TIME QUOTES XV

quotations about time

The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God the herdsman goads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The Countess Cathleen

Tags: William Butler Yeats


Previously, Newton considered time to be moving like a straight arrow which unerringly flies forward toward its target. Nothing could deflect or change the course of this arrow once it was shot. Einstein, however, showed that time was more like a mighty river, moving forward but often meandering through twisting valleys and plains. The presence of matter or energy might momentarily shift the direction of the river, but overall the river's course was smooth: It never abruptly ended or jerked backward. However, Gödel showed that the river of time could be smoothly bent backward into a circle. Rivers, after all, have eddy currents and whirlpools. In the main, a river may flow forward, but at the edges there are always side pools where water flows in a circular motion.

MICHIO KAKU

Hyperspace

Tags: Michio Kaku


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

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When then time is passing, it may be perceived and measured; but when it is past, it cannot, because it is not.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Confessions

Tags: St. Augustine


The sands of time are quicksands ... so much can sink into them without a trace.

MARGARET ATWOOD

The Year of the Flood

Tags: Margaret Atwood


That was the truly horrifying thing about it: the sense of time as an enemy, to be fought tooth and nail--but there was so much of it; you killed an hour, but what good did that do when there were thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions more hours just waiting to take its place?

K. J. PARKER

The Escapement

Tags: K. J. Parker


Some nights--more than I like, lately--I wake to the sound of the bedside clock. The room is dark, without detail, and it expands in such a way that it seems as if I'm outdoors, under an empty sky, or underground, in a cavern. I might be falling through space. I might be dreaming. I could be dead. Only the clock moves, its tick steady, unhurried. At these moments I have the most chilling understanding that time moves in only one direction.

ALAN BURDICK

"The Secret Life of Time", The New Yorker, December 19, 2016


Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

STEVE JOBS

Commencement address at Stanford University, June 12, 2005

Tags: Steve Jobs


Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

said to have been composed on the night before his execution, "Even Such Is Time"


At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions. It takes away your hair and your jump-shot, according to a popular country song, but in truth it takes away a lot more than that.

STEPHEN KING

introduction, The Gunslinger

Tags: Stephen King


A thousand pleasant arts we'll have
To add new feathers to the wings of Time,
And make him smoothly haste away:
We'll use him as our slave,
And when we please we'll bid him stay,
And clip his wings, and make him stop to view
Our studies, and our follies too.

ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD

"To Mr. Barbauld"

Tags: Anna Letitia Barbauld


E'en Beauty mourns in her decaying bower,
That Time upon her angel brow should set
His crooked autograph, and mar the jet
Of glossy locks. Lo! how her chaplet green,
The hoar frost and the canker worm destroy.
Decay's dull film obscures those matchless eyes.

ISAAC MCLELLAN

"Musings"

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As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Walden

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Time, place and space are illusions, having no existence save in the mind of man which must set limits and bounds in order to understand.

ROBERT E. HOWARD

Kull: Exile of Atlantis

Tags: Robert E. Howard


Time time time is a riddle
My oh my I can figure it out
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
In a thornless cathederal
Is barely moving a needle at all
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

LUKE SITAL-SINGH

"Time Is a Riddle"


Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion.

ECKHART TOLLE

The Power of Now

Tags: Eckhart Tolle


Those who understand the value of time use it as prudent people do their money--they make a little go a great way.

ELIZA COOK

Diamond Dust


The years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another.

HORACE

Epistles


Sometimes a minute can be a mighty powerful thing.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: James Baldwin


Time was like someone alongside me who could be unpredictable, could nudge me into something stupid.

GLEN DUNCAN

By Blood We Live