Quotes About Presence

It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.

A 'mistake' is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is.

the Holy City shall not be moved from its place because God dwells in it and is always ready to bring it help.

Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates, holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God.

A man is what he does with his attention.

If you listen hard enough, there's almost no such thing as silence: there's just noise that isn't very loud yet.

We haunt ourselves, I sometimes think; or, rather, we choose to be haunted. If there is a hole in our lives, then something will fill it. We invite it inside, and it accepts willingly.

They listen, the dead. They're always listening. What else is there for them to do?

Nevertheless, before she grew sick, he would often step quietly into the room in which his mother was reading, acknowledging her with a smile (always returned) before taking a seat close by and immersing himself in his own book so that, although both were lost in their own individual worlds, they shared the same space and time.

Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, I wish, I wish he'd go away . . . —

The presence in the living room called to her, summoning her in a hundred voices and none, a great dissonant harmony alien yet familiar, like a song that, once heard, insinuates itself into one's history, finding echoes in old melodies; a configuration once hidden, now revealed. Step

Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, I wish, I wish he'd go away . . . William Hughes Mearns, "Antigonish

The hatred for ex-soldiers on the part of those who had not fought was something I could not understand. They wanted us to disappear. There were no more parades now, no more kisses on the cheek. Soldiers were no more than beggars, and nobody likes a beggar. Perhaps we made them feel guilty by our presence. They might have preferred it had we all died in the mud and been buried far from England in places whose names we had not even learned to pronounce properly before we perished.

A streak of presence surrounded by a dim glow of absence.

One of the virtues of drink was how it reduced life to these simple matters, which engaged all the attention; seeing, walking, raising a bottle accurately to the hole in your face. As though you were two years old again. No thoughts but simple ones. And

Non, elles savent ce qu'est la mort, elles se lamentent, mais, pour elles, les défunts ne sont plus là ; ils ne sont nulle part — dans une oubliette du cÅ"ur, dans la mémoire voire dans une histoire, mais ce ne sont plus des présences auxquelles on peut parler, auxquelles apporter ou demander du réconfort. Ce ne sont pas des morts à aimer ou à craindre.

People in tales don't know, always. But there they are.

Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee (Heb. 13:5).

The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation.

Thoughts well up in our mind moment by moment. But we refrain from doing anything with our thoughts. We just let everything come up freely and go away freely. We don't grasp anything. We don't try to control anything. We just sit.

You are real only where you are given to love.

Where'e're I go, my Soul shall stay with thee: 'Tis but my Shadow I take away...

You lose a wallet or keys or something and you notice in a second, but your life can go missing and you don't even know it.

I have a room whereinto no one enters Save I myself alone: There sits a blessed memory on a throne, There my life centres.