The present times require the vigor and the activity of the prime of life; but I feel the increasing infirmities of age to such a degree, that I am conscious I cannot serve you to advantage. Christopher Gadsden
The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present.
Charles Baudelaire
If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not? Robert Fripp
The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but a stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich. Stephen J. Field
If an apprentice does not hear what a master hears, is then that quality not present in the music? Yes and no. In the world in which the apprentice lives no. Robert Fripp
Our specious present as such is very short. We do, however, experience passing events; part of the process of the passage of events is directly there in our experience, including some of the past and some of the future. George Herbert Mead
There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it. David Hume
But even after the end of the year, when otherwise engaged, if she should be now and then invited by her first husband to come and see him, she should put aside her present gain, and go to him for the night.
Sanctification is not to be understood here as a separation from ordinary use or consecration to some special use, although this meaning is often present in Scripture, sometimes referring to outward and sometimes to inward or effectual separation.
William Ames
Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted. Robert Benchley
We know the past and its great events, the present in its multitudinous complications, chiefly through faith in the testimony of others. Matthew Simpson
The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines as The Kensington Horror, or The Stabbing Woman, or The Woman in Black
We've got to ensure that the quality and the capability of these forces will be good enough to withstand the challenges that the insurgents and the terrorists will present to the new Iraqi government. John Abizaid
Instead of kids just hearing about beads and baskets and fringe, and about what 'was' and 'were,' we present Native American culture as a living contemporary culture. Buffy Sainte-Marie
If your voices are not heard, you can be sure that many others will be - in particular those who are paid to present a point of view, and often do it most effectively. Kathleen Sebelius
I have always believed that astrophysics should be the extrapolation of laboratory physics, that we must begin from the present universe and work our way backward to progressively more remote and uncertain epochs.
Hannes Alfven
