If both what is before and what is after are in this same “now,” things which happened ten thousand years ago would be simultaneous with what has happened today, and nothing would be before or after anything else.
—Aristotle, c. 330 BCQuotes
The best way to fill time is to waste it.
—Marguerite Duras, 1987Thou art not to learn the humors and tricks of that old bald cheater, time.
—Ben Jonson, 1601Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow.
—Book of Wisdom, c. 100 BCIn time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.
—Novalis, c. 1798There is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BCTime, 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, 1905This is Year Zero.
—Pol Pot, 1975The appointed thing comes at the appointed time in the appointed way.
—Myrtle Reed, 1910Nothing puzzles me more than time and space, and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them.
—Charles Lamb, 1810My 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, 1844A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.
—Jane Austen, 1814Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688