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.

We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing; he is, at most, time’s carcass.

Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow.

The past is always tense and the future, perfect.

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!

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

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.

Time’s violence rends the soul; by the rent eternity enters.

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

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

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

Thou art not to learn the humors and tricks of that old bald cheater, time.

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