to-day," that it screens the "to-morrow" from his sight.

  Lajos Kossuth

  Eye, Winter, Past

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• With each passing moment I'm becoming part of the past. There is no future for me, just the past steadily accumulating.

  Haruki Murakami

  Past, Becoming, Passings

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”, p.263, Random House

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