quotations about time
Time loves a new lay; and the dirge he is playing
Will change for you soon to a livelier strain.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"You Will Forget Me"
Time, the human dimension, which makes us everything we are.
MARTIN AMIS
Time's Arrow
Time cannot be spurred on like a horse.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
Time is the school in which we learn.
Time is the fire in which we burn.
JOAN DIDION
The Year of Magical Thinking
He who toys with Time, trifles with a frozen serpent, which afterwards turns upon the hand that indulged the sport, and inflicts a deadly wound.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.
EURIPIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
But to say there was a time when time was not, is as absurd as to say there was a man when there was no man.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
The years like birds of passage go
To that eternal clime, the past;
And May's immortal lot is cast
Upon their flight o'er all below,
Like sunlight on a field of snow,
Or some sweet rose-leaf on the blast.
HENRY ABBEY
"May Dreams"
Time commences with mutable things; if they perish, it perishes with them.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Conquest of Happiness
Time begets more than fiction can create.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The avalanche of time sweeps everything before it. Every individual instant hurtles into oblivion, drowning out the obliteration of the instant immediately preceding it, and then it too disappears under the onslaught of the next and the next and the next. When the avalanche has shuddered past for a long enough time, the perception of the past evolves. Distant events grow beyond mere history and take on the weight of legend.
DAVID GERROLD
Under the Eye of God
There was a time when time did not yet exist.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in tomorrow.
HORACE
Odes
No preacher is listened to but time; which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have tried in vain to put into our heads.
JONATHAN SWIFT
"Thoughts on Various Subjects", The Works of Jonathan Swift
Time ... thou ceaseless lackey to eternity.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Rape of Lucrece
Time is a trust, and for every minute of it you will have to account.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
Your children's losing battle with time seems even sadder than your own.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit at Rest
I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppled masonry, and time one livid final flame.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
I've always been keenly aware of the passing of time. I've always thought that I was old. Even when I was twelve, I thought it was awful to be thirty. I felt that something was lost. At the same time, I was aware of what I could gain, and certain periods of my life have taught me a great deal. But, in spite of everything, I've always been haunted by the passing of time and by the fact that death keeps closing in on us.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
interview, The Paris Review, spring-summer 1965