quotations about time
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
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"
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
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 cannot be spurred on like a horse.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
Time is the school in which we learn.
Time is the fire in which we burn.
JOAN DIDION
The Year of Magical Thinking
Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.
EURIPIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Time, the human dimension, which makes us everything we are.
MARTIN AMIS
Time's Arrow
As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in tomorrow.
HORACE
Odes
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 a trust, and for every minute of it you will have to account.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
Well, ultimately nothing lasts. Everything is temporal, but some things last longer than others.
WALTER BARGEN
Riverfront Times, September 29, 2009
Ah! let us love, my Love, for Time is heartless,
Be happy while you may!
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"The Lake"
The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Conquest of Happiness
There was a time when time did not yet exist.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
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
Time ... thou ceaseless lackey to eternity.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Rape of Lucrece
Your children's losing battle with time seems even sadder than your own.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit at Rest
No preacher is listened to but time; which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have tried in vain to put into our heads.
JONATHAN SWIFT
"Thoughts on Various Subjects", The Works of Jonathan Swift