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.

We are citizens of an age, as well as of a State; and if it is held to be unseemly, or even inadmissable, for a man to cut himself off from the customs and manners of the circle in which he lives, why should it be less of a duty, in the choice of his activity, to submit his decision to the needs and the taste of his century?

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus... soles occidere et redire possunt: nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda. da mi basia mille.

The appeal to heaven breaks off. The petals begin to fall, in self-forgiveness. It is a flower. On this mountainside it is dying.

While it is possible to play a single game, unrelated to any other game events past or future, it is the campaign for which these rules are designed. It is relatively simple to set up a fantasy campaign, and better still, it will cost almost nothing. In fact you will not even need miniature figures, although their occasional employment is recommended for real spectacle when battles are fought. A quick glance at the Equipment section of this booklet will reveal just how little is required. The most extensive requirement is time. The campaign referee will have to have sufficient time to meet the demands of his players, he will have to devote a number of hours to laying out the maps of his 'dungeons' and upper terrain before the affair begins.

Life is no more than a dewdrop balancing on the end of a blade of grass.

Hansel and Gretel discovered the ginger bread house about 45 minutes after they discovered the mushrooms.

A day off is always more welcome when it's unexpected.

I myself believe, perhaps on insufficient grounds, that the common man will win his fight sooner or later, but I want it to be sooner and not later - some time within the next hundred years, say, and not some time within the next ten thousand years. That was the real issue of the Spanish war, and of the last war, and perhaps of other wars yet to come.

The best way to relieve families from time is to let them keep some of their own money.

I fully understand it takes time for free societies, truly free societies to evolve. I don't expect instant success.

Liberty can be delayed, but it cannot be denied.

From the perspective of a single day, including this day of dedication, the issues and questions before our country are many. From the viewpoint of centuries, the questions that come to us are narrowed and few. Did our generation advance the cause of freedom? And did our character bring credit to that cause?

Because a pandemic could strike at any time, we can't waste time in preparing.

Hope had grown grey hairs, Hope had mourning on, Trenched with tears, carved with cares, Hope was twelve hours gone.

How to keep-is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, ... from vanishing away?

It was now just a question of time - and lives.

It will take her years to understand the things she's said tonight.

The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person.

He did not know the way things were going: he was too Victorian to understand the Victorian epoch. He did not know enough ignorant people to have heard the news.

[Stuff] happens, I know, but man, at times I've wished [stuff] would go somewhere else for a while.

The way I see it, you're either a year older or you're dead.

I used to be able to summon up scenes at will, but now aging memory is so busy weeding its own garden that, promiscuously, it pulls up roses as well as crabgrass.

Somebody was here the other day from BBC Radio. It's odd to meet a rather elderly man who says, 'I've been reading you all my life.' It makes you feel a slight chill.

In total desperation, I called over to the engineering building, and I said, 'Please cut off a nanosecond and send it over to me.'

The future is seconds ahead.

The ocean ate the last of the land and poured into the smoking gulf, thereby giving up all it had ever conquered. From the new-flooded lands it flowed again, uncovering death and decay; and from its ancient and immemorial bed it trickled loathsomely, uncovering nighted secrets of the years when Time was young and the gods unborn. Above the waves rose weedy remembered spires. The moon laid pale lilies of light on dead London, and Paris stood up from its damp grave to be sanctified with star-dust. Then rose spires and monoliths that were weedy but not remembered; terrible spires and monoliths of lands that men never knew were lands...

After the deed is done, one always becomes clever and philosophical.

I think of these things frequently, because I know the German people. Among them might arise the legend of Hitler, because Hitler was not heard from in this trial. Time always has some reconciling effect. On every ruin there eventually grows grass, and then some shrubbery, and finally, before you realize it, what is really an old hideous ruin becomes a romantic sight and legend.

'I did not want to share her with the world or break the mood, So before she woke I went out and brought us both some food. I came back with my paper bag, to find out she was gone. She'd left a six word letter saying 'It's time that I moved on.''

My child arrived just the other day, He came to the world in the usual way. But there were planes to catch, and bills to pay. He learned to walk while I was away. And he was talking 'fore I knew it, and as he grew, He'd say, 'I'm gonna be like you, dad. You know I'm gonna be like you.'

He ran under it with one last hope that he could add a prop And as he disappeared the rock came to a stop.

It took a while, but she looked in the mirror, And she glanced at the license for my name. A smile seemed to come to her slowly, It was a sad smile, just the same. And she said, 'How are you Harry?' I said, 'How are you Sue? Through the too many miles and the too little smiles I still remember you.'

Father, I scarcely dare to pray, So clear I see, now it is done, How I have wasted half my day, And left my work but just begun.

Le temps et l'espace... Ce n'est pas la nature qui nous les impose, c'est nous qui les imposons a la nature parce que nous les trouvons commodes.

The future cannot come, for when it comes it's already past.

The Battle is endless...we who babble and froth at the mouth have been at it since eternity.

I have never regretted anything. Regret, like guilt, is a waste of time.

And so, by night, while we were all at rest, I think the coming sped the parting guest.

I see them walking in an air of glory Whose light doth trample on my days, My days, which are at best but dull and hoary, Mere glimmering and decays.

The poor old Past, The Future's slave, She drudged through pain and crime To bring about the blissful Prime, Then-perished. There's a grave!

At the beginning of a cask and at the end take your fill; in the middle be sparing.

From my perspective, you get up every day and you get out there and you make your case, and you reach as many people as possible. That's what I intend to do. So I'm in it for the long run. It's not a very long run. It will be over by February 5.

Tout pouvoir humain est un compose de patience et de temps.

Entre le joueur du matin et le joueur du soir il existe la difference qui distingue le mari nonchalant de l'amant pame sous les fenetres de sa belle.

Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes.

This is too warm work, Hardy, to last long.

I have always been a quarter of an hour before my time and it has made a man of me.

Niggle was a painter. Not a very successful one, partly because he had many other things to do. Most of these things he thought were a nuisance; but he did them fairly well, when he could not get out of them: which (in his opinion) was far too often.

He went on looking at the Tree. All the leaves he had ever laboured at were there, as he had imagined them rather than as he had made them; and there were others that had only budded in his mind, and many that might have budded, if only he had had time. Nothing was written on them, they were just exquisite leaves, yet they were dated as clear as a calendar. Some of the most beautiful - and the most characteristic, the most perfect examples of the Niggle style - were seen to have been produced in collaboration with Mr. Parish: there was no other way of putting it.

It's not that I don't feel bad about it. It's just that I don't feel worse today than what I felt yesterday.

There's your Karma ripe as peaches.

Once when Kerouac was high on psychedelics with Timothy Leary, he looked out the window and said, 'Walking on water wasn't built in a day.' Our goal was to save the planet and alter human consciousness. That will take a long time, if it happens at all.

My daughter Jennifer has a clothing shop she's opening and she's in her own business now so I don't get to talk to her as much as I did a year or so ago.

All is mutability, and thus your three hundred terces has fluctuated to three.

'I got up at 6:30 a.m. I heard this hour existed but didn't really believe it till now.'

Jade: 'They look like dorks.' (When shown a picture of AFI from 1996)

Be not impatient and delay, But wait, as one who understands. When spirit rises and commands, The gods are ready to obey.

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last.

At the rate things are going here, all of Africa will be free before we can get a lousy cup of coffee.

'Mr. Richardson's endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic.' (Referring to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's endorsement of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton on GoodFriday).