quotations about time
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 commences with mutable things; if they perish, it perishes with them.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
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
As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in tomorrow.
HORACE
Odes
Time, the human dimension, which makes us everything we are.
MARTIN AMIS
Time's Arrow
Time is the school in which we learn.
Time is the fire in which we burn.
JOAN DIDION
The Year of Magical Thinking
Time cannot be spurred on like a horse.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
Time begets more than fiction can create.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
There was a time when time did not yet exist.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
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"
Ah! let us love, my Love, for Time is heartless,
Be happy while you may!
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"The Lake"
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
Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.
EURIPIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Time is a trust, and for every minute of it you will have to account.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
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
Well, ultimately nothing lasts. Everything is temporal, but some things last longer than others.
WALTER BARGEN
Riverfront Times, September 29, 2009
We are all burning in time, but each is consumed
at his own speed.
JACK GILBERT
"Burning (Andante Non Troppo)"
Time is the chrysalis of eternity.
RICHTER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Time is but the ante-chamber to eternity.
SUSANNAH MOODIE
Mark Hurdlestone; Or, The Two Brothers
Time ... thou ceaseless lackey to eternity.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Rape of Lucrece