The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.
—John Berger, 1984Quotes
The celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to a clockwork.
—Johannes Kepler, 1605Thou art not to learn the humors and tricks of that old bald cheater, time.
—Ben Jonson, 1601In time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.
—Novalis, c. 1798This is Year Zero.
—Pol Pot, 1975The past is always tense and the future, perfect.
—Zadie Smith, 2000The appointed thing comes at the appointed time in the appointed way.
—Myrtle Reed, 1910Time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters, but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallop.
—Edith Wharton, 1905I’ve been on a calendar, but never on time.
—Marilyn Monroe, 1962Time rushes toward us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.
—Tennessee Williams, 1951My stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse.
—John Quincy Adams, 1844If both what is before and what is after are in this same “now,” things which happened ten thousand years ago would be simultaneous with what has happened today, and nothing would be before or after anything else.
—Aristotle, c. 330 BCThose who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688