Quotes about time
page 46

“Why can’t the world hear? I ask myself. Within a few moments I ask it many times. Because it doesn’t care, I finally answer, and I know I’m right. It’s like I’ve been chosen. But chosen for what? I ask.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

World

“Don't trust anybody who'd rather be grammatically correct than have a good time.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

“A friend of mine, the most innocuous dreamer who ever lived, once set a forest on fire to see, as he said, if it would catch as easily as people said. The first ten times the experiment was a failure; but on the eleventh it succeeded all too well.”

Charles Baudelaire book Le Spleen de Paris

Source: Paris Spleen

People, Failure

“To be someone's best friend requires a minimum investment of time. More than that, though, it takes emotional energy. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

“Now and then sprays of rain flew over and misted our faces. Every time I refused to wipe away the wetness. It made the world seem so alive to me. I couldn't help but envy the way a good storm got everyone's attention.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

World, Way, Help, Envy

“That is the curse of lying, Sister. Once you place that crown of the liar upon your head, you can take it off again, but it leaves a stain for all time.”

Terry Goodkind book Soul of the Fire

Source: Soul of the Fire

Lying, Sister

“There are times I wish I were invisible. Which is silly, since I do everything I can to stand out.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Oh My Goth

“I've been looking for you a long time, I just didn't know it. But now I do.”

James Patterson book Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

Source: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

“Death should be a celebration. Like a birthday. I want to go up like a rocket when my time comes, and fall down in a cloud of stars, and hear everyone go: ahh!”

Joanne Harris (1964) British author

Death, Star, Birthday

“I've been waiting a long time for a quest, seaweed brain," she said. "Athena is no fan of Poseidon, but if you're going to save the world, I'm the best person to keep you from messing up.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

World, Waiting, Personality

“You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?”

John Steinbeck book Sweet Thursday

Source: Sweet Thursday

Beauty, Light, Sun, Sea

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Women, World, Understanding, Bird

“Adrian gave me a look that said I was wasting his time. "Because Jet sounds badass.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

“I loved you backward and forward in time. I loved you beyond boundaries of time and space.”

Dan Simmons book Endymion

Source: Endymion

Love

“Remember; no matter how desperate the situation seems, time spent
thinking clearly is never time wasted.”

Max Brooks book The Zombie Survival Guide

Source: The Zombie Survival Guide

Thinking

“Anyone who loves in the expectation of being loved in return is wasting their time.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Powerful, Love

“Time and distance have a way of playing tricks with your best intentions.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Way

“Enjoy the present, bid defiance to the future, laugh at all those reasonable beings who exercise their reason to avoid the misfortunes which they fear, destroying at the same time the pleasure that they might enjoy.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Pleasure, Fear, Exercises, Future

“No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 12
Context: Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology... But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone. And for me, what happened in the woods that day is one of these.

Moving On, Memory

“It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 2

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Beauty, Stupidity, Beauty

“Every time you try to flirt with her, a puppy dies.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: Suite Scarlett

“We live in a primitive time—don’t we, Will?—neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.”

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

Source: Red Dragon

Books

“He hesitated, remembering something Finnikin had said to him on their journey. That somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted.”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

“In a time of destruction, create something.”

Maxine Hong Kingston (1940) Chinese American author

Hope

“There is no Space or Time
Only intensity,
And tame things
Have no immensity”

Mina Loy (1882–1966) Futurist poet and actress

Source: The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy

“As she’d left, I’d glanced at her gun.
This time, when she’d pointed it at me, she’d flicked the safety on. If that wasn’t true love, I don’t know what was.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Firefight

Love

“For a short time, I hated them. But when you think about it, what good does that do? It takes so much to hold on to hate—you lose your grip on what's important, you know?”

Harlan Coben book Caught

Source: Caught

Hate, Thinking

“I don't understand my feelings. I really don't. I don't understand how I could hate you so much after so much time. How, no matter how much I'd like to not hate you, I hate you even more. It grows.”

Sam Shepard Fool for Love

Source: Fool for Love

Hate, Feeling, Understanding

“Something’s died in me,” she goes. “It took a long time for it to do it, but it’s dead. You’ve killed something, just like you’d took an axe to it. Everything is dirt now.”

Raymond Carver book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Source: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981)

Dead

“Eternity is a long time to spend alone, without others of your kind.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“I remembered the last time Annabeth and I had parted ways, when she'd given me a kiss for luck in Mount St. Helens. This time, all I got was the hat.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Way, Kiss, Parting

“It was possible to feel superior to other people and feel like a misfit at the same time.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

Source: The Marriage Plot

People, Feeling

“Just so you know, when they say "Once upon
a time”… they’re lying”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Lying

“Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got.”

Art Buchwald (1925–2007) journalist, humorist, United States Marine

As quoted in "Art Buchwald Celebrates His Life" a profile on CNN Newsroom (2 November 2006) http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0611/02/cnr.06.html.

“I held her close to me with my eyes closed, wonering if anything in my life had ever been this perfect and knowing at the same time that it hadn't. I was in love, and the feeling was even more wonderful than I ever imagined it could be.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Love, Life, Feeling, Imagination

“And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all.”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Source: Anathem

Sense

“Time erodes gratitude more quickly than it does beauty!”

Mario Puzo The Godfather

Source: The Godfather

Beauty, Gratitude

“Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.”

Neal Stephenson book Cryptonomicon

Source: Cryptonomicon

Game

“I've been saying it so long to you, you just wouldn't listen. Every time you said 'Farm Boy do this' you thought I was answering 'As you wish' but that's only because you were hearing wrong. 'I love you' was what it was, but you never heard.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Love, Boy

“Damn, Claire. Warn a guy before you do a face-plant on the floor next time. I could have looked all heroic and caught you or something -Shane”

Rachel Caine book Glass Houses

Source: Glass Houses

Funny, Guy

“All I know is that I love you. And for the first time, that's good enough.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Love

“Dear God,
I give this time of quiet to You.
Please dissolve my thoughts of stress and fear
And deliver me to the inner place
Where all is peace and love.
Amen.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: The Law of Divine Compensation: On Work, Money, and Miracles

Love, God, Fear, Peace

“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Help

“My father, I never knew, except for this one time when he threw a ball and told me to go fetch it.

"Dad," I said. "Am I a dog?"

"Lydia," he said. "I apologize.”

Jaclyn Moriarty (1968) Australian writer

Source: The Year of Secret Assignments

Dogs

“The answer of course, is that the clock isn't meant to measure earthly time, but the time of the soul. Redemption and condemnation time. For the soul, each instant is always a minute short of judgment.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Soul

“No," he said, voice thick and husky. His fingers dug into the chair's arms. "You'd better not get too close."
I stopped, laughing softly. "You don't strike me as the assaulting type, Mortensen."
"Yeah, well, there's a first time for everything.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus on Top

“The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

World, Beauty

“I've met an attractive weasel or two in my time. He looks more like a rat."
-pg.170-”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“Certainly there are times in all of our lives when bad things happen, or things don’t turn out as we had hoped. But that’s when we we must a decision that we’re going to be happy inspite of our circumstances.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

Hope, Decision, Happiness

“I thought about you all the time. I used to pray that you’d live to be a hundred years old. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that you were ashamed of me.”

Khaled Hosseini (1965) novelist

“Imagine how different a world might be if more leaders took time to ponder the finality of death before racing off to war.”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

Death, War, World, Imagination

“Every time you come to the limit of what is demanded of you, you are faced with the same problem-to be yourself!”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Capricorn

Source: Tropic of Capricorn

Problem

“You met me at a very strange time in my life.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Life

“Trust is not a passive state of mind. It is a vigorous act of the soul by which we choose to lay hold on the promises of God and cling to them despite the adversity that at times seeks to overwhelms us.”

Jerry Bridges (1929–2016) American writer

Source: Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts

God, Soul

“Remake the world, a little at a time, each in your own corner of the world.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

World

“I did have regrets these past six months,” he told me quietly. “I found it a curse as much as a blessing, all that time to think. About the things I could have said, that I should have told you . . .”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Tempt the Stars

Thinking, Past

“There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Childhood's End

Guardian Angel, p. 220
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)
Source: Childhood's End

Men, Evil

“We run when we're scared, we run when we're ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time.”

Christopher McDougall (1962) American journalist and writer

Source: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Problem

“The bottom line is, what defines you isn't how many times you crash, but the number of times you get back on the bike. As long as it's one more. you're all good.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

“Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Question

“One day all of this will be proof, proof that we were here, proof that we loved each other. It’s the guarantee that no matter what happens to us in the future, this time was ours. When”

Jenny Han book Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Source: Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Love, Future

“The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike”

Christopher Marlowe The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Source: Dr. Faustus

Star

“If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Source: Giovanni's Room

Love, Death

“Every time we burn a gallon of gas or an acre of rain forest, aren't we killing the future to preserve the present?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Future

“Everything seems asleep, and yet going on all the time. It is a goodly
life that you lead, friend; no doubt the best in the world, if only you are
strong enough to lead it!”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows

Life, World, Strong

“The time flies. The time flies feed on rotting clocks.”

Craig Clevenger Dermaphoria

Source: Dermaphoria

“Maybe under all that guilt and certainty that he couldn't love again, he still wanted me. I would have liked to have found out. But I didn't have the time.
Instead, I punched him.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Love

“What better place to kill time than a library?”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“I did learn something about insanity while I was down there. People go crazy, not because they are crazy, but because it's the best available option at the time.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: All These Things I've Done

People, Learning

“Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Music

“I will use big words from time to time, the meanings of which I may only vaguely perceive, in hopes such cupidity will send you scampering to your dictionary: I will call such behavior 'public service'.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Hope, Behavior

“You're peculiar, you're aggravating, yet you're easy to forgive. You say you're seventeen?.. How odd. How strange. And my wife thirty and yet you seem so much older at times. I can't get over it.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Forgiveness

“God is never in a hurry, but he is always on time.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

God

“Her heart had already been broken many times over, and yet she still believed she was destined to meet the man of her life.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Life, Heart

“when your time came, it came, and that was that. You might say something smart on your way out, but you might just as easily say something stupid.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Stupidity, Way

“When we are sure that we are on the right road there is no need to plan our journey too far ahead. No need to burden ourselves with doubts and fears as to the obstacles that may bar our progress. We cannot take more than one step at a time.”

Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American writer

Fear

“Time will pass; these mood will pass; and I will, eventually, be myself again. But then, at some unknown time, the electrifying carnival will come back into my mind.”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Mood

“But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.”

Plutarch book Moralia

I, 4
Moralia, Of Eating of Flesh
Context: For the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. And then we fancy that the voices it utters and screams forth to us are nothing else but certain inarticulate sounds and noises, and not the several deprecations, entreaties, and pleadings of each of them.

Life, World, Soul, Light

“Mr. Sagunuma: We can never escape who we are. Instead of wasting time worrying about it, why don't you cut to he chase and love yourself?”

Bisco Hatori (1975) Japanese manga artist

Source: Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 4

Love

“Oh, Jake,' Brett said, 'we could have had such a damned good time together.'
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
'Yes,' I said. 'Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Book 3, Ch. 19 (the last lines of the novel)
Source: The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Cars, Thinking

“Who, last time I'd checked, was still on our official archenemy list. (Yes, we have to keep a list. It's kind of sad.)”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Angel

Sadness

“Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation – the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Crack-Up

Source: Quoted, The Crack-Up (1936)
Context: Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation – the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.

History, Intelligence, Idea