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Quotes

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

—Ptahhotep, c. 2350 BC

My 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, 1844

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

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

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

—Jane Austen, 1814

In time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.

—Novalis, c. 1798

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

—Myrtle Reed, 1910

Time, 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

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.

—John Berger, 1984

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, 1706

They 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. 620

Thou art not to learn the humors and tricks of that old bald cheater, time.

—Ben Jonson, 1601

Time rushes toward us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.

—Tennessee Williams, 1951

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