quotations about time
Previously, Newton considered time to be moving like a straight arrow which unerringly flies forward toward its target. Nothing could deflect or change the course of this arrow once it was shot. Einstein, however, showed that time was more like a mighty river, moving forward but often meandering through twisting valleys and plains. The presence of matter or energy might momentarily shift the direction of the river, but overall the river's course was smooth: It never abruptly ended or jerked backward. However, Gödel showed that the river of time could be smoothly bent backward into a circle. Rivers, after all, have eddy currents and whirlpools. In the main, a river may flow forward, but at the edges there are always side pools where water flows in a circular motion.
MICHIO KAKU
Hyperspace
The sands of time are quicksands ... so much can sink into them without a trace.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
Nothing is more precious than time, and those who misspend it are the greatest of all prodigals.
THEOPHRASTUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Time is only an illusion produced by the succession of our states of consciousness as we travel through eternal duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be produced; but "lies asleep."
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY
An Abridgement of the Secret Doctrine
That was the truly horrifying thing about it: the sense of time as an enemy, to be fought tooth and nail--but there was so much of it; you killed an hour, but what good did that do when there were thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions more hours just waiting to take its place?
K. J. PARKER
The Escapement
When then time is passing, it may be perceived and measured; but when it is past, it cannot, because it is not.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
STEVE JOBS
Commencement address at Stanford University, June 12, 2005
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
said to have been composed on the night before his execution, "Even Such Is Time"
Time time time is a riddle
My oh my I can figure it out
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
In a thornless cathederal
Is barely moving a needle at all
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
LUKE SITAL-SINGH
"Time Is a Riddle"
A thousand pleasant arts we'll have
To add new feathers to the wings of Time,
And make him smoothly haste away:
We'll use him as our slave,
And when we please we'll bid him stay,
And clip his wings, and make him stop to view
Our studies, and our follies too.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"To Mr. Barbauld"
At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions. It takes away your hair and your jump-shot, according to a popular country song, but in truth it takes away a lot more than that.
STEPHEN KING
introduction, The Gunslinger
Those who understand the value of time use it as prudent people do their money--they make a little go a great way.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Time, place and space are illusions, having no existence save in the mind of man which must set limits and bounds in order to understand.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis
E'en Beauty mourns in her decaying bower,
That Time upon her angel brow should set
His crooked autograph, and mar the jet
Of glossy locks. Lo! how her chaplet green,
The hoar frost and the canker worm destroy.
Decay's dull film obscures those matchless eyes.
ISAAC MCLELLAN
"Musings"
The years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another.
HORACE
Epistles
Time gives his hour-glass
Its due reversal.
Their hour is gone.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"Consolation"
Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
ROBERT FROST
"Acquainted with the Night"