Quotes about time
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“But he had been in love once, that he knew. Once and only once, and a long time ago. And it had changed him forever. Perfect love did that to a person and this had been perfect.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Love, Change, Personality, Perfection

“We sat around the kitchen table picking off of foil-covered plates. Conrad kept sneaking looks at me, and every time I looked back, he looked away. I'm right here, I wanted to tell him. I'm still here.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

“Equally disquieting are the times when we do make a choice, only to later feel as though we have murdered some other aspect of our being by settling on one single concrete decision.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Feeling, Decision

“The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. The difference betweenand. Lay is always passive.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Lie, Night

“I sat up, sliding them off, and the quiet around me did not, for once, seem empty and vast. Instead, for the first time in a while, it felt like it already was full.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“Stop running, you fools!" Kronos yelled. "Stand and ACKK!"
That last part was because a panicked Hyperborean giant stumbled backwards and sat on top of him. The lord of time disappeared under a giant blue butt.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Fools, Parting

“Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Stupidity, Evil

“Dogs own space and cats own time.”

Nicola Griffith book Hild

Source: Hild

Dogs, Cats

“Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Context: To have access to literature, world literature, was to escape the prison of national vanity, of philistinism, of compulsory provincialism, of inane schooling, of imperfect destinies and bad luck. Literature was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom.
Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.

Literature, Freedom, Reading

“I heard that in relativity theory, space and time are the same thing. Einstein discovered this when he kept showing up three miles late for his meetings.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“You know. Life's short. If you don't try new things, you'll never know what you're best at. And you can only make time for new things by quitting the things you know don't work for you.”

Meg Cabot book Teen Idol

Source: Teen Idol

Life

“The question 'What was there before creation?' is meaningless. Time is a property of creation, therefore before creation there was no before creation.”

Glen Duncan book I, Lucifer

Source: I, Lucifer

Question

“Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow book Voices of the Night

St. 4.
Cf. Andrew Marvell, Upon the Death of Lord Hastings (1649): "Art indeed is long, but life is short".
A Psalm of Life (1839)
Source: Voices of the Night

Art, Heart

“… most of the time we were alone and mixing up our souls ever more and ever more till it would be terribly hard to say good-by.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Soul

“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life — and travel — leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks — on your body or on your heart — are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.”

Anthony Bourdain book The Nasty Bits

The Nasty Bits (2006)

Life, World, Beauty, Travel

“We've spent so much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

People

“It’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.”

Clayton M. Christensen (1952–2020) Mormon academic

Intro (2012 edition)
1990s, The Innovator's Dilemma (1997)
Source: How Will You Measure Your Life?

“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity.”

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

1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Context: We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late."

Life, History

“I guess the real reason that my wife and I had children is the same reason that Napoleon had for invading Russia: it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Children, Idea

“It's a fine world, though rich in hardships at times.”

Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove

Source: Lonesome Dove

World

“The willingness to show up changes us, It makes us a little braver each time.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Courageous, Change

“Reading is a gift. It's something you can do almost anytime and anywhere. It can be a tremendous way to learn, relax, and even escape. So, enough about the virtues of reading. Time to read on.”

Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker

Source: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens: Simple Ways to Keep Your Cool in Stressful Times

Way, Learning, Reading

“Time, dear friend, time brings round opportunity; opportunity is the martingale of man. The more we have ventured the more we gain, when we know how to wait.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

Waiting

“For Harry Potter I have all the time in the world.”

Philippa Gregory (1954) English novelist

World

“I just don't want you to worry about me, or think you've met me, or waste your time anymore.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Thinking

“I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. You'd know what a drag it is to see you.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Positively 4th Street
Source: Lyrics, 1962-1985

Shoe

“Knowing is better than not knowing. Every time.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“I couldn’t remember the last time I had stayed up into the squeaky hours of the night because I couldn’t put a book down, and that was a tragedy.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

Books, Night

“You can't save time. You can only spend it, but you can spend it wisely or foolishly.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

“Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Fear, Suffering

“I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me.”

William Nicholson movie Shadowlands

Source: Shadowlands

God, Sleep, Change, Help

“Tana. In all my long life, though there were many times I prayed for it, no one has ever saved me. No one but you.”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Life

“Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife.”
Temporis filia veritas; cui me obstetricari non pudet.

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer

As quoted in The Ismailis in the Middle Ages: A History of Survival, A search for Salvation (2007) by Shafique N. Virani, p. 28

Truth, Feeling, Daughters

“Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted.”

John Marsden book Tomorrow, When the War Began

Source: Tomorrow, When the War Began

“When I was alive, I mean the first time, Mussolini was in charge. We were at war.”
“Mussolini?” Leo frowned. “Wasn’t he like BFFs with Hitler?”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

War

“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.”

John Cage book Silence: Lectures and Writings

Source: Silence: Lectures and Writings

Silence

“Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Boy

“These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Feeling

“It is a little-known fact about covert operations that you will spend a lot of time with people you can’t really trust. They may be traitors and liars. We call them assets or informants. But mostly, in those days, I called him Zach.”

Ally Carter book Only the Good Spy Young

Source: Only the Good Spy Young

People

“He says this is war. There is no shame in war. Tell him he's wrong. War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

War, Peace

“Staying alive was what we did to pass the time.”

Meg Rosoff book How I Live Now

Source: How I Live Now

“If you knew where your happiness came from, it gave you patience. You realized that a lot of the time, you were just waiting out a situation, and that took the pressure off; you no longer looked to every interaction to actually do something for you.”

Curtis Sittenfeld book Prep

Source: Prep

Waiting, Patience, Happiness

“You can use your time to build bridges or walls. The latter is not only unChristlike, it limits impact & creates loneliness.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Loneliness

“every time God forgives us, God is saying that God's own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

God, Forgiveness

“Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in.”

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

“… you cannot eat every tadpole and frog in the pond, but you can eat the biggest and ugliest one, and that will be enough, at least for the time being.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Source: Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

“I left mad behind a long time ago. The world it is the way it is. I can only fix my little piece of it”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

World, Way, Madness

“Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Education, Waiting, Reading

“Déjà vu is more than just that fleeting moment of surprise, instantly forgotten because we never bother with things that make no sense. It show that time doesn't pass. It's a leap into something we have already experienced and that is being repeated.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Sense

“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different, it's accepting the past for what it was, and using this moment and this time to help yourself move forward.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Hope, Forgiveness, Past, Help

“How many times do we all have to do this? Get up, go to school, again? Before everyone admits it's a crap idea?”

Louise Rennison (1951–2016) British writer

Source: Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me?

School, Idea

“The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Freedom

“I have to tell you I love living in a world without clocks. The shackles are gone. I’m a puppy unleashed in a meadow of time. -- Stargirl”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

Love, World

“Time heals all wounds.”

Stephen King book Hearts in Atlantis

Misattributed
Source: Hearts in Atlantis

“Enclose your heart in times of need with the steel of your determination and your strength. In doing this, all things will be bearable.”

Lora Leigh (1965) American writer

Source: Broken Wings

Heart

“There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

People

“… that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them.
(Paraphrase of Schopenhauer)”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Books, Thinking, Reading

“You asked me who I belong to," he whispered. "I belong to. Your blood is my blood, your bones my bones. The first time you saw me, I looked familiar, didn't I? Just like you looked familiar to me.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it's not the same as in daytime.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Change, Training

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

As quoted in The Life and Work of Martha Graham (1991) by Agnes de Mille, p. 264, 
Context: There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

Motivational, Success, Inspirational, Life

“They're not just dreams. Not anymore, I dream more than I wake now, and, at times, I have crossed over. Can't you see? I've been there.”

Mark Helprin book Winter's Tale

Source: Winter's Tale

Dreams

“If people persist in trespassing upon the grizzlies' territory, we must accept the fact that the grizzlies, from time to time, will harvest a few trespassers.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

People

“I have lost everything, Han thought. Then he corrected himself. Every time I think I’ve lost everything, I find there’s still something else to lose.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Gray Wolf Throne

Thinking

“Love life. Engage in it. Give it all you've got. Love it with a passion because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Love, Life, Passion

“And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. An infinity, and at the same time, zero. We try to scoop it all up in our hands, and what we get is a handful of zero. That's the city”

Haruki Murakami book The Elephant Vanishes

Source: The Elephant Vanishes

“And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.”

Amy Tan The Kitchen God's Wife

Source: The Kitchen God's Wife

Sadness, Way, Feeling, Memory

“Whoever knows you when you are young can look inside you and see the person you once were, and maybe still are at certain times.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Source: The Marriage of Opposites

Personality

“Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

Past

“There is a time for many words and there is a time also for sleep.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XI. 379 (tr. A. T. Murray).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Source: The Odyssey

Good Night, Sleep

“If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

“All this hoping for something- or someone- that's maybe hopeless. I'm having a hard time processing what I am supposed to believe, or if I'm even supposed to. There is too much information, and I don't like a lot of it.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Hope

“I killed her once and died for her many times and I still have nothing to show for it. I always search for her; I always remember her. I carry the hope that someday she will remember me.”

Ann Brashares book My Name is Memory

Source: My Name Is Memory

Hope, Search

“Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, 'This isn't supposed to be happening this way,' and trying harder to make it happen some other way.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

Way

“We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Last time you were starving, I gave you my blood. It was a little homoerotic, maybe, but I’m secure in my sexuality.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Jace Herondale and Simon Lewis, pg. 509
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)
Context: "Why didn't you say something?"
"Because, it's not like there's animals I can feed on here."
"There's us."
"I don't want to feed on my friends' blood."
"Why not? We've been here before, haven't we? Last time you were starving, I gave you my blood. It was a little homoerotic, maybe, but I'm secure in my sexuality."

“Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Nature, Tree

“Men don’t often know those times when a girl could be had for nothing.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Love of the Last Tycoon

Source: The Last Tycoon

Men, Girl

“No one can hurry me down to Hades before my time, but if a man's hour is come, be he brave or be he coward, there is no escape for him when he has once been born.”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

“This, said Damerel wrathfully, is the second time you have walked in just as I am about to propose to your sister!”

Georgette Heyer book Venetia

Source: Venetia

Sister

“Time spent reading, like time spent loving, increases our lifetime.”

Daniel Pennac (1944) French author

Source: Better than Life

Love, Reading

“When the day shall come, that we do part," he said softly, and turned to look at me, "if my last words are not 'I love you'—ye'll ken it was because I didna have time.”

Diana Gabaldon book The Fiery Cross

Variant: When the day shall come that we do part," he said softly, and turned to look at me, "if my last words are not 'I love you'-ye'll ken it was because I didna have time.
Source: The Fiery Cross

Love, Parting

“You fainted and I caught you. It was the first time I'd supported a human. You had such heavy bones. I put myself between you and gravity. Impossible.”

Elizabeth Knox (1959) New Zealand writer

Source: The Vintner's Luck

Support

“Every time I've built character, I've regretted it.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes

“I wonder how many times each day she dies a little.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“Every day when I wake I tell myself that it will be my last. If you are not trying to hold on to time, you are not so afraid of losing it… And then, if you make it to bedtime, you feel the joy of cheating death out of one more day.”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor the Overlander

Variant: You see, I tired of constant fear, so I made a decision. Every day when I wake I tell myself that it will be my last. If you are not trying to hold on to time, you are not so afraid of losing it.
Source: Gregor the Overlander

Death, Feeling, Joy, Cheating

“You had to know someone very well to make them laugh like that. She had loved him for such a long time, she thought. How was it that she did not know him at all?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Love