Background Image
The present only has a being in nature; things past have a being in the memory only, but things to come have no being at all; the future but a fiction of the mind.
-Thomas Hobbes
Please Wait....
Translating....

The Present Only Has A Being In

Thomas Hobbes
The present only has a being in nature; things past have a being in the memory only, but things to come have no being at all; the future but a fiction of the mind.
Views: 1
Cite this Page
Prevent plagiarism by providing proper attribution.
APA FORMAT
Embed this Quote
Copy this HTML code to embed the quote on your website or blog.
HTML CODE
Topic
Memories Future Past

More From Thomas Hobbes

Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of memories. if i am going to have a true memory, there are a thousand things that must first be forgotten. memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. a memory that is not alive to the present does not remember the here and now, does not remember its true identity, is not memory at all. he who remembers nothing but facts and past events, and is never brought back into the present, is a victim of amnesia.
Memories Past True Identity
Memory is like fiction; or else it's fiction that's like memory. this really came home to me once i started writing fiction, that memory seemd a kind of fiction, or vice versa. either way, no matter how hard you try to put everything neatly into shape, the context wanders this way and that, until finally the context isn't even there anymore... warm with life, hopeless unstable.
Memories Home Writing
The past is dead, and has no resurrection; but the future is endowed with such a life, that it lives to us even in anticipation. the past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the future is, in all things, our friend. in the past is no hope; the future is both hope and fruition. the past is the text-book of tyrants; the future is the bible of the free. those who are solely governed by the past stand like lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.
Book Past Tyrants
Live in the present. the past is gone; the future is unknown -- but the present is real, and your opportunities are now. you must see these opportunities; they must be real for you. the catch is that they can't seem real if your mind is buried in past failures, if you keep reliving old mistakes, old guilts, old tragedies. fight your way above the many inevitable traumatizations of your ego, escape damnation by the past, and look to the opportunities of the present. i don't mean some vague moment in the present -- next week or next month, perhaps. i mean today, this minute.
Real Mistake Mean
All fiction, if it's successful, is going to appeal to the emotions. emotion is really what fiction is all about. that's not to say fiction can't be thoughtful, or present some interesting or provocative ideas to make us think. but if you want to present an intellectual argument, nonfiction is a better tool. you can drive a nail with a shoe but a hammer is a better tool for that. but fiction is about emotional resonance, about making us feel things on a primal and visceral level.
Writing Successful Thinking
To look back on one's life is to experience the capriciousness of memory. ... the past is not static. it can be relived only in memory, and memory is a device for forgetting as well as remembering. it, too, is not immutable. it rediscovers, reinvents, reorganizes. like a passage of prose it can be revised and repunctuated. to that extent, every autobiography is a work of fiction and every work of fiction an autobiography.
Memories Past Looks
Similar Quotes
I am already sensible of decay in the power of walking, and find my memory not so faithful as it used to be. this may be partly owing to the incessant current of new matter flowing constantly through it; but i ascribe to years their share in it also.
Memories Years Faithful
In all circumstances, i always look for the light and build around it, with little memory of pain.
Pain Memories Light
All was shattered, and all but memory lost, and one memory above all others, of him who brought the shadow and the breaking of the world. and him they named dragon.
Memories Dragons Shadow
How could anyone stay sane with entire lifetimes stored in one human mind?
Memories Mind Lifetime

Trending Author

Ed Koch
Ed Koch
Burl Ives
Burl Ives
Michael M. Honda
Michael M. Honda
Phil Crosby
Phil Crosby
Bob Edwards
Bob Edwards
Eduardo Galeano
Eduardo Galeano
Category
Information
Inspirational
Philosophy
Personal Growth
Happiness & Joy
Life Lessons
Success & Business
Motivation