quotations about time
We are the fools of Time and Terror: Days
Steal on us, and steal from us; yet we live,
Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.
LORD BYRON
Manfred
Every hour in itself, as it respects us in particular, is the only one we can call our own.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
attributed, Thoughts Moral and Divine
I can never understand why I should eat at one or sleep at eleven, if it is, as it often is, my one and my eleven and nobody else's. For, as between the clock and me alone, one and eleven and all other o'clocks are mine and I am not theirs. But I have known men and women living in hotels who would interrupt a sunset to go to dine, or wave away the stars in their courses to go to sleep, merely because the hour had struck.
ZONA GALE
"Miggy"
One hurries through, even though there's time; the past, the continent, is behind; the future is the glowing mouth in the side of the ship; the dim, turbulent alley is too confusedly the present.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Tender Is the Night
He began to suspect another, deeper layer of time, a time of stone and cloud and tree to which the time of clocks and calendars was a gross mockery cobbled up by savages.
WILLIAM GAY
Provinces of Night
O time, arrest your flight! and you, propitious hours, arrest your course! Let us savor the fleeting delights of our most beautiful days!
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"The Lake"
Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
"A New Refutation of Time", Other Inquisitions
One day you will hear the sound of time rustling as it slips through your fingers like sand.
SERGEI LUKYANENKO
Night Watch
So little time we live in Time,
And we learn all so painfully,
That we may spare this hour's term
To practice for Eternity.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
"Bearded Oaks"
Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.
JAMES THURBER
The 13 Clocks
Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?
SAMUEL BECKETT
Waiting for Godot
Time treads down empires.
DUGALD MOORE
"To the Moon"
Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
lines written the night before his death
Oh, thou divinest healer Time
And thing sublime!
That thou should'st gladly life's lorn nest
Anew invest,
And set before the eyes of man
A deeper purpose, holier plan,
And gently bridge the abysmal span,
'Twixt earth and rest!
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Oh, Thou Inexorable Grief"
So much of what we now call time is a collective myth, devised by emperors, industrialists, protesters, and tinkerers.
DEREK THOMPSON
"A Brief Economic History of Time", The Atlantic, December 21, 2016
The end of time is the birthday of Eternity.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Time cools, time clarifies, no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
Make good use of Time ... reflect that yesterday cannot be recalled, tomorrow cannot be assured, today is only yours, which if you procrastinate you lose.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Men have contrived instruments to measure the motion of time, but they have no scales to weigh, no figures to compute, no words to describe its value.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Time cleanses what it touches over time.
AESCHYLUS
Eumenides