#resent

If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time. Lacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot firmly planted in its history, and in the end, conforms, like an artist, not to the world but to its own inner being--ever mindful of its personal style. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#conformity #future #history #mainstream #new-orleans

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. ↗

— Malachy McCourt

#like #other #person #poison #resentment

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience. ↗

— Anatole Broyard

#everything #expect #expected #nothing #obedience

Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow. ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#philosophy #present-moment #mourning

She'd cried over a broken heart before. She knew what that felt like, and it didn't feel like this. Her heart felt not so much broken as just ... empty. It felt like she was an outline empty in the middle. The outline cried senselessly for the absent middle. The past cried for the present that was nothing. ↗

— Ann Brashares

#cried #empty #nothing #outline #past

If it’s over, then don’t let the past screw up the rest of your life. ↗

— Nicholas Sparks

#past #present-moment #life

We all lie to each other, present some sort of front. ↗

— Mary Wesley

#front #lie #other #present #some

I do think it's important to live in the present because in that way you won't be living in a state of regret. ↗

— Francesca Annis

#i #i do #important #live #living

So often, even when we stop to say a blessing before a meal, we’re mentally preparing to spoon some pasta or potatoes onto our plates. We’re not usually focused on the present moment, simply placing ourselves before our food and entering into the still, slow space where eating is done for eating’s sake and not something we do simply to get to the next thing on our list. ↗

— Mary DeTurris Poust

#faith #food #mindful-eating #mindfulness #present-moment

The choices we’re working with here are a block universe, where past, present and future all coexist simultaneously and everything has already happened; chaos, where anything can happen and nothing can be predicted because we can’t know all the variables; and a Christian universe in which God made everything and it’s all here for a purpose but we have free will anyway. ↗

— Audrey Niffenegger

#choices #free-will #future #god #life