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Quotes

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.

—John Berger, 1984

Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow.

—Book of Wisdom, c. 100 BC

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

—Ptahhotep, c. 2350 BC

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

—Cormac McCarthy, 1992

This is Year Zero.

—Pol Pot, 1975

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

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

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

—Novalis, c. 1798

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

—Jane Austen, 1814

Time’s ruins build eternity’s mansions.

—James Joyce, 1922

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

—Charles Lamb, 1810

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

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

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