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Time Quotes

The sourced entries here are an odd mix: Edmund Burke on planning the future by the past (1791), Rollo May on learning to live in the present (1953), and a line about death from Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) that turns up on several pages because it fits more than one. Shakespeare leads the page by a wide margin, with T. S. Eliot a distant second.

“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana” is credited to Groucho Marx almost everywhere and is flagged. No citation to Marx has been found. It first appears in the mid-1960s, unattributed, in logic and computing texts, as an example of why machines find ordinary sentences hard to parse.

Random quote on Time

Most quoted on time:

A drop of water freezes instantly -
My seven years and seventy.
All changes at a blow
Springs of water welling from the fire.

Kaso Sodon

Yield frequently to the first inspiration. Too much meditation on the same subject ends by suggesting the worst part, or at least causes loss of precious time.

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)

On the Day of Judgement many a rich will suffer imprisonment and the office-holders of the world will have a terrible time, being called to answer for their deeds. So be prepared to answer for your acts on that Day.

Al-Fudayl ibn 'Iyad The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

I, I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins
Like dolphins can swim Though nothing, nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, forever and ever
Oh, we can be heroes just for one day.

Brian Eno

Time: That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.

Herbert Spencer

My six and seventy years are through.
I was not born, I am not dead.
Clouds floating on the high wide skies
The moon curves through its million-mile course.

Yakuo Tokuken

Time never returns once lost.

Hyder Bux Jatoi

Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.

John Steinbeck Tortilla Flat (1935)

I don't understand the ones that have no sense of hope and invest in hate. That's not gonna work out, you know? It's a waste of your time!

Tom Petty Interview With Alan Bangs (1999)

Being an immortal doesn’t matter to me. If one looks out into the universe and perceives what true immortality would mean in terms of time and space, it takes monstrous hubris to even conceive of personal immortality, much less desire it.

Sheri S. Tepper The Visitor (2002)

Forty years ago, my dad gave up a safe seat in Congress to run for governor and, finally, forty years later, we're gonna have a Larry Hogan in the governor's mansion.

Larry Hogan

Earth and metal ...
although my breathing ceases
time and tide go on.

Atsujin

I am still hopeful. A falcon, Time. But the coincidence is probably accidental.

Leonardo da Vinci The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)

Old sundial, you stand here for Time:
For Love, the vine that round your base
Its tendrils twines, and dares to climb
And lay one flower-capped spray in grace
Without the asking on your cold
Unsmiling and unfrowning face.

Eleanor Farjeon Pan-Worship and Other Poems (1908)

The Dark Ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of Science, and what might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind, may even bring about its total destruction. Beware, I say; time may be short.

Winston Churchill

It's pretty hard to tell somebody who won 211 seats the first time out, having started way behind, and then 169 the next time out, that he can't do it a third time against Jean Chrétien, Preston Manning and Audrey McLaughlin. Give me a break.

Brian Mulroney

I have not long to live. I have lasted more than a man’s average allotted span, and while I still am hale and hearty, I know full well the hand of time, while it may miss a man at one reaping, will get him at the next.

Clifford D. Simak Time and Again (1951)

Three and seventy years
I've drawn pure water from the fire -
Now I become a tiny bug.
With a touch of my body
I shatter all worlds.

Ingo

Do not wait; the time will never be "just right." Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along. p. 127

Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich (1938)

That old bald cheater, Time.

Ben Jonson The Poetaster (1601)

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