Quotes about time
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Source: Magic Bleeds
“Wisdom is oft-times nearer when we stoop
Than when we soar.”
Source: The Excursion 1814
Source: Rework
“Heaven would be Hell in no time if every cruel, selfish, vicious soul went to Heaven.”
Source: Memnoch the Devil
“Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.”
Source: The Theory Of Moral Sentiments
“Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.”
Source: The Blind Assassin
“Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.”
Source: White Oleander
“In The Right Light, At The Right Time. Everything Is Extraordinary.”
“and the two of them loved each other for a long time in silence without making love again.”
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.”
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“Fate already warned us to pack it in. We just didn’t hear it in time.”
Source: This is Where I Leave You
“First time it's a stranger. Second time its just a coincidence. Third time it's a tail”
Source: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy
“…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.”
Source: A Widow for One Year
“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”
Introduction, p. xi.
Source: The Alchemist (1988)
Context: I ask myself: are defeats necessary?
Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for a dream, we have no experience and make mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.
1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
Source: Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics & the Visionary Experience
“I'm killing time and it's dying hard.”
Variant: Mostly I just kill time," he said, "and it dies hard.
Source: The Long Goodbye
“I saw a bank that said '24 Hour Banking,' but I didn’t have that much time.”
Source: Words for the Wind: The Collected Verse
1780s, Letter to Peter Carr (1785)
“There may be a time when we'll attend Weather Theatres to recall the sensation of rain.”
Source: The Lords and The New Creatures
“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”
Variant: Now is no time to think of what you do not have.
Think of what you can do with that there is
Source: The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 10
Source: A Cafe in Space: The Anais Nin Literary Journal, Volume 3
Source: A Kiss in Time
As quoted in Gems of Thought (1888) edited by Charles Northend
“Not many people can lay claim to having broken Time, and we did it purely by accident.”
Source: The Search for the Red Dragon
Source: Black Genius: African-American Solutions to African-American Problems
Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding
“Time flows away like the water in the river.”
“Looks like it's time to liven up this dead little town!" - Saint Dane (The Reality Bug)”
Source: The Reality Bug
Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You
“There are no drive-thru breakthroughs. Breakthroughs take time.”
Source: In a Strange Room
Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?
“You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.”
"The Owl who was God", The New Yorker (29 April 1939); Fables for Our Time & Famous Poems Illustrated (1940). Parody of "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time