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, for a man who has never truly felt a second of it, is not a great sacrifice.
JOSEPHINE HART
Damage
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
T. S. ELIOT
"The Dry Salvages", Four Quartets
Time, that aged nurse,
Rocked me to patience.
JOHN KEATS
Endymion
Time commences with mutable things; if they perish, it perishes with them.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Time ... thou ceaseless lackey to eternity.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Rape of Lucrece
Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away, but which nevertheless will make at the end of it, no small deduction from the life of man.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Our time's the most precious thing we've got to offer folks, and the worst thing a body can do is to take it away from us.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Saxophone Joe and the Woman in Black", The Ivory and the Horn
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, the human dimension, which makes us everything we are.
MARTIN AMIS
Time's Arrow
And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.
MILAN KUNDERA
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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
In what time does man live? The thinkers have always known that he does not live in any time at all. The immortality of thoughts and deeds banishes him to a timeless realm at whose heart an inscrutable death lies in wait.... Devoured by the countless demands of the moment, time slipped away from him; the medium in which the pure melody of his youth would swell was destroyed. The fulfilled tranquility in which his late maturity would ripen was stolen from him. It was purloined by everyday reality, which, with its events, chance occurrences, and obligations, disrupted the myriad opportunities of youthful time, immortal time.... From day to day, second to second, the self preserves itself, clinging to that instrument: time, the instrument that it was supposed to play.
WALTER BENJAMIN
"The Metaphysics of Youth", Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings
How Time doth lash us with sharp pains,
Set loose our teeth, snatch wisps of hair, dim eyes --
And finally bend our backs toward earth
To find the fittest place for burial.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
"Of Time", Cloudrifts at Twilight
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
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
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
Well, ultimately nothing lasts. Everything is temporal, but some things last longer than others.
WALTER BARGEN
Riverfront Times, September 29, 2009
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Troilus and Cressida
Ah! let us love, my Love, for Time is heartless,
Be happy while you may!
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"The Lake"