Archive

Quotes

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

—Frank Zappa, 1989

Time’s ruins build eternity’s mansions.

—James Joyce, 1922

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.

—Joseph Addison, 1711

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

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

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

—Ptahhotep, c. 2350 BC

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

—Jane Austen, 1814

The past is always tense and the future, perfect.

—Zadie Smith, 2000

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

—Simone Weil, 1947

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

—Zhuangzi, c. 325 BC

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BC

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

—Cormac McCarthy, 1992

There is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC

The appointed thing comes at the appointed time in the appointed way.

—Myrtle Reed, 1910