TIME QUOTES XIV

quotations about time

Time is a master of ceremonies who always ends up putting us in our rightful place, we advance, stop and retreat according to his orders, our mistake lies in imagining that we can catch him out.

JOSÉ SARAMAGO

The Cave

Tags: José Saramago


I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppled masonry, and time one livid final flame.

JAMES JOYCE

Ulysses

Tags: James Joyce


Time goes, you say? ah no! Alas, time stays, we go.

GREGORY BENFORD

Furious Gulf

Tags: Gregory Benford


Man seems to be deficient in nothing so much as he is in time.

ZENO

attributed, Day's Collacon


But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

J. R. R. TOLKIEN

The Fellowship of the Ring

Tags: J. R. R. Tolkien


Thinking about time is to acknowledge two contradictory certainties: that our outward lives are governed by the seasons and the clock; that our inward lives are governed by something much less regular -- an imaginative impulse cutting through the dictates of daily time, and leaving us free to ignore the boundaries of here and now and pass like lightning along the coil of pure time, that is, the circle of the universe and whatever it does or does not contain.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

Sexing the Cherry

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


Time can also be a place.... Everything depends on where you are standing, on where you look or what you hear. The measure of it is found in consciousness itself.

FRANK HERBERT

God Emperor of Dune


Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but it is noble to live life, and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

Einstein's Dreams

Tags: Alan Lightman


Time, that aged nurse,
Rocked me to patience.

JOHN KEATS

Endymion

Tags: John Keats


And now, Lord, these things are passed by, and time hath assuaged my wound.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Confessions

Tags: St. Augustine


I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Richard II

Tags: William Shakespeare


While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

Einstein's Dreams


Time has laid his hand
Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it,
But as a harper lays his open palm
Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The Golden Legend

Tags: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Days, months, years fly away, and irrecoverably sink in the abyss of time.

JEAN DE LA BRUYERE

attributed, Thoughts Moral and Divine


There is nothing fatherly about time and what it does to us, either.

DEAN KOONTZ

Forever Odd

Tags: Dean Koontz


It seems to be not the vast things, but the immense multitude of little, like insects in a forest, which eat up the fruit of time.

JAMES VILA BLAKE

Essays


A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.

CHARLES DARWIN

letter to his sister, Susan Elizabeth Darwin, August 4, 1836

Tags: Charles Darwin


Time is only an illusion produced by the succession of our states of consciousness as we travel through eternal duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be produced; but "lies asleep."

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

An Abridgement of the Secret Doctrine


I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.

JULIAN BARNES

The Sense of an Ending

Tags: Julian Barnes


Nothing is more precious than time, and those who misspend it are the greatest of all prodigals.

THEOPHRASTUS

attributed, Day's Collacon