Archive

Quotes

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

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

—Johannes Kepler, 1605

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

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BC

We wish away whole years, and travel through time as through a country filled with many wild and empty wastes, which we would fain hurry over, that we may arrive at those several little settlements or imaginary points of rest which are dispersed up and down in it.

—Joseph Addison, 1711

My 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, 1844

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

—Charles Lamb, 1810

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 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

This is Year Zero.

—Pol Pot, 1975

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

—Ptahhotep, c. 2350 BC

The past is always tense and the future, perfect.

—Zadie Smith, 2000