The appointed thing comes at the appointed time in the appointed way.
—Myrtle Reed, 1910Quotes
The celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to a clockwork.
—Johannes Kepler, 1605We 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, 1711If 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 BCThey 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. 620Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688Thou art not to learn the humors and tricks of that old bald cheater, time.
—Ben Jonson, 1601In time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.
—Novalis, c. 1798The past is always tense and the future, perfect.
—Zadie Smith, 2000I look for the end of the future, but it never ceases to arrive.
—Zhuangzi, c. 325 BCTime is a veil interposed between God and ourselves, as our eyelid is between our eye and the light.
—François-René de Chateaubriand, c. 1820I’ve been on a calendar, but never on time.
—Marilyn Monroe, 1962The best way to fill time is to waste it.
—Marguerite Duras, 1987