Quotes
Quotes about Present
My mind to me a kingdom is;
Such present joys therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss
That earth affords or grows by kind:
Though much I want which most would have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave.
Past and to come seems best; things present worst.
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature. Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings.
Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow:
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill,--
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man.
2 Watch. How if a' will not stand?
Dogb. Why, then, take no note of him, but let him go; and presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of a knave.
But our captain counts the image of God--nevertheless his image--cut in ebony as if done in ivory, and in the blackest Moors he sees the representation of the King of Heaven.
Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me; from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of Nature's works, to me expung'd and raz'd,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptred pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine.
By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes.
Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state.
For he lives twice who can at once employ
The present well, and e'en the past enjoy.
Whose well-taught mind the present age surpast.
Live while you live, the epicure would say,
And seize the pleasures of the present day;
Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries,
And give to God each moment as it flies.
Lord, in my views, let both united be:
I live in pleasure when I live to thee.
Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow,--attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
Now let us thank the Eternal Power: convinced
That Heaven but tries our virtue by affliction,--
That oft the cloud which wraps the present hour
Serves but to brighten all our future days.
If you choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of different shapes,--some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong,--and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole. The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly that we can say they were almost made for each other.
For with G. D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to speak profanely) to be present with the Lord.
Presents, I often say, endear absents.
A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us.
How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,
When fond recollection presents them to view.
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.
To me, through every season dearest;
In every scene, by day, by night,
Thou, present to my mind appearest
A quenchless star, forever bright;
My solitary sole delight:
Where'er I am, by shore, at sea,
I think of thee.
Sorrows remembered sweeten present joy.
Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.
The characteristic of the present age is craving credulity.
