Archive

Quotes

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

—Simone Weil, 1947

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 BC

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

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

—Jane Austen, 1814

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

—Cormac McCarthy, 1992

The best way to fill time is to waste it.

—Marguerite Duras, 1987

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

Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow.

—Book of Wisdom, c. 100 BC

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

—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BC

The past is always tense and the future, perfect.

—Zadie Smith, 2000

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

—John Berger, 1984

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, 1911

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

—Myrtle Reed, 1910