Archive

Quotes

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

—Cormac McCarthy, 1992

The best way to fill time is to waste it.

—Marguerite Duras, 1987

There is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC

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

—Charles Lamb, 1810

Time rushes toward us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.

—Tennessee Williams, 1951

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

—Novalis, c. 1798

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

Time’s ruins build eternity’s mansions.

—James Joyce, 1922

Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow.

—Book of Wisdom, c. 100 BC

This is Year Zero.

—Pol Pot, 1975

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

—Zhuangzi, c. 325 BC

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

—Marilyn Monroe, 1962

The past is always tense and the future, perfect.

—Zadie Smith, 2000