TIME QUOTES XIII

quotations about time

I've always been keenly aware of the passing of time. I've always thought that I was old. Even when I was twelve, I thought it was awful to be thirty. I felt that something was lost. At the same time, I was aware of what I could gain, and certain periods of my life have taught me a great deal. But, in spite of everything, I've always been haunted by the passing of time and by the fact that death keeps closing in on us.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

interview, The Paris Review, spring-summer 1965

Tags: Simone de Beauvoir


Time's flying wheel leaves little trace behind.

ISAAC MCLELLAN

"Musings"

Tags: Isaac McLellan


As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in tomorrow.

HORACE

Odes

Tags: Horace


Time seemed wormholed and faulted, honeycombed in mazes that crossed and recrossed.

WILLIAM GAY

Provinces of Night

Tags: William Gay


How Time doth lash us with sharp pains,
Set loose our teeth, snatch wisps of hair, dim eyes --
And finally bend our backs toward earth
To find the fittest place for burial.

WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE

"Of Time", Cloudrifts at Twilight


You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.

T. S. ELIOT

"The Dry Salvages", Four Quartets

Tags: T. S. Eliot


But to say there was a time when time was not, is as absurd as to say there was a man when there was no man.

ST. AUGUSTINE

The City of God

Tags: St. Augustine


Time, that aged nurse,
Rocked me to patience.

JOHN KEATS

Endymion

Tags: John Keats


Time can also be a place.... Everything depends on where you are standing, on where you look or what you hear. The measure of it is found in consciousness itself.

FRANK HERBERT

God Emperor of Dune


I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Richard II

Tags: William Shakespeare


The fluid cradle of events (time).

WILLIAM FAULKNER

Absalom, Absalom!

Tags: William Faulkner


Well, ultimately nothing lasts. Everything is temporal, but some things last longer than others.

WALTER BARGEN

Riverfront Times, September 29, 2009

Tags: Walter Bargen


Time is but the ante-chamber to eternity.

SUSANNAH MOODIE

Mark Hurdlestone; Or, The Two Brothers


No preacher is listened to but time; which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have tried in vain to put into our heads.

JONATHAN SWIFT

"Thoughts on Various Subjects", The Works of Jonathan Swift

Tags: Jonathan Swift


It seems to be not the vast things, but the immense multitude of little, like insects in a forest, which eat up the fruit of time.

JAMES VILA BLAKE

Essays


We are all burning in time, but each is consumed
at his own speed.

JACK GILBERT

"Burning (Andante Non Troppo)"


Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.

EURIPIDES

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Euripides


The avalanche of time sweeps everything before it. Every individual instant hurtles into oblivion, drowning out the obliteration of the instant immediately preceding it, and then it too disappears under the onslaught of the next and the next and the next. When the avalanche has shuddered past for a long enough time, the perception of the past evolves. Distant events grow beyond mere history and take on the weight of legend.

DAVID GERROLD

Under the Eye of God

Tags: David Gerrold


Ah! let us love, my Love, for Time is heartless,
Be happy while you may!

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE

"The Lake"

Tags: Alphonse de Lamartine


I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.

JULIAN BARNES

The Sense of an Ending

Tags: Julian Barnes