Quotes: Time

(a process by which nature prevents everything from happening all at once)


The present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come.

—Walter Savage Landor

Nothing is worth more than this day.

—Goethe

We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that once it was all that was humanly possible.

—George Santayana

Those who make the worst use of their time are the one’s who complain the most about how little there is.

—Anonymous

The future is no more uncertain than the present.

—Walt Whitman

The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way, and it is a useful nostrum against despair.

—Barbara Tuchman, Practicing History

Time is the thief you cannot banish.

—Phyllis McGinley

We find it the worst thing about time that we know not what to do with it.

—R.W. Emerson, Lecture on the Times, (1841).

Our todays and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which
We build [the future].
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The noiseless foot of time steals swiftly by,
And, ere we dream of manhood, age is nigh!
—William Gifford (1802)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us . . . . ”

—Charles Dickens in his novel, A Tale of Two Cities

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times! Today more people have more money than ever before and there is more poverty than ever before, there are more high school graduates than ever before, there are more dropouts, there is more security, there is more uncertainty and danger from terrorists, there is more education, there is more miseducation and lack of education, there is more success than ever before there is more failure. It is the best of times, it is the worst of times!

—Anonymous

Catch, then, O catch the transient hour;
Improve each moment as it flies;
Life’s a short Summer, man a flower;
He dies—alas! How soon he dies.
—Samuel Johnson

I recommend you to take care of the minutes for the hours will take care of themselves.

—Lord Chesterfield, Letters to His Son

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict, or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.

—Barbara Bush (1925-, American First Lady, Wife of President George Bush)

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it.

—Franklin P. Jones

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.

—Paul Valery, French poet and writer

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

—Robertson Davies, "A Voice from the Attic", 1960

Yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow but a vision; but today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day.

—Sanskrit Proverb

There is never enough time, unless you're serving it [in prison].

—Malcolm Forbes

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

—Louis-Hector Berlioz

Time is the reef upon which all of our frail mystic ships are wrecked.

—Noel Coward

Take what man makes and use it,
But do not worship it,
For it shall pass.
—Anonymous

Links to quotations units. Other Quotes, Quotation Units.


Related "time" units: aevum, evum; archaeo-, archeo-; Calendars; chrono-; horo-; pre-; tempo-.