Quotes about time
page 58

“I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored. But then it occurred to me that musing is a pointless waste of anyone's time, and instead I went off to see if I could find a Baby Ruth candy bar, a far more profitable exercise.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

Life, Exercises, Question, Baby

“It was the first time I was ever in love, and I learned a lot. Before that I'd never even thought about killing myself.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Love, Learning

“It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.”

James Boswell book The Life of Samuel Johnson

October 26, 1769, p. 174
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson

“It's time to discuss what it's going to take to get you beneath me"-GC”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

“It broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can't people say what they mean at the time?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 279

People, Heart

“But every once in a while, from out of the blue, someone reaches the quiet place where you spend your private time and changes the way you see yourself”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Avenged

Way, Change

“Sorrow is not a raven perched persistently above a chamber door. Sorrow is a thing with teeth, and while in time it retreats, it comes back at the whisper of it's name.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

“We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Pain, Feeling

“Learn from the mistakes of others you won't have time to make them all your self”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: Simply Irresistible

Learning

“It starts when you begin to overlook good manners. Any time you quit hearing Sir and Mam the end is pretty much in sight…”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

Source: No Country for Old Men

“I could end the deficit in five minutes. You just pass a law that says that any time there's a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.”

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

Interview on CNBC http://www.cnbc.com/id/43670783 (1 July 2011)

Law

“One step at a time, I can walk around the world. Watch me.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)

World

“There are moments in every girl’s life that are bigger than we know at the time. When you look back, you say, that was one of those life-changing,
fork-in-the-road moments and I didn’t even see it coming. I had no idea.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Life, Girl, Idea, Change

“Things change all the time, mostly in little ways.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Way, Change

“It’s how I fill the time when nothing’s happening. Thinking too much, flirting with melancholy.”

Tim Winton book Breath

Source: Breath

Thinking

“Stop and take your time to notice things and make those things you notice matter.”

Cecelia Ahern book Thanks for the Memories

Source: Thanks for the Memories

“Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Life, Death

“And in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Life, Death, People, Housing

“Any time your life is at stake and you can't find even one woman to come forward and say, 'This is a good man,' your problem isn't what kind of woman THEY are. Your problem is what kind of men YOU are.”

Pearl Cleage (1948) American novelist

Source: Just Wanna Testify

Life, Men, Problem

“Every time I think I'm missing a piece of me, you give it back.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Thinking

“I think by the time you're grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

Source: No Country for Old Men (2005)
Context: I aint got all that many regrets. I could imagine lots of things that you might think would make a man happier. I think by the time you're grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.

People, Thinking, Happiness

“It became known that I had a rather fertile imagination, when it came to private activities."
She stared. "What sort of private activities?"
This time he did smile, and it turned his face wicked. "Disrobe, and I'll be happy to demonstrate.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: On the Edge

Smile, Imagination, Happiness

“Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Books, Home, Sense

“That's how you know you really trust someone, I think; when you don't have to talk all the time to make sure they still like you or prove that you have interesting stuff to say.”

Sara Zarr book Story of a Girl

Source: Story of a Girl

Thinking

“We're lost, but we're making good time.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

“Time can play all sorts of tricks on you. In the blink of an eye, babies appear in carriages, coffins disappear into the ground, wars are won and lost, and children transform, like butterflies, into adults.”

Brian Selznick book The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Source: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

War, Children, Appearance, Baby

“And the seasons they go round and round,
And the painted ponies go up and down,
We’re all captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go 'round and 'round and 'round
In the circle game.”

Joni Mitchell (1943) Canadian musician

"Circle Game"
Songs
Source: The Circle Game

Game, Painting, Season

“We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

World

“She spilled rice on my knee, and she smiled. I wanted her to spill a thousand things on me, lava, acid, bricks, anything, and smile each time”

Ann Brashares book My Name is Memory

Source: My Name Is Memory

Smile

“Knowledge is hot water on wool. It shrinks time and space.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Knowledge, Water

“I was in the air around him. I was in the cold mornings he had now. I was in the quiet time he spent alone. I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow to set me free. -Susie Salmon”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

Girl, Kiss

“There is no such thing as a happy ending. I never met a single one to equal "Once upon a time.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Happiness

“Ethan gave me an admiring look that wasn't about sex, but about that guy moment when they realize you are not just another pretty face, but maybe, just maybe you can be cute, petite, and one of the guys all at the same time.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Hit List

Source: Hit List

Sex, Guy

“When I first heard the word existential, I didn't know what it meant. But then I found out that no one knows what it means, so now I use it all the time.”

Francine Pascal Fearless

Source: Fearless

“How many people came and stayed a certain time,
Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you
Like light behind windblown fog and sand
Filtered and influenced by it, until no part
Remains that is surely you.”

John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States

People, Light, Parting

“Ages fourteen to eighteen, a girl needs something to kill all that time, that endless itchy waiting, every hour, every day for something — anything — to begin.”

Megan Abbott book Dare Me

Source: Dare Me

Age, Girl, Waiting

“You know, those parlor tricks would be much more impressive if they actually helped me. (Danger)
I wanted to see what you had in you. (Alexion)
Piss and vinegar. Next time you don’t help me, I’ll unleash it fully against you. (Danger)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Sins of the Night

Help

“Never regret trusting someone. It proves you have a heart. But if he turns out to be a lying worm… I'm not going to waste my time crying. Because I am way too fabulous for that.”

Jude Watson book Beyond the Grave

Source: Beyond the Grave

Way, Lying, Heart, Cry

“I stared at him. Did he really say that? Did he remember? The way he looked back at me, one eyebrow raised, I knew he did. And this time, I was the one to look away.
Because I remembered. I remembered everything.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Way

“I feel like a lot of life is distasteful and embarrassing. And you just push through it. You fix what you can, and you let time pass.”

Curtis Sittenfeld (1975) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Man of My Dreams

Life, Feeling

“You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.”

Cheryl Strayed book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Source: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Love, People

“That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“On horseback you feel as if you're moving in time to classical music; a camel seems to progress to the beat of a drum played by a drunk.”

Walter Moers The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

Source: The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

Music, Feeling

“Everything man does today to be efficient, to fill the hour? It does not satisfy. It only makes him hungry to do more. Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time. When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Life

“The first step towards mastering time is always to make time meaningless”

Robert Aickman (1914–1981) British fantasy and horror writer

“A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Art of Travel

Travel, Chance

“Remembering from last year how Haymitch's gifts are often timed to send a message, I make a note to myself. Be friends with Finnick. You'll get food.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Food

“If what you're asking is how I debated whether or not to love her the answer is I didn't. Not at all. It just happened. I didn't ever question it; by the time I realized what was happening, it was already done.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Love, Question

“Let us be separated by wars and pestilence, death, madness but not by the passing of time.”

Mario Puzo book Fools Die

Source: Fools Die

Death, War, Madness

“There’s been time this whole time. You can’t kill time with your heart. Everything takes time.”

David Foster Wallace book Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Source: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Heart

“There comes a time in a man's life when he hears the call of the sea. If the man has a brain in his head, he will hang up the phone immediately.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Life, Sea

“If you spend all your time arguing with people who are nuts, you'll be exhausted and the nuts will still be nuts.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Source: Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel

People

“Yes, time can be buoyed by wordlessness, but it needs to be anchored in words.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

“In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

Source: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Books

“They didn’t agree on much. In fact, they didn’t agree on anything. They fought all the time and challenged each other ever day. But despite their differences, they had one important thing in common. They were crazy about each other.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Romantic

“We don’t have much time. Mel will be out of the restroom soon.”
“You’ve got a magician named Mel?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“You should spend more time reading the Good Book and less reading all those novels. What are you going to tell the Lord on Judgement Day when He asks you why you didn't read your bible? Hmm?"I said. To myself.”

Jennifer Donnelly A Northern Light

Source: A Northern Light

Books, Reading

“A bit of advice
Given to a young Native American
At the time of his initiation:
As you go the way of life,
You will see a great chasm. Jump.
It is not as wide as you think.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Life, Way, Thinking

“because the past was always around her and might return at any time. It prowled the world searching for her, and she knew it was growing angrier at every passing day.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

World, Search, Past

“What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

“Sometimes you cry, Susie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

Love, Cry

“I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you. A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

“We have eyes, and we're looking at stuff all the time, all day long. And I just think that whatever our eyes touch should be beautiful, tasteful, appealing, and important.”

Eric Carle (1929) American children's illustrator and writer

Beauty, Thinking

“We went sailing one time, and he wore a Speedo, and any smart woman should know that means bisexual at least.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

“One day
Time will die
And love will bury it”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

Love

“It is because people live in the things they possess instead of in their relationship to God that God seems at times to be cruel.”

Grace Livingston Hill (1865–1947) 20th-century novelist

God, People

“So tell me gentleman, tell me the time and place where it was easy to be a woman.”

Andrew Sean Greer (1970) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells

“No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it
are no longer the same interpreters.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Reading

“Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Wisdom, Madness

“your loved ones have been used to lure you into Kronos's traps. Your fatal flaw is personal loyalty Percy. You do not know when it is time to cut your losses. To save a friend you would sacrifice the world.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Love, World, Loss, Personality

“Did you love Annie right away, Finnick?" I ask. "No." A long time passes before he adds, "She crept up on me.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Love

“It's your time to live, don't mess it up.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

“199. For to wish to forget how much you loved someone—and then, to actually forget—can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart.”

Maggie Nelson (1973) American writer

Source: Bluets

Love, Beauty, Feeling, Bird

“It is almost impossible to state what one in fact believes, because it is almost impossible to hold a belief and to define it at the same time.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

“In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Beauty

“No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike. Times change, and people change; and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much the worse for us.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Blithedale Romance

Source: The Blithedale Romance

People, Change, Heart, Summer

“Real love changes and grows with time and discovers new ways of expressing itself.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Love, Way, Change

“You get so alone at times that it just makes sense.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Sense

“There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Housing

“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

IV, 18
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IV

Thinking

“And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

For Men, Happiness

“Once upon a time," he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux

“Sometimes, he thought wryly, a reputation for being right all the time could be a heavy burden.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Ruins of Gorlan

“The last time I'd seen the Minotaur, he'd been wearing nothing but his tighty whities. I don't know why. Maybe he'd been shaken out of bed to chase me.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

“Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

“Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.”

Lenny Bruce (1925–1966) comedian and social critic

Source: The Essential Lenny Bruce: his original unexpurgated satirical routines

Thinking

“If it is very painful for you to criticize your friends, you are safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that is the time to hold your tongue”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend, Pain

“Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.”

Marian Wright Edelman (1939) American children's rights activist

Business, Life

“If you don't annoy your big sister for no good reason from time to time, she thinks you don't love her anymore.”

Pearl Cleage What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day

Source: What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day

Love, Thinking, Sister

“I am a Smedry, and we do ridiculous, unexpected, eccentric things like this all the time! Ha-ha!”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens

“These times make for strange friends and unexpected enemies.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Drawing

“I cannot help but wonder how many of us walk through our lives, day after day, feeling slightly broken and alone, surrounded all the time by others who feel exactly the same way.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Way, Feeling, Help

“I love when I reach Marcus on the phone and as he says hello, I can hear the music he's listening to in the background. That music is the sound of him without me. How he surrounds himself when I'm not there, which is almost all the time.”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Charmed Thirds

Love, Music

“Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate,
Whose table once a Guest, but not
The second time, is set.
Whose crumbs the crows inspect,
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the Farmer’s corn;
Men eat of it and die.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

The Single Hound, p. 257
Collected Poems (1993)

Men, Food, Past

“My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them──by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Idea

“Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

Way, History

“Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.”

T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Context: There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands,
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Tea, Indecision

“The mind of man is a thousand times more beautiful than the earth on which he dwells.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Beauty

“Each time you happen to me all over again.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

For Wife, love, Cute, Romantic

Quotes about time page 58

Quotes about time
page 58