For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.
—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BCQuotes
No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706They 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. 620The appointed thing comes at the appointed time in the appointed way.
—Myrtle Reed, 1910Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
—Frank Zappa, 1989The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.
—John Berger, 1984Time’s violence rends the soul; by the rent eternity enters.
—Simone Weil, 1947My 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, 1844Do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit.
—Ptahhotep, c. 2350 BCWe 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, 1711I look for the end of the future, but it never ceases to arrive.
—Zhuangzi, c. 325 BCThou art not to learn the humors and tricks of that old bald cheater, time.
—Ben Jonson, 1601Time, 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