Quote: The present

Source: Deanery Furniture

I looked anxiously around me: the present, nothing but the present. Furniture light and solid, rooted in its present, a table, a bed, a closet with a mirror—and me. The true nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, and all that was not present did not exist. The past did not exist. Not at all. Not in things, not even in my thoughts. It is true that I had realized a long time ago that mine had escaped me. But until then I had believed that it had simply gone out of my range. For me the past was only a pensioning off: it was another way of existing, a state of vacation and inaction; each event, when it had played its part, put itself politely into a box and became an honorary event: we have so much difficulty imagining nothingness. Now I knew: things are entirely what they appear to be—and behind them... there is nothing.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Quote: The present

Source: Deanery Furniture

I looked anxiously around me: the present, nothing but the present. Furniture light and solid, rooted in its present, a table, a bed, a closet with a mirror—and me. The true nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, and all that was not present did not exist. The past did not exist. Not at all. Not in things, not even in my thoughts. It is true that I had realized a long time ago that mine had escaped me. But until then I had believed that it had simply gone out of my range. For me the past was only a pensioning off: it was another way of existing, a state of vacation and inaction; each event, when it had played its part, put itself politely into a box and became an honorary event: we have so much difficulty imagining nothingness. Now I knew: things are entirely what they appear to be—and behind them... there is nothing.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Too late

Photo credit: emlyn from morguefile.com

Already it is too late

to start over. So many people

I'll never be, things I won't do.

Why list them? Soon the years ahead

will be too few to maneuver among

and I won't be able to lie, even to myself.

As in a cave at low tide, echoes resound,

not in the spaciousness of possibility,

but in limitation. And isn't this good?

To say, "Yes, I haven't. That's right, I never did."

~ Carole Glasser Langille

___________________________________________

One always dies too soon - or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are - your life, and nothing else. 

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Too late

Photo credit: emlyn from morguefile.com

Already it is too late

to start over. So many people

I'll never be, things I won't do.

Why list them? Soon the years ahead

will be too few to maneuver among

and I won't be able to lie, even to myself.

As in a cave at low tide, echoes resound,

not in the spaciousness of possibility,

but in limitation. And isn't this good?

To say, "Yes, I haven't. That's right, I never did."

~ Carole Glasser Langille

___________________________________________

One always dies too soon - or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are - your life, and nothing else. 

~ Jean-Paul Sartre