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Quotes

Thou art not to learn the humors and tricks of that old bald cheater, time.

—Ben Jonson, 1601

This is Year Zero.

—Pol Pot, 1975

A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.

—Jane Austen, 1814

In time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.

—Novalis, c. 1798

 Do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit.

—Ptahhotep, c. 2350 BC

If 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 BC

The appointed thing comes at the appointed time in the appointed way.

—Myrtle Reed, 1910

Time’s violence rends the soul; by the rent eternity enters.

—Simone Weil, 1947

They say, “We only have the life of this world. We die and we live, and nothing destroys us but time.” Yet, not true knowledge have they of this—only belief.

—The Qur’an, c. 620

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

—Frank Zappa, 1989

I look for the end of the future, but it never ceases to arrive. 

—Zhuangzi, c. 325 BC

No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.

—Jonathan Swift, 1706

I’ve been on a calendar, but never on time.

—Marilyn Monroe, 1962