Mindfulness and the Passing of Time: Quotations for Reflection and Discussion
published March 8, 2025
Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash
Continuing the series of Quotations for Teaching Mindfulness and Compassion, here are a variety of perspectives on speed and stillness, aging and wisdom, and how we experience time.
Teachers, please note:
I don’t necessarily recommend giving this whole list to your students—I like to provide a lot of options so you can choose what’s most appropriate for your particular context.
I’ve included links to book titles so you can see more information about the sources of these quotes. (I don’t accept any paid links or advertising.)
Scroll to the bottom of the post for questions that can be used for personal reflection or as prompts for discussion and writing.
Mindfulness and the Present Moment
“Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to the moment-by-moment flow of our thoughts and emotions in a nonjudgmental way.”
Dr. Paul Gilbert and Choden, Mindful Compassion, p. 24
“To practice mindfulness doesn’t mean you’re forbidden from making plans for the future, and it doesn’t mean you’re prevented from learning from the past.
The idea is not to get lost in fear or uncertainty about the future but to be grounded in the present moment […] You’re not lost in the future; you are planning for the future right in the present moment.”
Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, p. 141
“We miss so much ‘now’ because we are rushing to ‘next.’ […] If we live in the past, we will be depressed. If we live in the future, we are guaranteed anxiety. Now is always vast and new. Like any practice, it’s not about technique or program. It’s a decision.”
Fr. Gregory Boyle, Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship, p. 75; p. 77
“The time that you have with the people you love is like an ice cube. One minute it’s there. The next, it’s gone.
[…] We can’t stop the ice cube from melting. The only thing we can do is make the most of the time that we have with the people we love.
[…] I don’t know about you, but […] I get so worked up about things that don’t matter that I ruin the brief moments I have with those I love.
[…] Life is funny like that. One minute you are tearing up about the passing of time and how old the kids have gotten, the next minute you’re racing around trying to find your car keys and getting annoyed that someone left their dishes in the sink.”
Mel Robbins, The Let Them Theory, p. 20-21
“Milo was not a particularly good meditator. […] He was, perhaps, the crappiest meditator in the world. But he noticed this, accepted it, and let it humble him. […]
The shark that would eat Milo in a few hours […] lived in the moment, every moment, in a perfect equanimity of sense and peace, meditating its way through the sea without even trying.”
Michael Poore, Reincarnation Blues, p. 3-4
The Nature of Time
“On what basis do we consider a duration long or short? A few seconds is a fantastically long time compared to most of the invisible molecular processes in the body, but a very short time compared to […] a human lifetime. So ‘long’ and ‘short’ perceptions of time must be wedged between these two extremes.”
Alan Lightman, The Miraculous from the Material, p. 179
“Those small spaces of time, too soon gone, when everything seems to stand still, and existence is balanced on a perfect point, like the moment of change between the dark and the light, when both and neither surround you.”
Diana Gabaldon, Outlander, p. 439
“Time has a way of folding into itself, like a map, distances and journeys and hours and minutes tucked neatly away to leave jut the realness of the before and the now, as close as hands pressed on either side of a rice-paper door.”
Natasha Ngan, Girls of Paper and Fire
“Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by so quick you hardly catch it going.”
Tennessee Williams
Speed and Stillness
“We live in a world that values speed. Messages that used to take days or weeks to reach their recipient arrive in our e-mail in-boxes instantly. […]The people we communicate with expect our responses immediately.
And all of this back and forth, e-mailing or texting, innocuous as it seems, shifts our attitude to time so we might begin to value only that which happens quickly.”
Louise De Salvo, The Art of Slow Writing
“Our natural ability to be fully present is being challenged and is in danger of being lost. Technology’s onslaught of nonstop information is splintering our attention and recalibrating our brains to “future think”—a future-oriented collective mind-set that emphasizes virtual relationships, preoccupation with the future, and activities that disorient and forfeit the present moment.”
Donald Altman, One-Minute Mindfulness
“There has been a recent vogue for applauding the lost virtues of slowness. Slow food, slow exercise, slow fashion […] In a fast world, in pursuit of instant answers, slowness has become a dissident act. Perhaps a sentence slowly written, and slowly relished, could work in the same way, as a last redoubt against the glib articulacy of a distracted age.”
Joe Moran, First You Write a Sentence, p. 23
“Sitting peacefully, doing nothing
Spring comes
and the grass grows all by itself.”
Lao Tsu
quoted in Telling Stories by Lee Martin, p. 190
“I have things not to do, and not a lot of time not to do them in.”
“The Lady and the Fox,” in White Cat, Black Dog, by Kelly Link, p. 169
“In a culture that values productivity and views leisure suspiciously, it’s harder to take rest break than in one that views time away from work as necessary for the human spirit.”
Louise De Salvo, The Art of Slow Writing
“You can be mindful even when you’re in a hurry. If you move quickly but mindfully, you’ll be even more effective at whatever you’re doing, because you’ll be less distracted.”
Karyn Hall, The Emotionally Sensitive Person: Finding Peace When Your Emotions Overwhelm You, p. 68
“Hasten slowly and you will soon reach your destination.”
Milarepa
Aging and Wisdom
“Believe me when I tell you that everything is temporary. Everything. There’s not a thing in the world that will not change, including you.”
Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers, p. 69
“When I look back at my younger self… I can’t believe she and I are the same person.”
Susie Arnett, More Magazine July/Aug 2015 [no longer published]
“The day I buried my youth, I grew twenty years younger.”
George Sand
“Your first four decades of experiences, good and bad, have been essential for their errors.”
Barbara Sher, It’s Only Too Late if You Don’t Start Now
“You’re only middle-aged once.”
from the film Brief Encounter
“Few people know how to be old.”
from the maxims of La Rochefoucauld
“I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past.”
Maōri proverb
Questions for Reflection and Discussion
(If you use these questions in a class or group: As with any other discussion about personal topics, please respect your students' wishes about how much they choose to share.)
Which is your favorite quote? Why?
Are there any quotations you don’t agree with? Why?
How can practicing mindfulness and/or meditation impact your experience of time?
When do you want time to pass more quickly? When do you want it to pass more slowly? Is there anything you can do to slow down or speed up your experience of time passing?
In what ways has the internet affected most people’s experience of time?
Do you think doing nothing can be a productive use of time? Why or why not?
Do you think that animals can be ‘mindful’? Why or why not?
Do you think older or younger people are better at living in the moment? Why?
How have you changed as you’ve gotten older? Are there any ways you’d like to change in the future? Is there anything you can do now to affect your future experience?
Related Posts
There are many more quotations and other resources for practicing and teaching mindfulness here at MindfulTeachers.org, including the following posts: