Echoes

It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time.

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

Even as we speak, envious time is running away from us. Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in tomorrow.

What doth care about future events bring thee, save sorrow upon sorrow? Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. It is vain and useless to be disturbed or lifted up about future things which perhaps will never come.

Do not, my soul, seek immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.

There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment. Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

...why did we wait for any thing? — why not seize the pleasure at once? — How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.

Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you're alive and able—be good.

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

I am endeavouring to live every day as if it were a complete life.

Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.

The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.

Life is a journey, not a destination.

The present moment contains past and future. The secret of transformation, is in the way we handle this very moment.

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

Thou oughtest in every deed and thought so to order thyself, as if thou wert to die this day.

Lost Time is never found again.

To-morrow's action! Can that hoary wisdom, Borne down with years, still doat upon tomorrow! That fatal mistress of the young, the lazy, The coward, and the fool, condemn'd to lose A useless life in waiting for to-morrow, To gaze with longing eyes upon to-morrow, Till interposing death destroys the prospect Strange! that this general fraud from day to day Should fill the world with wretches undetected. The soldier, labouring through a winter's march, Still sees to-morrow drest in robes of triumph; Still to the lover's long-expecting arms To-morrow brings the visionary bride. But thou, too old to hear another cheat, Learn, that the present hour alone is man's.

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.