Archive

Quotes

Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow.

—Book of Wisdom, c. 100 BC

The best way to fill time is to waste it.

—Marguerite Duras, 1987

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

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

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

—Ptahhotep, c. 2350 BC

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

—Marilyn Monroe, 1962

Time’s ruins build eternity’s mansions.

—James Joyce, 1922

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

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

Time is a veil interposed between God and ourselves, as our eyelid is between our eye and the light.

—François-René de Chateaubriand, c. 1820

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

This is Year Zero.

—Pol Pot, 1975