1,994 Time Quotes

The irrevocable Hand That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut The portals of our earthly destinies; We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors Close after us, for ever. Pause, my soul, On these strange words - for ever - whose large sound Breaks flood-like, drowning all the petty noise Our human moans make on the shores of Time. O Thou that openest, and no man shuts; That shut'st, and no man opens - Thee we wait!

Autumn to winter, winter into spring, Spring into summer, summer into fall, - So rolls the changing year, and so we change; Motion so swift, we know not that we move.

It is astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day.

I do not intend to spare myself, not to avoid emotions or difficulties. I don't care much whether I live a longer or shorter time: the world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain debt toward it, because I have walked on this earth for thirty years, and out of gratitude I want to leave some souvenir.

There, like the wind through woods in riot, Through him the gale of life blew high; The tree of man was never quiet: Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

To the philosophers of India, however, Relativity is no new discovery, just as the concept of light years is no matter for astonishment to people used to thinking of time in millions of kalpas, (A kalpa is about 4,320,000 years). The fact that the wise men of India have not been concerned with technological applications of this knowledge arises from the circumstance that technology is but one of innumerable ways of applying it.

To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them.

I think that's what makes life interesting - the evolution of getting older, and it's kinda fascinating to me, the whole process.

I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

In twenty years I've never had a day when I didn't have to think about someone else's needs. And this means the writing has to be fitted around it.

What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?

Gather the flowers, but spare the buds.

My sculpture can last for days or a few seconds - what is important to me is the experience of making. I leave all my work outside and often return to watch it decay.

I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.

The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass.

No matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century.

One hour of right-down love is worth an age of dully living on.

Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.

Thought may well be ever ranging, And opinion ever changing, Task-work be, though ill begun, Dealt with by experience better; By the law and by the letter Duty done is duty done Do it, Time is on the wing!

O tell me, friends, while yet we part, And heart can yet be heard of heart, O tell me then, for what is it Our early plan of life we quit; From all our old intentions range, And why does all so wholly change? O tell me, friends, while yet we part!

Dance on, dance on, we see, we see Youth goes, alack, and with it glee, A boy the old man ne'er can be; Maternal thirty scarce can find The sweet sixteen long left behind.

As ships becalmed at eve, that lay With canvas drooping, side by side, Two towers of sail, at dawn of day Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried.

The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained.

But the ingenious machinery contrived by the Gods for reducing human possibilities of amelioration to a minimum - which arranges that wisdom to do shall come pari passu with the departure of zest for doing - stood in the way of all that.

'Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once'. One of a series of exchanges when Owen repeated his claims about the Gorilla brain in a Royal Institution lecture. [Athenaeum 13 April 1861 p.498; Browne vol 2 p.159]

Work! work! work! While the cock is crowing aloof! And work-work-work, Till the stars shine through the roof!

Speak but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off unnecessary actions.

Dost thou think to live till his old doublet will make thee a new truss?

This was a good week's labour.

The better day, the better deed.

And I don't want to question or even celebrate all the joy you took and then gave back too late.

In the quiet ache of the evening, Alobar listened to his calluses grow.

Midnight, when the monotonous tick-tock of diurnal progress is for one throbbing moment replaced by the cool but smokey honk of a saxophone, alternately seductive and threatening. Midnight. The black growth on the clock face that has to be biopsied every twenty-four hours to see whether it is malignant or benign.

Alexander: How the world must have been changing while I was holding it still.

And someone will head south 'til this whole thing cools off.

Forse, se tu gustassi anco una volta La millesima parte de la gioie Che gusta un cor amato riamando, Diresti, ripentita, sospirando: Perduto e tutto il tempo Che in amar non si spende.

Waiting for the sun to shine And you know sometimes it gets so painful Just like talking to yourself When everything don't seem to have no rhyme or reason we all go Do do loo do do, do do loo do do Waiting for the sun to shine.

Look at the ivy on the cold clinging wall Look at the flowers and the green grass so tall It's not a matter of when push comes to shove It's just an hour on the wings of a dove.

Come here my love And I will lift my spirits high for you I'd like to fly away and spend a day or two Just contemplating the fields and leaves and talking about nothing Just layin' down in shades of effervescent, effervescent odors And shades of time and tide.

And I shall get to know you In these lifetimes In awe and wonder On down through the years The nighttime angel spreads her wings around me I feel the silence And my doubts are cleared.

Rave on, down through the industrial revolution Empiricism, atomic and nuclear age Rave on down through time and space down through the corridors Rave on words on printed page.

I walked in my greatcoat Down through the days of the leaves. No before after, yes after before We were shining our light into the days of blooming wonder In the eternal presence, in the presence of the flame.

There may be millions of fine thoughts, and the account of the experience on which they are based, all encased within stone walls of acceptable architectural form; but if the scholar can get at only one a week by diligent search, his syntheses are not likely to keep up with the current scene.

It is Earlier Than We Think.

'Nijinsky's life can be simply summed up: ten years of growth, ten years of learning, ten years of dancing, thirty years of darkness. Altogether some sixty years. How long he will live on in people's memories, we can only guess.'

'Well that remains to be seen'

'That'll do it!' (generally after a transitional move has been hit, rather than a finisher)

'Dear Vincent Gallo, Thank you for the tape which I am listening to at this moment. All the best for 1983 and forever.' -William S. Burroughs.

The dreamer sometimes falls into the doldrums, but is said to emerge from them again. And the absent-minded person also makes up for it with bouts of perspicacity. Sometimes he is a person whose right to exist has a justification that is not always immediately obvious to you, or more usually, you may absent-mindedly allow it to slip from your mind. Someone who has been wandering about for a long time, tossed to and fro on a stormy sea, will in the end reach his destination. Someone who has seemed to be good for nothing, unable to fill any job, any appointment, will find one in the end and, energetic and capable, will prove himself quite different from what he seemed at first.

Omnia fert aetas, animum quoque.

Tel homme qui dans un exces de melancolie se tue aujourd'hui aimerait a vivre s'il attendait huit jours.

Il faut vingt ans pour mener l'homme de l'etat de plante ou il est dans le ventre de sa mere, et de l'etat de pur animal, qui est le partage de sa premiere enfance, jusqu'a celui ou la maturite de la raison commence a poindre. Il a fallu trente siecles pour connaitre un peu sa structure. Il faudrait l'eternite pour connaitre quelque chose de son ame. Il ne faut qu'un instant pour le tuer.

Slowly the ivy on the stones Becomes the stones. Women become The cities, children become the fields And men in waves become the sea.

The sea returns upon the men, The fields entrap the children, brick Is a weed and all the flies are caught, Wingless and withered, but living alive. The discord merely magnified. Deeper within the belly's dark Of time, time grows upon the rock.

Here is the bread of time to come, Here is its actual stone. The bread Will be our bread, the stone will be Our bed and we shall sleep by night. We shall forget by day, except The moments when we choose to play The imagined pine, the imagined jay.

Should there be a question of returning or Of death in memory's dream? Is spring a sleep? This warmth is for lovers at last accomplishing Their love, this beginning, not resuming, this Booming and booming of the new-come bee.

On a blue island in a sky-wide water The wild orange trees continued to bloom and to bear, Long after the planter's death.

Eye without lid, mind without any dream - These are of minstrels lacking minstrelsy, Of an earth in which the first leaf is the tale Of leaves, in which the sparrow is a bird Of stone, that never changes. Bethou him, you And you, bethou him and bethou. It is A sound like any other. It will end.

Of these beginnings, gay and green, propose The suitable amours. Time will write them down.

A thing final in itself and, therefore, good: One of the vast repetitions final in Themselves and, therefore, good, the going round And round and round, the merely going round, Until merely going round is a final good, The way wine comes at a table in a wood.

Everyone has been remarkably influenced by a book, or books. In my case it was a book on cartoon animation. I discovered it in the Kansas City Library at the time I was preparing to make motion-picture animation my life's work. The book told me all I needed to know as a beginner - all about the arts and the mechanics of making drawings that move on the theater screen. From the basic information I could go on to develop my own way of movie storytelling. Finding that book was one of the most important and useful events in my life. It happened at just the right time. The right time for reading a story or an article or a book is important. By trying too hard to read a book that, for our age and understanding, is beyond us, we may tire of it. Then, even after, we'll avoid it and deny ourselves the delights it holds.

I've never believed in doing sequels. I didn't want to waste the time I have doing a sequel; I'd rather be using that time doing something new and different.

Foo, a beautiful gal wastes her time gracin' up this swamp.

Romeo wasn't bilked in a day.

Given three strikes, the truth will out.

The Now is alive with a curious life which defies the descriptive powers of such divers as swim ahead of the swine in search of pearls.

Boy, that escalated quickly... I mean, that really got out of hand fast.

The windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enriched and mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had gone into it was coming back in long, sweeping lines of fertility. The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized every tree and sandbank and rugged draw. I found that I remembered the conformation of the land as one remembers the modelling of human faces.

His misfortune was that he loved youth - he was weak to it, it kindled him. If there was one eager eye, one doubting, critical mind, one lively curiosity in a whole lecture-room full of commonplace boys and girls, he was its servant. That ardour could command him. It hadn't worn out with years, this responsiveness, any more than the magnetic currents wear out; it had nothing to do with Time.

Hear the voice of the Bard, Who present, past, and future, sees; Whose ears have heard The Holy Word That walked among the ancient trees.

Turn away no more; Why wilt thou turn away? The starry floor, The watery shore,> Is given thee till the break of day.

I thought of your beauty, and this arrow, Made out of a wild thought, is in my marrow. There's no man may look upon her, no man, As when newly grown to be a woman, Tall and noble but with face and bosom Delicate in colour as apple blossom. This beauty's kinder, yet for a reason I could weep that the old is out of season.

Ah, that Time could touch a form That could show what Homer's age Bred to be a hero's wage. 'Were not all her life but a storm, Would not painters pain a form Of such noble lines,' I said, 'Such a delicate high head, All that sternness amid charm, All that sweetness amid strength? Ah, but peace that comes at length, Came when Time had touched her form.

Minute by minute they live: The stone's in the midst of all.

Come let us mock at the wise; With all those calendars whereon They fixed old aching eyes, They never saw how seasons run, And now but gape at the sun.

'To Awaken an Old Lady,' The Dial (August 1920), later published in Sour Grapes (1921)

Eternity was in that moment.

Beware of desp'rate steps! The darkest day (Live till tomorrow) will have passed away.

They talk of short-lived pleasures-be it so- pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go. The fiercest agonies have shortest reign; And after dreams of horror, comes again The welcome morning with its rays of peace.

Thou unrelenting Past! Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain, And fetters, sure and fast, Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.

The hills, Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun.