quotations about time
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Troilus and Cressida
And now, Lord, these things are passed by, and time hath assuaged my wound.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
Time: the word tolled like the bells of a church.
JAMES BALDWIN
If Beale Street Could Talk
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 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 as he grows old teaches all things.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
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
E'en Beauty mourns in her decaying bower,
That Time upon her angel brow should set
His crooked autograph, and mar the jet
Of glossy locks. Lo! how her chaplet green,
The hoar frost and the canker worm destroy.
Decay's dull film obscures those matchless eyes.
ISAAC MCLELLAN
"Musings"
At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions. It takes away your hair and your jump-shot, according to a popular country song, but in truth it takes away a lot more than that.
STEPHEN KING
introduction, The Gunslinger
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"
Time is a seedfield; in youth we sow it with causes; in after life we reap the harvest of effects.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Time changes the nature of the whole world;
Everything passes from one state to another
And nothing stays like itself.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
CHARLES DARWIN
letter to his sister, Susan Elizabeth Darwin, August 4, 1836
Time, place and space are illusions, having no existence save in the mind of man which must set limits and bounds in order to understand.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis
Time gives his hour-glass
Its due reversal.
Their hour is gone.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"Consolation"
The sands of time are quicksands ... so much can sink into them without a trace.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
O time! swift devourer of all created things!
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Nothing is more precious than time, and those who misspend it are the greatest of all prodigals.
THEOPHRASTUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now