quotations about time
The years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another.
HORACE
Epistles
Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
said to have been composed on the night before his execution, "Even Such Is Time"
While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
When then time is passing, it may be perceived and measured; but when it is past, it cannot, because it is not.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
CHARLES DARWIN
letter to his sister, Susan Elizabeth Darwin, August 4, 1836
Previously, Newton considered time to be moving like a straight arrow which unerringly flies forward toward its target. Nothing could deflect or change the course of this arrow once it was shot. Einstein, however, showed that time was more like a mighty river, moving forward but often meandering through twisting valleys and plains. The presence of matter or energy might momentarily shift the direction of the river, but overall the river's course was smooth: It never abruptly ended or jerked backward. However, Gödel showed that the river of time could be smoothly bent backward into a circle. Rivers, after all, have eddy currents and whirlpools. In the main, a river may flow forward, but at the edges there are always side pools where water flows in a circular motion.
MICHIO KAKU
Hyperspace
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
STEVE JOBS
Commencement address at Stanford University, June 12, 2005
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
At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions. It takes away your hair and your jump-shot, according to a popular country song, but in truth it takes away a lot more than that.
STEPHEN KING
introduction, The Gunslinger
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard II
Time doesn't really heal, it just makes you not to give a crap.
DAVID BALDACCI
Split Second
The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God the herdsman goads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Countess Cathleen
The sands of time are quicksands ... so much can sink into them without a trace.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
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
E'en Beauty mourns in her decaying bower,
That Time upon her angel brow should set
His crooked autograph, and mar the jet
Of glossy locks. Lo! how her chaplet green,
The hoar frost and the canker worm destroy.
Decay's dull film obscures those matchless eyes.
ISAAC MCLELLAN
"Musings"
A thousand pleasant arts we'll have
To add new feathers to the wings of Time,
And make him smoothly haste away:
We'll use him as our slave,
And when we please we'll bid him stay,
And clip his wings, and make him stop to view
Our studies, and our follies too.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"To Mr. Barbauld"
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"
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"
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
ROBERT FROST
"Acquainted with the Night"
They that drive away time spur a free horse.
JOHN MASON
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