quotations about time
Time, among all concepts in the world of physics, puts up the greatest resistance to being dethroned from ideal continuum to the world of the discrete, of information, of bits.... Of all obstacles to a thoroughly penetrating account of existence, none looms up more dismayingly than 'time.' Explain time? Not without explaining existence. Explain existence? Not without explaining time. To uncover the deep and hidden connection between time and existence ... is a task for the future.
JOHN ARCHIBALD WHEELER
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eulogy for Hermann Weyl, 1986
Your children's losing battle with time seems even sadder than your own.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit at Rest
And now, Lord, these things are passed by, and time hath assuaged my wound.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but it is noble to live life, and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
There is nothing fatherly about time and what it does to us, either.
DEAN KOONTZ
Forever Odd
Time goes, you say? ah no! Alas, time stays, we go.
GREGORY BENFORD
Furious Gulf
Time has laid his hand
Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it,
But as a harper lays his open palm
Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The Golden Legend
We are all burning in time, but each is consumed
at his own speed.
JACK GILBERT
"Burning (Andante Non Troppo)"
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard II
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 ... antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or Enquiries Into Very Many Received Tenents
Time cannot be spurred on like a horse.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
Time gives his hour-glass
Its due reversal.
Their hour is gone.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"Consolation"
Ye are but actors moved at Time's behest,
And king or slave as shifts the pantomime.
KENNETH RAND
"Sonnet"
As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in tomorrow.
HORACE
Odes
How do you "spend" your time? Because make no mistake, time is a currency. There is a cost to how you spend it. The cost might be a trade-off, like choosing one activity over another, but don't fool yourself into thinking that this is a free exchange.
CARL RICHARDS
"Free Time? Not Likely, for Time Is Anything but Free", New York Times, January 18, 2017
Nothing is more precious than time, and those who misspend it are the greatest of all prodigals.
THEOPHRASTUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Once I lived in time as a fish in water, breathing it, drinking it, sustained by it. Now I kill time and time kills me.
J. M. COETZEE
In the Heart of the Country
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Troilus and Cressida
Time: the word tolled like the bells of a church.
JAMES BALDWIN
If Beale Street Could Talk