Time

Time is a concept referring to the perceived flow of actions and events from the past to future, or to its measurement. In Physics it is also referred to as "the fourth dimension" of a space-time continuum.

Sourced

Arranged alphabetically by author

• Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.
  • Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

• How can I tell that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?
  • The man in the shack, in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980) by Douglas Adams. Ch. 29

• Time is not a reality [hupostasis], but a concept [noêma] or a measure [metron]…
  • Antiphon the Sophist, Truth

• Time is not bought ready-made at the watchmaker's.
  • Jacob Bronowski, Science and Human Values (1956)

• With the magnificence of eternity before us, let time, with all its fluctuations, dwindle into its own littleness.
  • Thomas Chalmers, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 584.

• In the spirit of faith let us begin each day, and we shall be sure to " redeem the time " which it brings to us, by changing it into something definite and eternal. There is a deep meaning in this phrase of the apostle, to redeem time. We redeem time, and do not merely use it. We transform it into eternity by living it aright.
  • James Freeman Clarke, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 583.

• Time,— that black and narrow isthmus between two eternities.
  • Charles Caleb Colton, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 582.

• Time goes, you say? Ah no, alas, time stays, we go.
  • Henry Austin Dobson

• The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
  • Albert Einstein

• A butterfly
  Fluttering over the vendor’s
  Dry flowers of spring
  Only two days it flies
  Caught by the lost boy
  Yet still.
  • For Peng Fajardo by Shane Castro in The Now

• The times they are a'changin,
  • Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin', 1964

• Time present and time past
  Are both perhaps present in time future,
  And time future contained in time past.
  If all time is eternally present
  All time is unredeemable.
  • T. S. Eliot, in the Four Quartets

• Time is Life.
  • Michael Ende in Momo (1973)

• Lots of things take time, and time was Momo's only form of wealth.
  • Michael Ende in Momo (1973)

• All dwelling in one house are strange brothers three,
  as unlike as any three brothers could be,
  yet try as you may to tell brother from brother,
  you'll find that the trio resemble each other.
  The first isn't there, though he'll come beyond doubt.
  The second's departed, so he's not about.
  The third and the smallest is right on the spot,
  And manage without him the others could not.
  Yet the third factor with which to be reckoned
  Because the first brother turns into the second.
  You cannot stand back and observe number three,
  For one of the others is all you will see.
  So tell me, my child, are the three of them one?
  Or are there but two? Or could there be none?
  Just name them, and you will at once realize
  That each rules a kingdom of infinite size.
  They rule it together and are it as well.
  In that, they're alike, so where do they dwell?
  • Riddle by Michael Ende, in Momo

• The best general means to insure the profitable employment of our time, is to accustom ourselves to living in continual dependence upon the Spirit of God and His law, receiving, every instant, whatever He is pleased to bestow; consulting Him in every emergency requiring instant action, and having recourse to Him in our weaker moments when virtue seems to fail.
  • François Fénelon, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 583.

• Time is money.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Advice to Young Tradesmen (1748)

• Dost thou love life? then do not squander time; for that is the stuff life is made of.
  • Benjamin Franklin, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 582.

• Time is a game played beautifully by children.
  • Heraclitus, as quoted in Fragments (2001) translated by Brooks Haxton

• Observe a method in the distribution of your time. Every hour will then know its proper employment, and no time will be lost
  • Bishop George Horne, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 583.

• The Bird of Time has but a little way
  To flutter — and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing
  • Omar Khayyam Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as translated by Edward FitzGerald (1868 edition)
• The Bird of Time has but a little way
  To fly — and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.
  • (1859 edition)

• How awful that silent, unceasing footfall of receding days is when once we begin to watch it! Inexorable, passionless— though hope and fear may pray, " Sun, stand thou still on Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon," — the tramp of the hours goes on. The poets paint them as a linked chorus of rosy forms, garlanded and clasping hands as they dance onwards. So they may be to some of us at some moments. So they may seem as they approach; but those who come hold the hands of those that go, and that troop have no rosy light upon their limbs, their garlands are faded, the sunshine falls not upon the gray and shrouded shapes, as they steal ghostlike through the gloom.
  • Alexander Maclaren, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 584.

• The first thing necessary for a constructive dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. For psychologically speaking, this present moment is all we have.
  • Rollo May, in Man’s Search for Himself (1953)

• He who cannot find time to consult his Bible will one day find he has time to be sick; he who has no time to pray must find time to die; he who can find no time to reflect is most likely to find time to sin; he who cannot find time for repentance will find an eternity in which repentance will be of no avail; he who cannot find time to work for others may find an eternity in which to suffer for himself.
  • Hannah More, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 583.

• Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived. After all Number One, we're only mortal.
  • Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: Generations (1994), portrayed by Patrick

• Hours are golden links, God's token
  Reaching heaven; but one by one
  Take them, lest the chain be broken
  Ere the pilgrimage be done.
  • [[A. A. Proctor]], reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 583.Stewart

• Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn.
  • Delmore Schwartz in "Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day"

• I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
  For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
  My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar
  Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
  Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
  Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
  Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
  Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart,
  Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans
  Show minutes, times, and hours.
  • King Richard in Richard II by William Shakespeare

• The flow of time is always cruel... its speed seems different for each person, but no one can change it... A thing that does not change with time is a memory of younger days...
  • "Sheik" in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

• Time, time, time, see what's become of me,
  While I looked around,
  For my possibilities;
  I was so hard to please.
  But look around, leaves are brown
  And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.
  • Paul Simon in "Hazy Shade Of Winter"

• There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven — A time to give birth, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to tear down, and a time to build up. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to throw stones, and a time to gather stones; A time to embrace, and a time to shun embracing. A time to search, and a time to give up as lost; A time to keep, and a time to throw away. A time to tear apart, and a time to sew together; A time to be silent, and a time to speak. A time to love, and a time to hate; A time for war, and a time for peace.
  • King Solomon, The Bible, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 ("A Time for Everything")

• Come, sir, is time really so precious? Mine isn't. If yours is, all the more tempting to steal a little.
  • Nero Wolfe in A Right to Die (1964) by Rex Stout

• This thing all things devours:
  Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
  Gnaws iron, bites steel,
  Grinds hard stones to meal;
  Slays king, ruins town,
  And beats high mountain down.
  • Riddle by J. R. R. Tolkien, in The Hobbit'

• Who has time? Who has time? But then if we never take time, how can we have time?
  • The Merovingian in The Matrix Reloaded (2003) by the Wachowski Brothers

• Time is a waste of money.
  • Oscar Wilde, Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)

• Time's tide will smother you ... and I will too.
  • The Smiths, "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore", 1985 single; written by Morrissey

• Make use of time, if thou valuest eternity. Yesterday cannot be recalled; to-morrow cannot be assured; to-day only is thine, which, if thou procrastinatest, thou losest, which loss is lost forever.
  • Jeremy Taylor, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 582.

• When your legs get weaker time starts running faster.
  • Mikhail Turovsky (b. 1933), Russian-American artist and aphorist. Itch of Wisdom Cicuta Press (1986)

• Time: a great engraver, or eraser.
  • Yahia Lababidi (b. 1973), Egyptian-Lebanese essayist and poet. Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)

• Time wasted is existence, used is life.
  • Edward Young, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 582.

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• Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
  You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
  Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
  Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
  
  Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
  You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
  And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
  No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
  
  And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
  And racing around to come up behind you again
  The sun is the same in the relative way, but youre older
  Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
  
  Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
  Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
  Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way
  The time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say
  
  Home, home again
  I like to be here when I can
  And when I come home cold and tired
  Its good to warm my bones beside the fire
  Far away across the field
  The tolling of the iron bell
  Calls the faithful to their knees
  To hear the softly spoken magic spells.
  • Pink Floyd, Time, from the album The Dark Side of the Moon

• I think the second you stop fighting it, time really is on your side.
  • J.D., Scrubs, unidentified episode

• What is time? If nobody asks me, I know; but if I were desirous to explain it to one that should ask me, plainly I know not.
  • Augustine of Hippo

• We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
  • Paul Bowles

• Time spent with cats is never wasted.
  • Colette

• Time spent Wishing is Time Wasted
• Janitor

• What Difference does it make? Wheter Twenty Seconds or Twenty Years,it doesn't have the Faintest Echo or Slighest Whisper in the Thunderstorm of Time
• The Outer Limits

• Time wounds all heels.
  • Jane Ace

• Everything passes, but nothing entirely goes away.
  • Jenny Diski

• To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
  • Emily Dickinson
• Forever is composed of nows.
  • Emily Dickinson

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

• Time is what keeps the light from reaching us.
  • Meister Eckhart

• Time is an illusion.
  • Albert Einstein

• Life holds one great but quite commonplace mystery. Though shared by each of us and known to all, seldom rates a second thought. That mystery, which most of us take for granted and never think twice about, is time.
  • Michael Ende

• Time is the accident of accidents.
  • Epicurus

• Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that the stuff life is made of.
  • Benjamin Franklin
• Lost time is never found again.
  • Benjamin Franklin

• Spend some time alone every day.
  • Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

• It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper understanding.
  • Vincent Van Gogh

• Each day a day goes by.
  • Carlo Goldoni

• Our true home is the present moment.'
  To live in the present moment is a miracle.
  The miracle is not to walk on water.
  The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment.
  • Thich Nhat Hanh

• Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed. You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others, go flowing on. Time is a child, moving counters in a game; the royal power is a child's.
  • Heraclitus

• Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.
  • Jesse Jackson

• Time is on my side, yes it is.
  • Mick Jagger

• You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow.
  • Janis Joplin

• The surest way to be late is to have plenty of time.
  • Leon Kennedy

• Truth is always new, therefore timeless.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti

• Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.
  • Stephen Leacock

• Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
  • John Lennon

• The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
  • C. S. Lewis

• Lost, yesterday, somewhere between Sunrise and Sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.
  • Horace Mann

• Tomorrow's life is too late. Live today.
  • Martial

• Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
  • Groucho Marx

• The future turns to present, and present turns to past. Thus it seems that time is ever-ending, yet never-ending...
  • Richard van der Merwe

• I've been on a calendar but I have never been on time.
  • Marilyn Monroe

• "I confes that I do not believe in time. I like to unfold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness - in an landscape selected at random - is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstacy, and behind the ecstacy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love."
  • Vladamir Nabokov in Speak, Memory

• Time makes more converts than reason.
  • Thomas Paine

• Love vanquishes time. To lovers, a moment can be eternity, eternity can be the tick of a clock.
  • Mary Parrish

• By labor we can find food and water, but all of our labor will not find for us another hour.
  • Kenneth Patton

• Nature's Time is Cubic and perpetual. Linear Time is wrong and suicidal.
  • Gene Ray

• We are not capable of producing a concept of time that is at once cosmological, biological, historical and individual.
  • Paul Ricoeur

• Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
  • Will Rogers

• Come out of the circle of time
  And into the circle of love.
  • Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi

• This I offer to the secret of great Truth: Do not waste time!
  • The Sandokai

• " Alone I suffer, alone I wait. Waiting for time. Time the healer."
  • Steve Sayles

• There's a gude time coming.
  • Sir Walter Scott in Rob Roy

• Veritum dies aperit.
  • Time discovers the truth.
  • Seneca in De Ira

• We must trust time to reveal all things.
  • "Maiev Shadowsong", in Warcraft III

• The present never ages. Each moment is like a snowflake, unique, unspoiled, unrepeatable, and can be appreciated in its surprisingness.
  • Gail Sheehy

• Each moment is a place you've never been.
  • Mark Strand

• The present is not what is spoken about today, but what is reported tomorrow.
  • Leonid S. Sukhorukov

• The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.”
  • James Taylor (American Singer, Song Writer and Guitarist, b.1948)

• The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
  • Henry David Thoreau

• Time and tide wait for no man. A pompous and self-satisfied proverb, and was true for a billion years; but in our day of electric wires and water-ballast we turn it around: Man waits not for time nor tide.
  • Mark Twain (American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer. 1835-1910)
• “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
  • Mark Twain (American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer. 1835-1910)

• They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
  • Andy Warhol

• Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.
  • Alan Watts

• Time is precious because time is finite.
  • Swami Raj

• Events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.
  • Eudora Welty

• I want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own.
  • H.G. Wells

• Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
  Space is what prevents everything from happening to me.
  • Attributed to John Archibald Wheeler

• All things in this world are impermanent. They have the nature to rise and pass away. To be in harmony with this truth brings true happiness.
  • Buddhist chant

• An inch of gold won't buy an inch of time.
  • Chinese proverb

• Pulling at an olive won't make it ripen faster.
  • Italian proverb

• Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
  • Variously attributed to Woody Allen, Albert Einstein, John Archibald Wheeler, and Anonymous

• The more time we lose, the more memories we make.
  • Anonymous

• All things end in unending time.
  • Anonymous, Latin graffito scratched into a brothel's wall, Pompeii.

• Living is entirely too time consuming to last.
  • Irene Peter, Ouotations for our time (1977), by Laurence Peter

• Time. Time is an artificial construct. An idea based on the theory that events occur in a linear direction, at all times. Always forward, never back. Is the concept of time correct? Is time relevent?
  • Sheogorath, in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion