quotations about time
That was the truly horrifying thing about it: the sense of time as an enemy, to be fought tooth and nail--but there was so much of it; you killed an hour, but what good did that do when there were thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions more hours just waiting to take its place?
K. J. PARKER
The Escapement
Love and Time with reverence use,
Treat them like a parting friend:
Nor the golden gifts refuse
Which in youth sincere they send:
For each year their price is more,
And they less simple than before.
JOHN DRYDEN
Tyrannic Love
Time time time is a riddle
My oh my I can figure it out
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
In a thornless cathederal
Is barely moving a needle at all
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
LUKE SITAL-SINGH
"Time Is a Riddle"
A thousand pleasant arts we'll have
To add new feathers to the wings of Time,
And make him smoothly haste away:
We'll use him as our slave,
And when we please we'll bid him stay,
And clip his wings, and make him stop to view
Our studies, and our follies too.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"To Mr. Barbauld"
O time! swift devourer of all created things!
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Time can't be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Brodie's Report
Those who understand the value of time use it as prudent people do their money--they make a little go a great way.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
I think we are what Time may make us--lords
Of wealth and land, or wagemen held at hire;
Turning the years, we gain our toil's desire,
Or lose, inopportune, its high rewards.
KENNETH RAND
"To the Time-God"
Let every man be master of his time.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
Time is short. Seventy years in the eye of youthful fancy seems a vast and almost boundless space; but in the estimate of sage experience, and in the full view of eternity, they contract to a span and dwindle to a point.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Time is a keyhole.... We sometimes bend and peer through it. And the wind we feel on our cheeks when we do--the wind that blows through the keyhole--is the breath of all the living universe.
STEPHEN KING
The Wind through the Keyhole
Time gives his hour-glass
Its due reversal.
Their hour is gone.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"Consolation"
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
ROBERT FROST
"Acquainted with the Night"
Time was like someone alongside me who could be unpredictable, could nudge me into something stupid.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
Sometimes a minute can be a mighty powerful thing.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
The universe may be timeless, but if you imagine breaking it into pieces, some of the pieces can serve as clocks for the others. Time emerges from timelessness. We perceive time because we are, by our very nature, one of those pieces.
CRAIG CALLENDER
Scientific American, June 2010
Men wrongly lament the flight of time, blaming it for being too swift; they do not perceive that its passage is sufficiently long, but a good memory, which nature has given to us, causes things long past to seem present.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don't stop at your station.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
Time ... brings us everything we have and are, then comes with a back-loader and starts taking it all away.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
interview, Words with Writers, December 5, 2011
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy