quotations about time
Time, space, and natural law hold for me suggestions of intolerable bondage, and I can form no picture of emotional satisfaction which does not involve their defeat--especially the defeat of time, so that one may merge oneself with the whole historic stream and be wholly emancipated from the transient and the ephemeral.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to August Derleth, November 21, 1930
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
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 who daily puts the finishing touches on his life is never in want of time.
SENECA
Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
Time -- that black and narrow isthmus between two eternities.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
Stealing a moment from Mr. Time
He rocks in his chair like a shiny dime
But it's all for show, all for show.
Wearing your name and a number or two
When the minute's up, so are you
But everybody knows, everybody knows.
THE ALAN PARSON PROJECT
"Mr. Time"
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands,
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
T. S. ELIOT
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Time, which despoils castles, enriches verses.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
"Averroes' Search"
Time puts out all other flames
But the glory of his eyes;
His are all the sacred names,
His the solemn mysteries.
Crown him! In his darkest day,
He has heaven to give away!
CAROLINE SPENCER
"The Royal Name"
Time, though in Eternity, applied
To motion, measures all things durable
By present, past, and future.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
The days are such a repetition of each other that they sometimes seem very long, but when one pauses and looks back one starts at the accumulation of departed time, and deplores the swiftness of the seasons.
ROBERT GRANT
"The Romance of a Soul"
A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.
VLADIMIR LENIN
attributed, The Great Book Of Best Quotes Of All Time
The ancients painted time in the form of an old man with a large tuft of hair on his forehead, but bald behind, to teach us, that, if we catch him not as he comes, it will be impossible after he has passed by.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Time admits no argument.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Time is endless and ours. Love and Death are only the games we play in it.
TANITH LEE
Delirium's Mistress
Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
MACKEY MILLER
Mouse Attack 5!!!
A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
Time is a lake, getting deeper year by year, drop by drop. Surface tension, the electric presence of our staccato acts, keeps us scuttling like water bugs on its surface, unmindful of the depths we traverse. We're safe, afloat in the now, until we stop moving and begin to sink into the past. Only then do we realize how important all those yesterdays were, how they hold each present moment to the sun; and how many people we leave behind, stricken in time like ambered insects.
MICHAEL MARSHALL
Blood of Angels