quotations about time
Ye are but actors moved at Time's behest,
And king or slave as shifts the pantomime.
KENNETH RAND
"Sonnet"
I think we are what Time may make us--lords
Of wealth and land, or wagemen held at hire;
Turning the years, we gain our toil's desire,
Or lose, inopportune, its high rewards.
KENNETH RAND
"To the Time-God"
Time is short. Seventy years in the eye of youthful fancy seems a vast and almost boundless space; but in the estimate of sage experience, and in the full view of eternity, they contract to a span and dwindle to a point.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
The universe may be timeless, but if you imagine breaking it into pieces, some of the pieces can serve as clocks for the others. Time emerges from timelessness. We perceive time because we are, by our very nature, one of those pieces.
CRAIG CALLENDER
Scientific American, June 2010
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Time time time is a riddle
My oh my I can figure it out
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
In a thornless cathederal
Is barely moving a needle at all
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
LUKE SITAL-SINGH
"Time Is a Riddle"
Time can't be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Brodie's Report
Time was like someone alongside me who could be unpredictable, could nudge me into something stupid.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
We're sitting here and time is going on, and we know what it means to say that time is going on. I don't know what it means to say that time really doesn't pass and it's only in virtue of entropy increasing that it seems to.
TIM MAUDLIN
"A Defense of the Reality of Time", Quanta Magazine, May 16, 2017
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
ROBERT FROST
"Acquainted with the Night"
Time wounds all heals.
TRACY LETTS
August: Osage County
Let every man be master of his time.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
Time doesn't really heal, it just makes you not to give a crap.
DAVID BALDACCI
Split Second
Sometimes a minute can be a mighty powerful thing.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now
Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don't stop at your station.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
Men wrongly lament the flight of time, blaming it for being too swift; they do not perceive that its passage is sufficiently long, but a good memory, which nature has given to us, causes things long past to seem present.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
O aching time! O moments big as years!
JOHN KEATS
"Hyperion: A Fragment"
Anesthetized time; nothing moves and everything is at once.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
The Sound and the Fury