TIME QUOTES XI

quotations about time

Time is but a phantom dagger
That motion lifts to slay itself.

MAXWELL BODENHEIM

"Advice To a Pool"

Tags: Maxwell Bodenheim


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

Tags: Charles de Lint


Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon

Tags: Charles Caleb Colton


Indifferent to the affairs of men, time runs out, precise, heedless, exact, and immutable in rhythm.

ERWIN SYLVANUS

Dr. Korczak and the Children

Tags: Erwin Sylvanus


Time also stumbled and had accidents and could therefore splinter and leave an eternalized fragment.

GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Tags: Gabriel García Márquez


There are no moments you have frozen in amber. It's moving, it's changing, so appreciate what's good about right now and be ready for what's next.

MICHAEL J. FOX

interview, Good Housekeeping, April 2009

Tags: Michael J. Fox


Day by day Time rolls the scroll of Life,
Yet man heeds not in worldly strife
The vanished years, till Death demands his claim--
The mound-lines of the clay that mark his name.

HARRIET MAXWELL CONVERSE

"Day by Day"

Tags: Harriet Maxwell Converse


A proper disposition of time leaves a man at leisure in the very bustle of affairs; without delaying the attention of his concerns to the last or giving them unnecessary application at first: it affords a season for everything by affording everything its proper season.

NORMAN MACDONALD

Maxims and Moral Reflections

Tags: Norman MacDonald


Time, for a man who has never truly felt a second of it, is not a great sacrifice.

JOSEPHINE HART

Damage

Tags: Josephine Hart


We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.

JOHN F. KENNEDY

Address to the National Association of Manufacturers in New York City, December 5, 1961

Tags: John F. Kennedy


Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence -- neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish -- it is an imponderably valuable gift.

MAYA ANGELOU

Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Tags: Maya Angelou


Time's flying wheel leaves little trace behind.

ISAAC MCLELLAN

"Musings"

Tags: Isaac McLellan


A clock is a little machine that shuts us out from the wonder of time.

SUSAN GLASPELL

"Tickless Time"

Tags: Susan Glaspell


Many & most moments go by with us hardly aware of their passage. But love & hate & fear cause time to snag you, to drag you down like a spider's web holding fast to a doomed fly's wings. And when you're caught like that you're aware of every moment & movement & nuance.

WALTER MOSLEY

When the Thrill Is Gone

Tags: Walter Mosley


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

Tags: Walter Benjamin


I believe in the force of time, the impetus of that dimension that seems to have baffled even the physicists, the power of that force that will, in time, cure every ill, solve every problem, fulfill every nightmare. Time. I see time all about me, like a substance. I see it in the clutter of my apartment, in the fabric of the city, in the lessons that I teach. The tyranny of time, as dictatorial as any god.

SIMON MAWER

The Gospel of Judas

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Time is getting on.... Yes, bad luck to it. It always gallops when you want it to walk, and walks when you want it to gallop, like an ill-trained horse.

ROBERT BARR

The Victors

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Go to the man on the street and ask whether time has a direction, whether the future is different from the past, and whether time doesn't march on toward the future. That's the natural view. The more interesting view is how the physicists manage to convince themselves that time doesn't have a direction.

TIM MAUDLIN

"A Defense of the Reality of Time", Quanta Magazine, May 16, 2017


Pick an apocalypse, any apocalypse. A sea of black oil and dead things. No wind. No light. Nothing stirring, not even an ant, a spider. A silent universe. Such is the end of the flicker of time, the brief, hot fuse of events and ideas set off, accidentally, and snuffed out, accidentally, by man. Not a real ending of course, nor even a beginning. Mere ripple in Time's stream.

JOHN GARDNER

Grendel

Tags: John Gardner


For though time may seem to drag slowly on
Before you will know it, time will be gone.

MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN

"The Voice of the Clock"

Tags: Martha Lavinia Hoffman