Today is today, yesterday is yesterday, the future is the time that is left.
—Karl Lagerfeld
Nothing has ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?
—Eckhart Tolle
If you live in the past, you don’t enjoy what is happening right now because you will always wish it to be different than it is.
—Miguel Ruiz in The Four Agreements
That’s the worst way to miss somebody. When they’re right beside you and you miss them anyway.
—Pittacus Lore in I Am Number Four
I wanted someone to love who would stay: stay and be there, always.
—Audrey Niffenegger in The Time Traveler’s Wife
The rooms of his apartment were full with the dog home again, convalescing. He was satisfied to know, even when she was out of sight, that somewhere in the apartment she was sleeping or eating or sitting watchfully. It was family, he guessed, more or less. Did most people want a house of living things at night, to know that in the dark around them other warm bodies slept?
Such a house could even be the whole world.
—Lydia Millet
They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
—Emily Dickinson
Sometimes, the best way to help someone is just to be near them.
—Veronica Roth in Divergent
I realize, for the first time, how very lonely I’ve been. How comforting the presence of another human being can be.
—Suzanne Collins in The Hunger Games
They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
—Emily Dickinson
The old futures have a way of hanging around.… Everyone sort of knows that the real future is going to be cluttered with all the same junk we have today, except it will be old and beat up and there will be more of it.
—William Gibson
Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it.
—Thomas Fuller
There is a difference between saying goodbye and letting go. Goodbye is not permanent. You can meet years later and share what happened in your life. You can smile and laugh about all the nonsense that you both went through. However, letting go is being okay with never seeing this person ever again… being okay with never knowing how their life turned out… being okay with fifty or more years of silence… being okay with running into that person at a grocery store and having them not acknowledge your presence. This is the part of life that doesn't sit well with me and never will. It tears my heart in pieces, robs me of gratitude, drains me of anything positive and eats at the faith that holds on.
—Shannon L. Alder
Nonattachment is not the elimination of desire. It is the spaciousness to allow any quality of mind, any thought or feeling, to arise without closing around it, without eliminating the pure witness of being. It is an active receptivity to life.
—Stephen Levine
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
—Pema Chödrön