quotations about time
Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
said to have been composed on the night before his execution, "Even Such Is Time"
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
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 was like someone alongside me who could be unpredictable, could nudge me into something stupid.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
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"
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 an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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
Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now
Sometimes a minute can be a mighty powerful thing.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
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 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"
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
ROBERT FROST
"Acquainted with the Night"
We're sitting here and time is going on, and we know what it means to say that time is going on. I don't know what it means to say that time really doesn't pass and it's only in virtue of entropy increasing that it seems to.
TIM MAUDLIN
"A Defense of the Reality of Time", Quanta Magazine, May 16, 2017
Let every man be master of his time.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
Time doesn't really heal, it just makes you not to give a crap.
DAVID BALDACCI
Split Second
There is a desert of time as well as of land.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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 is a seedfield; in youth we sow it with causes; in after life we reap the harvest of effects.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Time, so complain'd of,
Who to no one man
Shows partiality,
Brings round to all men
Some undimm'd hours.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"Consolation"