quotations about time
Time is only an illusion produced by the succession of our states of consciousness as we travel through eternal duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be produced; but "lies asleep."
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY
An Abridgement of the Secret Doctrine
Time is but the ante-chamber to eternity.
SUSANNAH MOODIE
Mark Hurdlestone; Or, The Two Brothers
I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppled masonry, and time one livid final flame.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
For though time may seem to drag slowly on
Before you will know it, time will be gone.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"The Voice of the Clock"
Days, months, years fly away, and irrecoverably sink in the abyss of time.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
attributed, Thoughts Moral and Divine
Well, ultimately nothing lasts. Everything is temporal, but some things last longer than others.
WALTER BARGEN
Riverfront Times, September 29, 2009
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
The years like birds of passage go
To that eternal clime, the past;
And May's immortal lot is cast
Upon their flight o'er all below,
Like sunlight on a field of snow,
Or some sweet rose-leaf on the blast.
HENRY ABBEY
"May Dreams"
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
Your children's losing battle with time seems even sadder than your own.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit at Rest
We are all burning in time, but each is consumed
at his own speed.
JACK GILBERT
"Burning (Andante Non Troppo)"
There is nothing fatherly about time and what it does to us, either.
DEAN KOONTZ
Forever Odd
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 avalanche of time sweeps everything before it. Every individual instant hurtles into oblivion, drowning out the obliteration of the instant immediately preceding it, and then it too disappears under the onslaught of the next and the next and the next. When the avalanche has shuddered past for a long enough time, the perception of the past evolves. Distant events grow beyond mere history and take on the weight of legend.
DAVID GERROLD
Under the Eye of God
Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but it is noble to live life, and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
No preacher is listened to but time; which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have tried in vain to put into our heads.
JONATHAN SWIFT
"Thoughts on Various Subjects", The Works of Jonathan Swift
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
Time, that aged nurse,
Rocked me to patience.
JOHN KEATS
Endymion
Time is a master of ceremonies who always ends up putting us in our rightful place, we advance, stop and retreat according to his orders, our mistake lies in imagining that we can catch him out.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
The Cave