quotations about time
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
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
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
Time cannot be spurred on like a horse.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
Time's flying wheel leaves little trace behind.
ISAAC MCLELLAN
"Musings"
Time begets more than fiction can create.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Time commences with mutable things; if they perish, it perishes with them.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Time is the school in which we learn.
Time is the fire in which we burn.
JOAN DIDION
The Year of Magical Thinking
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"
Time has ghosts. That's what time is: the ghost of every instant passed, haunting the potential of every moment to come.
TIM LEBBON
Fears Unnamed
Time is but the ante-chamber to eternity.
SUSANNAH MOODIE
Mark Hurdlestone; Or, The Two Brothers
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
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
Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.
EURIPIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
I've always been keenly aware of the passing of time. I've always thought that I was old. Even when I was twelve, I thought it was awful to be thirty. I felt that something was lost. At the same time, I was aware of what I could gain, and certain periods of my life have taught me a great deal. But, in spite of everything, I've always been haunted by the passing of time and by the fact that death keeps closing in on us.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
interview, The Paris Review, spring-summer 1965
Time ... thou ceaseless lackey to eternity.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Rape of Lucrece
The years like birds of passage go
To that eternal clime, the past;
And May's immortal lot is cast
Upon their flight o'er all below,
Like sunlight on a field of snow,
Or some sweet rose-leaf on the blast.
HENRY ABBEY
"May Dreams"
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
eulogy for Hermann Weyl, 1986