moment quotes

  The world's best moment is a calm hour passed In listening to a friend who can talk well.

-Abu'l-'Ala¤   Al-Ma'arri
c.1000  Luzu'  miyya'  t, stanza 32 (translated by R  A Nicholson in Studies in Islamic Poetry,1921).

Consider every moment past A thread from life's frayed mantle cast.

-Abu'l-'Ala¤   Al-Ma'arri
c.1000  Luzu'  miyya'  t, stanza 57 (translated by R  A Nicholson in Studies in Islamic Poetry,1921).

Bien choisir son moment et se taire, serait-ce le seul moyen d'avoir e"  tre et habitat? To carefully choose one'smoment and keep quiet, isthis the only way one can be and live?

-Beckett, Samuel
  Nouvelles et textes pour rien.

The only real distinction at this dangerous moment in human historyand cosmic development has nothing to do with medals and ribbons. Not to fall asleep is distinguished. Everything else is mere popcorn.

-Bellow, Saul
  Humboldt's Gift.

Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.

-Buck, Pearl ne¤  e Sydenstricker
  What  America Means To Me, ch.10.

But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment whiteöthen melts for ever.

-Burns, Robert
  'Tam o' Shanter.  A  Tale'.

La plupart des gens ne meurent qu'au dernier moment; d'autres commencent et s'y prennent vingt ans d'avance et parfois davantage. Ce sont les malheureux de la terre. Most people only die at the last moment; others begin earlyand take twenty years and sometimes more. These are the most miserable people on earth.

-Destouches
  Voyage au bout de la nuit ( Journey to the End of Night, translated by John H P Marks,1960).

That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.

-Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
  Biographia Literaria, ch.14.

Eternity was in that moment.

-Congreve,William
  Bellmore to Laetitia. The Old Bachelor, act 4, sc.7.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  'The Love Song of  J  Alfred Prufrock' (first published in Poetry magazine, collected in Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917).

I am no prophetöand here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  'The Love Song of  J  Alfred Prufrock' (first published in Poetry magazine, collected in Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917).

The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract. 306

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  The Waste Land, pt.5,'What the Thunder Said'.

For most of us, there is only the unattended Moment, the moment in and out of time.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
Four Quartets,'The Dry Salvages', pt.5.

Each individual work serves as an expression of our most personal state of mind at that particular moment and of the inescapable, imperative need for release by means of an appropriate act of creation: in the rhythm, form, colour and mood of a picture.

-Feininger, Lyonel
  Letter to Paul Westheim, quoted in Wolf-Dieter Dube The Expressionists (1972).

Il y a toujours un moment o  u' la curiosite¤   devient un pe¤  che¤  , et le diable s'est toujours mis du co"  te¤   des savants. There is always a moment when curiosity becomes a sin and the devil is always on the side of the learned.

-Thibault
  Le Jardin d'Epicure.

A naked moment in politics.

-Gergen, David Richmond
  On the vulnerability of the President. In the NewYork Times, 31 Oct.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

-Greene, (Henry) Graham
  The Power and the Glory, pt.1, ch.1.

Um esta¤   sempre no escuro, so¤   no u¤ ltimo derradeiro e¤   que clareiam a sala. Oneisalwaysinthedark, and it isonlyatthelast moment that they turn on the lights in the room.

-Guimara‹  es Rosa,Joa‹  o
  Grande Serta‹  o: Vere¤  das (translated as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands,1963).

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream: it may be so the moment after death.

-Hawthorne, Nathaniel
c.1836  The American Notebooks, ch.1.

Art is the retelling of certain themes in a new light, making them accessible to the public of the moment.

-Lucas, George
  In the NewYork Times, 9  Jun.