Time’s violence rends the soul; by the rent eternity enters.
—Simone Weil, 1947Quotes
Thou art not to learn the humors and tricks of that old bald cheater, time.
—Ben Jonson, 1601They 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. 620Time rushes toward us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.
—Tennessee Williams, 1951Time is a veil interposed between God and ourselves, as our eyelid is between our eye and the light.
—François-René de Chateaubriand, c. 1820Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
—Frank Zappa, 1989For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.
—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BCMy 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, 1844I’ve been on a calendar, but never on time.
—Marilyn Monroe, 1962The best way to fill time is to waste it.
—Marguerite Duras, 1987I look for the end of the future, but it never ceases to arrive.
—Zhuangzi, c. 325 BCThere is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BCIn time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.
—Novalis, c. 1798