quotations about time
Time, among all concepts in the world of physics, puts up the greatest resistance to being dethroned from ideal continuum to the world of the discrete, of information, of bits.... Of all obstacles to a thoroughly penetrating account of existence, none looms up more dismayingly than 'time.' Explain time? Not without explaining existence. Explain existence? Not without explaining time. To uncover the deep and hidden connection between time and existence ... is a task for the future.
JOHN ARCHIBALD WHEELER
eulogy for Hermann Weyl, 1986
Time seemed wormholed and faulted, honeycombed in mazes that crossed and recrossed.
WILLIAM GAY
Provinces of Night
There was a time when time did not yet exist.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
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
Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away, but which nevertheless will make at the end of it, no small deduction from the life of man.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Time begets more than fiction can create.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Ah! let us love, my Love, for Time is heartless,
Be happy while you may!
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"The Lake"
The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Conquest of Happiness
Time: the word tolled like the bells of a church.
JAMES BALDWIN
If Beale Street Could Talk
Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.
EURIPIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Time is the chrysalis of eternity.
RICHTER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Time ... antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or Enquiries Into Very Many Received Tenents
Well, ultimately nothing lasts. Everything is temporal, but some things last longer than others.
WALTER BARGEN
Riverfront Times, September 29, 2009
Your children's losing battle with time seems even sadder than your own.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit at Rest
Time, that aged nurse,
Rocked me to patience.
JOHN KEATS
Endymion
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
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
The fluid cradle of events (time).
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom, Absalom!
Time has laid his hand
Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it,
But as a harper lays his open palm
Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The Golden Legend
Time has ghosts. That's what time is: the ghost of every instant passed, haunting the potential of every moment to come.
TIM LEBBON
Fears Unnamed