quotations about time
The universe may be timeless, but if you imagine breaking it into pieces, some of the pieces can serve as clocks for the others. Time emerges from timelessness. We perceive time because we are, by our very nature, one of those pieces.
CRAIG CALLENDER
Scientific American, June 2010
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"
Some nights--more than I like, lately--I wake to the sound of the bedside clock. The room is dark, without detail, and it expands in such a way that it seems as if I'm outdoors, under an empty sky, or underground, in a cavern. I might be falling through space. I might be dreaming. I could be dead. Only the clock moves, its tick steady, unhurried. At these moments I have the most chilling understanding that time moves in only one direction.
ALAN BURDICK
"The Secret Life of Time", The New Yorker, December 19, 2016
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
"Burnt Norton", Four Quartets
Time, so complain'd of,
Who to no one man
Shows partiality,
Brings round to all men
Some undimm'd hours.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"Consolation"
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"
Let every man be master of his time.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
Time is the father of mutability.
SOLON
attributed, Day's Collacon
My father Time is weak and gray
With waiting for a better day;
See how idiot-like he stands,
Fumbling with his palsied hands!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The Mask of Anarchy
It rolls in grandeur lone--
The stream of Time;
And on its shores lie strown
The wrecks of every clime.
HARVEY RICE
"The Stream of Time"
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives,
Who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
One must work with time and not against it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
Time is the root of all this earth;
These creatures, who from Time had birth,
Within his bosom at the end
Shall sleep; Time hath nor enemy nor friend.
BHARTRHARI
"Time"
O aching time! O moments big as years!
JOHN KEATS
"Hyperion: A Fragment"
Time doesn't really heal, it just makes you not to give a crap.
DAVID BALDACCI
Split Second
Perhaps we expect time to work for us, when time is only given us that we may work.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Exempt are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love.
ARISTOTLE
letter to Alexander on the policy toward the Cities
Time is an impartial distributor.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Anesthetized time; nothing moves and everything is at once.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams