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, 1911Quotes
The celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to a clockwork.
—Johannes Kepler, 1605Time rushes toward us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.
—Tennessee Williams, 1951In time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.
—Novalis, c. 1798Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
—Frank Zappa, 1989We 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, 1711My 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, 1987A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.
—Jane Austen, 1814Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow.
—Book of Wisdom, c. 100 BCTime’s ruins build eternity’s mansions.
—James Joyce, 1922I look for the end of the future, but it never ceases to arrive.
—Zhuangzi, c. 325 BC