Archive

Quotes

Nothing puzzles me more than time and space, and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them.

—Charles Lamb, 1810

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

—Myrtle Reed, 1910

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

The celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to a clockwork.

—Johannes Kepler, 1605

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

The best way to fill time is to waste it.

—Marguerite Duras, 1987

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

—Novalis, c. 1798

The past is always tense and the future, perfect.

—Zadie Smith, 2000

Time, 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, 1905

Years are nothing to me—they should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or to consider them? In the world of wild nature, time is measured by seasons only—the bird does not know how old it is—the rose tree does not count its birthdays!

—Marie Corelli, 1911

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.

—Cormac McCarthy, 1992

Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow.

—Book of Wisdom, c. 100 BC