Selected time quotes

1. 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!

2. 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.

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

4. 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.

5. If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

6. It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one's youth.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

10. In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

17. 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.

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

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. Let us love the passing hour, let us hurry up and enjoy our time.

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

24. Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.

25. Gather the flowers, but spare the buds.

26. 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.

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

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

29. 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.

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

31. 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.

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

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

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

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

36. 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.

37. 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!

38. 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!

39. 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.

40. 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.

41. All history is modern history.

42. Age is a matter of feeling, not of years.

43. The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection, and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.

44. The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure.

45. Children of the future Age Reading this indignant page, Know that in a former time Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime.

46. 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.

47. Land of Heart's Desire, Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.

48. Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth.

49. All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

50. Things said or done long years ago, Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.

51. Misses! the tale that I relate This lesson seems to carry - Choose not alone a proper mate, But proper time to marry.

52. Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; The eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, And dies among his worshippers.

53. And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, And the year smiles as it draws near its death.

54. Pain dies quickly, and lets her weary prisoners go; the fiercest agonies have shortest reign.

55. Justice delayed is justice denied.

56. A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired, but then time is your misfortune.

57. Clocks slay time. Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

58. Time's glory is to command contending kings, To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.

59. Sweet childish days, that were as long As twenty days are now.

60. Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

61. It's a cliche - but true - that life is not a dress rehearsal. You get to do it once, so do it well.

62. I've always lived in the moment.

63. The truth is at the beginning of anything and its end are alike touching.

64. 'It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime, what better place than here? What better time than now?'

65. Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!

66. I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.

67. As it is so strangely ordained in this world, what is amusing will turn into being gloomy, if you stand too long before it, and then God knows what ideas may not stray into the mind... Why is it that even in moments of unthinking, careless gaiety a different and strange mood comes upon one?

68. 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!

69. 'Tis time, my friend, 'tis time! For rest the heart is aching; Days follow days in flight, and every day is taking Fragments of being, while together you and I Make plans to live. Look, all is dust, and we shall die.

70. Sad that our finest aspiration Our freshest dreams and meditations, In swift succession should decay, Like Autumn leaves that rot away.

71. 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.

72. Then talk not of Inconstancy, False Hearts, and broken Vows; If I, by Miracle, can be This live-long Minute true to thee, 'Tis all that Heav'n allows.

73. Then Old Age, and Experience, hand in hand, Lead him to death, and make him understand, After a Search so painful, and so long, That all his Life he has been in the wrong.

74. He stood, and heard the steeple Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town. One, two, three, four, to market-place and people It tossed them down. Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck.

75. Thus would I double my life's fading space; For he that runs it well, runs twice his race.

76. 'My field,' said Goethe, 'is time.' That is indeed the absurd speech. What, in fact, is the Absurd Man? He who, without negating it, does nothing for the eternal. Not that nostalgia is foreign to him. But he prefers his courage and his reasoning. The first teaches him to live without appeal and to get along with what he has; the second informs him of his limits. Assured of his temporally limited freedom, of his revolt devoid of future, and of his mortal consciousness, he lives out his adventure within the span of his lifetime.

77. The actor's realm is that of the fleeting.

78. Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.

79. In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon.

80. I would Love you ten years before the Flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires and more slow.

81. An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart.

82. Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long preserved virginity, And your quaint honor turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust. The grave's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.

83. Now therefore while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

84. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

85. In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.

86. It's the place where my prediction from the sixties finally came true: 'In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.' I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, 'In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous.'

87. They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

88. Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that is comes early.

89. One swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

90. Being a husband is a whole-time job. That is why so many husbands fail. They can't give their entire attention to it.

91. The word 'now' is like a bomb thrown through the window, and it ticks.

92. Chess is a matter of delicate judgment, knowing when to punch and how to duck.

93. To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner. To waste time is to expend it thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to spend or waste, and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever.

94. The Hindu religion is the only one of the world's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still.

95. We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever.

96. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way-in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

97. What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart... Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.

98. Even if you meet the perfect person, it ain't gonna be at the perfect time. You're married, they're single. That's right. You're Jewish, they're Palestinian. You're a Mexican, they're a racoon. You're a black woman, he's a black man.

99. What did we build it for? Was it all a dream? . . . Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . . And after a while they will fall to dust and rain; Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands; And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.

100. Time is a dream, he thinks, a destroying dream; It lays great cities in dust, it fills the seas; It covers the face of beauty, and tumbles walls. Where was the woman he loved? Where was his youth? Where was the dream that burned his brain like fire? Even a dream grows grey at last and falls.