Time & Perspective Quote by Charles Caleb Colton

Colton’s line flatters the present the way a shrewd merchant flatters a customer: not because “now” is morally better than then, but because it’s the only moment you can actually spend. Calling the present “our own” turns time into property, a neat rhetorical trick that yanks the reader out of nostalgia and out of futurism with the same gentle theft. Past and future can be admired, regretted, even worshipped, but they can’t be possessed. The present is the only slice of life where agency isn’t theoretical.

The intent is motivational, but not in the syrupy sense. Colton was a master of the aphorism, writing in an era when moral instruction often came packaged as polished wit for the rising middle class. This isn’t Romantic poetry asking you to feel more; it’s a compact piece of self-management: attention is a scarce resource, stop leasing it to memories or promises.

The subtext has bite. “One advantage” admits the present is messy, imperfect, maybe even disappointing. It doesn’t claim the present is pleasurable, noble, or fair - only that it’s actionable. That restraint is why it works: it doesn’t argue that your moment is special; it argues that ownership, however limited, is power.

Read against Colton’s own turbulent biography (a clergyman turned public moralist with a troubled end), the aphorism also sounds like a self-address: a reminder that redemption, repair, and choice don’t live in timelines - they live in today.