Quotes about time
page 36

“Better not to give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.”

Variant: It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.
Source: Mockingjay

“She was one of those people who are irrevocably, incurably honest and therefore both inflexible and vulnerable at the same time.”

Azar Nafisi (1955) Iranaian academic and writer

People

“He sat a long time and he thought about his life and how little of it he could ever have foreseen and he wondered for all his will and all his intent how much of it was his doing.”

Cormac McCarthy book Cities of the Plain

Source: Cities of the Plain

Life

“Now she and I sit together in her room and eat chocolate, and I tell her that in a very long time when we both to go heaven, we should try to get chairs next to each other, close to the dessert table.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

“Forgive me," he went on. "For a long time I have had the peculiar habit of not arriving but appearing.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: Farewell Waltz

Forgiveness, Appearance

“Things usually make sense in time, and even bad decisions have their own kind of correctness.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Decision, Sense

“Intense fear comes in waves; the body can’t stand it for long at a time.”

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

Source: Red Dragon

Fear

“Not only are selves conditional but they die. Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Source: Self-Consciousness

Death, Personality, Dead

“Just when you feel you have no time to relax, know that this is the moment you most need to make time to relax.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

Feeling

“If a man smiles all the time, he’s probably selling something that doesn’t work.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Back To Work, Smile

“My God, I could raise a family of six children and hold down a full-time job with all the energy I expend on depression!”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

God, Children, Family

“If you weaken, I'll be strong. If you get lost, I'll be your way home. If you despair, I'll bring you joy. I will love you until the end of time.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

Love, Way, Home, Strong

“Time for some thrillin' heroics.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

“It was a secret time and place, you next to me, untraceable and out of this world.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Secret, World

“Superstition, like true love, needs time to grow and reflect upon itself.”

Stephen King book The Stand

Source: The Stand

Love

“But just because you bury something, that doesn't mean it stops existing. Those feelings, they'd been there all along. All that time. I had to just face it.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Feeling

“What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of tough-mindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hard-heartedness?”

Martin Luther King, Jr. book Strength to Love

Source: Strength to Love

Personality

“A man who discovers his pants are on fire tends to have very little time to worry about somebody else's box of matches”

Jeff Lindsay book Dearly Devoted Dexter

Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter

Box

“And from that time on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,
Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam,
A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Source: A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

Dreams, Star, Sea

“To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

1951 - 1968, The Creative Act', 1957
Context: Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity; to all appearances the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.

Way, Appearance

“Well,' the Goddess said, 'your heart didn't heal straight the last time it broke. So we'll break it again and reset it so it heals straight this time.”

Jane Yolen (1939) American speculative fiction and children's writer

Source: The Books of Great Alta

Heart

“Also consider that someday, when you’re dead and rotted, kids with their baby teeth will sit in their time-geography class and laugh about how stupid you were.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

Stupidity, Baby, Dead

“Goodbye, Room." I wave up at Skylight. "Say goodbye," I tell Ma. "Goodbye, Room."
Ma says it but on mute.
I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.”

Emma Donoghue Room

Source: Room

“There's a moment when love makes you believe in death for the first time. You recognize the one whose loss, even contemplated, you'll carry forever, like a sleeping child. All grief, anyone's grief… is the weight of a sleeping child.”

Anne Michaels book Fugitive Pieces

Source: Fugitive Pieces

Love, Death, Sleep, Loss

“By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Gift from the Sea (1955)

“Librarians save lives: by handing the right book, at the right time, to a kid in need”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

Books

“There are a lot of things a person with two hands couldn't steal," Eddis said.
"So?"
"If it's impossible to steal them with two hands, it's no more impossible to steal them with one. Steal peace, Eugenides. Steal me some time.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Queen of Attolia

Source: The Queen of Attolia

Peace, Personality

“It's the perfect solution. We argue all the time. We can't stand each other. It's like we're already married.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Married By Morning

Perfection

“He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22 (1961)

“If by the quarter of the twentieth century godliness wasn’t next to something more interesting than cleanliness, it might be time to reevaluate our notions of godliness.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

“Error is better than apathy. Error can be corrected in time to change the outcome. Apathy is seldom corrected until it is too late.”

G. Edward Griffin (1931) American conspiracy theorist, film producer, author, and political lecturer

Error, Change

“Considering Adrian had once gotten bored while reading while reading a particularly long menu, I had a hard time imagining he'd read the Hugo book in any language.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Books, Imagination, Reading

“He had a feeling this was one of those times when a male should express positive enthusiasm regardless of what he really thought—especially when he didn’t really know what was going on.”

Anne Bishop book Vision in Silver

Source: Vision in Silver

Feeling

“At the same time, we both pulled back briefly still oh so close. Everything in the word rested on that moment.
"We can't…" He told me.
"I know," I agreed.
Then his mouth was on mine again, and this time I knew there would be no turning back.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

“It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.”

Annie Dillard book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Source: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

“I'm killing time while I wait for life to shower me with meaning and happiness.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Life, Waiting, Happiness

“Like seeing a photograph of yourself as a child, encountering handwriting that you know was once yours but that now seems only dimly familiar can inspire a confrontation with the mystery of time.”

Francine Prose (1947) American writer

Source: Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

“Love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning.”

Esther Perel (1958) Belgian Psychotherapist and Author

Source: Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

Love, Life, Marriage

“Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music-not too much, or the soul could not sustain it-from time to time.”

Vikram Seth book An Equal Music

Source: An Equal Music

Hope, Music, Soul, Happiness

“He had lived a very long time, and only since he gained Anna had he learned to fear. He’d discovered that he had never been brave before—just indifferent. She had taught him that to be brave, you have to fear losing something.”

Patricia Briggs book Fair Game

Source: Fair Game

Fear, Learning, Indifference

“When stalking one’s prey, it is best to take one’s time. Say nothing, and as sure as eggs he will become curious and emerge.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“The Oracle rose. As one, the three witches bowed.
"See?" Bran jerked his thumb at the three women. "That's how a woman should treat a man. Next time you see me, I want you to do just like them.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

Women, Jerk

“The time is always right to do what’s right.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Speech delivered in Finney Chapel at Oberlin College (22 October 1964), as reported in "When MLK came to Oberlin" by Cindy Leise, The Chronicle-Telegram (21 January 2008) http://chronicle.northcoastnow.com/2008/01/21/when-mlk-came-to-oberlin/ <br class="br">1960s <br class="br">Variant: The time is always right to do what’s right.

Wise, Deep, Inspirational, Life

“Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: Hannah Coulter

Love

“It was like that all the time, in those years: an endless trip, a gaudy voyage. But powers decay. Time leaches the colors from the best of visions. The world becomes grayer. Entropy beats us down. Everything fades. Everything goes. Everything dies.”

Robert Silverberg Dying Inside

Source: Dying Inside

World, Color

“Passing time adds false memories and modifies real ones.”

Stephen King book Joyland

Source: Joyland

Memory, Falseness

“It occurred to me then that it was in times of struggle that I found the best parts of myself - courage, loyalty, an unexpected peace - and I always discovered what I needed to break through and go on.”

Patrick Carman book Stargazer

Source: Stargazer

Peace, Courage, Parting, Loyalty

“If I looked like him,” Tara said. “I’d want to have sex with myself. All the time.”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: Simply Irresistible

Sex

“Time is a river, and books are boats.”

Dan Brown (1964) American author

Books

“You want to be a better person? Go listen to someone you disagree with. don't argue with them just. It's remarkable what interesting things people will say if you take the time to not be a jerk.”

Brandon Sanderson book Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

People, Jerk, Personality

“Maybe the life I think I'm living is a paranoid delusion… Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Life, Money, People, Way

“Don't be mysterious; there isn't the time.”

E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread

Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread

“You have to work at relationships. You can’t just walk out on them every time something goes wrong.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

“I’d much rather pretend I’m
somewhere else, and any time I open
the pages of a book, that happens.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Books

“These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Letter to John Quincy Adams (19 January 1780)
Context: These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues.
Context: These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by the scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

Life

“Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

People, Parting

“I learned a long time ago not to judge people by what they look like, sound like, or by the clothes they wear. Just because a house is nice and shiny out front doesn’t mean it’s not rotting on the inside. (Kyrian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

People, Learning, Housing, Clothes

“I can see the first apple teetering when I let the third arrow go, catching the torn flap and ripping it from the bag. For a moment, everything seems frozen in time. Then the apples spill to the ground and I'm blown backward into the air.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but though his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: 1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

Education, Suicide, Universe, Envy

“Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Statement of January 1991, as quoted in Of Permanent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett (2007) by Andrew Kilpatrick

Motivational, Inspirational, For Team, Success

“Children of the future Age
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

A Little Girl Lost, st. 1
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)

Love, Children, Age, Reading

“Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.”

Alan Lightman book Einstein's Dreams

Source: Einstein's Dreams

Personality

“And for one second, it was like I could feel the timing clicking together, finally pieces falling into place.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Feeling

“Why waste time learning when ignorance is instantaneous.
---Hobbes”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

15 Nov 90
Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons

Learning

“Everyone is a potential murderer-in everyone there arises from time to time theto kill-though not theto kill.”

Agatha Christie Curtain

Source: Curtain

“Even if all the clocks in the station break down, thought Hugo, time won't stop. Not even if you really want it to.

Like now.”

Brian Selznick book The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Source: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

“Being tired isn't the same as being rich, but most times it's close enough.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

“So you drive as far as you can, even when you can clearly read the sign. You want to think you are exempt, that it doesn’t apply to you. But it does. Life is still a dead end. And we still have a hard time believing it”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Life, Thinking, Reading, Dead

“Sometimes the lights all shining on me, other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me what a long strange trip it's been.”

Jerry Garcia (1942–1995) American musician and member of the Grateful Dead

Light

“The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter II.

Painting

“Strange though it is, Sarov still cares about you. He told me to leave you alone. But I think, this time, I must disobey the general. You are mine! And I intend to make you suffer…"

"Just talking to you makes me suffer," Alex said.”

Anthony Horowitz book Skeleton Key

Source: Skeleton Key

Thinking, Suffering

“Some hurts can never be mended" he said. "No matter how much time passes. They tattoo themselves on our souls”

Yasmine Galenorn (1961) American writer

Soul, Tattoo, Hurt

“You know, if you have certain frustrations," Ascanio said, "I would be happy to help you work them out."
Derek looked at me, pointed at Ascanio, and punched his left palm with his right fist a few times. I shook my head.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

Help, Happiness

“I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already.”

Anthony Powell book The Valley of Bones

Source: The Valley of Bones

Life, Books, Literature

“Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Source: Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991

Feeling

“I suppose you should her it from me that I met your mother" he smiled a litte sadly. "well… When I say met I mean one time I tried to kill her."
"Do me a favor" Zach's voice was low and dark and dangerous. "Next time don't just try”

Ally Carter Out of Sight, Out of Time

Source: Out of Sight, Out of Time

Smile

“We ought so to behave to one another as to avoid making enemies of our friends, and at the same time to make friends of our enemies.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 23, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations http://archive.org/details/dictionaryquota02harbgoog (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 320

“How many times… have you encountered the saying, 'When the student is ready, the Master speaks?' Do you know why that is true? The door opens. The Master is everywhere, but the student has to open his mind to hear the Masters Voice.”

Robert Anton Wilson book Masks of the Illuminati

Source: Masks of the Illuminati

“…she'll go and fall in love, and there's an end of peace and fun, and cozy times together.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Love, Peace

“how can you be true and
kind at the same
time?

how?”

Charles Bukowski book Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories

Source: Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories

“For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.”

Isabel Allende Of Love and Shadows

Source: Of Love and Shadows

Women

“I realize, for the first time, how very lonely I've been in the arena. How comforting the presence of another human being can be.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“No matter how much time has passed, these things still affect us and the world we live in. If you don't pay attention to the past, you'll never understand the future. It's all linked together.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

World, Understanding, Past, Future

“He lunged again. This time I stood my ground and he checked his leap at the last second…. and toppled sideways. I didn't hide my laugh that time. His face twisted fast, grabbed my pajama leg and wrenched, and down I went.
"Bully”

Kelley Armstrong The Reckoning

Source: The Reckoning

“I am not strange but I feel queer. I am like that sometimes. I feel like crying all the time. It is very silly but it will pass.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Feeling, Cry

“No one had ever called me unnatural before, except for the time I put ketchup on a taco. But seriously, we'd been out of salsa, so what else was I supposed to do?”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death”

John Keats Ode to a Nightingale

Stanza 6
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale
Source: The Complete Poems
Context: Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain —
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Love, Death