quotations about time
Time ... brings us everything we have and are, then comes with a back-loader and starts taking it all away.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
interview, Words with Writers, December 5, 2011
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 ... advances like the slowest tide, but retreats like the swiftest torrent.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Time is the backdrop of our lives and the very fabric of the cosmos.
PHILIP ZIMBARDO
The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life
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
Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Exempt are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love.
ARISTOTLE
letter to Alexander on the policy toward the Cities
O aching time! O moments big as years!
JOHN KEATS
"Hyperion: A Fragment"
Time means less than the color of zero.
RAVEN GREGORY
Alice in Wonderland, issue #1, January 2012
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
T. S. ELIOT
"Burnt Norton", Four Quartets
My father Time is weak and gray
With waiting for a better day;
See how idiot-like he stands,
Fumbling with his palsied hands!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The Mask of Anarchy
One must work with time and not against it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
Time is the longest distance between two places.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Glass Menagerie
Time, so complain'd of,
Who to no one man
Shows partiality,
Brings round to all men
Some undimm'd hours.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"Consolation"
Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
Perhaps we expect time to work for us, when time is only given us that we may work.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
Anesthetized time; nothing moves and everything is at once.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Time is the root of all this earth;
These creatures, who from Time had birth,
Within his bosom at the end
Shall sleep; Time hath nor enemy nor friend.
BHARTRHARI
"Time"
It rolls in grandeur lone--
The stream of Time;
And on its shores lie strown
The wrecks of every clime.
HARVEY RICE
"The Stream of Time"
Time is an impartial distributor.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Theses on the Philosophy of History