Quotes about time
page 66

“Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved.”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

Source: Dreamtigers

Books, Feeling

“fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

Beauty, Happiness

“We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.”

David Mamet (1947) American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director

“The busy bee has no time for sorrow.”

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

Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 11

Business, Bee

“Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Life

“In times of storm and tempest, of indecision and desolation, a book already known and loved makes better reading than something new and untried… nothing is so warming and companionable.”

Elizabeth Goudge (1900–1984) English fiction writer

Love, Books, Reading, Indecision

“My dad always used to say that with everything in life, there’s a game-changing moment. The one moment everything else hinges upon, but you hardly ever know it at the time.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Life, Game, Change

“Someone once said that dancers work just as hard as policeman, always alert, always tense. But i dont agree with that because policeman don't have to look beautiful at the same time" *”

George Balanchine (1904–1983) Georgian choreographer, dancer and ballet master (1904-1983)

Beauty

“At the time I started in ballet they were dancing 'The Spirit of Champagne' on pointe, in Paris. I thought, 'I don't want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it!”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

Source: Blood Memory

Drink, Dance

“We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.”

Zadie Smith (1975) British writer

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Source: Four Quartets

Past, Future

“Time expands, then contracts, all in tune with the stirrings of the heart.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Heart

“You know, dulceata, there are times when I truly believe you are the most frightening person I know.
Thank you?”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Hunt the Moon

Personality

“Eddis looked at her minister, curious. “Your head?” she asked.
Attolia explained. “He had to be forcibly dissuaded from strangling his son.”
“So have we all from time to time,” Eddis said seriously.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Queen of Attolia

Source: The Queen of Attolia

“A woman with an education may be able to spend more time sitting in a chair instead of lying on her back. A sound advantage, I should think.”

Anne Bishop (1955) American fiction writer

Source: Daughter of the Blood

Education, Lying, Thinking

“We have traveled through space and time. We have been many places. Visited many worlds. And there is good news: the acoustics everywhere are terrific.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

World, Travel

“Getting angry over something that won't change is like seeing what happens if you hit your hand with a hammer over and over again, and being surprised each time when it hurts. So you might as well stop doing it.”

Mercedes Lackey (1950) American novelist and short story writer

Source: Beauty and the Werewolf

Change, Hurt

“Instead of expecting all and being lowered into despair each time I get less, I expect nothing now and, occasionally, I get a little, and am more than a little happy.”

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

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

Despair, Happiness

“… the best gift we can give each other is the gift of time -- those precious, special, eternal moments.”

Shmuley Boteach (1966) American Orthodox rabbi and writer

“If you knew who walked beside you at all times, on the path that you have chosen, you could never experience fear or doubt again.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Fear

“It was one of those rare times when remembering the dead was more inmportant than tending to the needs of the living.”

Dean Koontz book Lightning

Source: Lightning

Dead

“Maybe love is thinking that every time your partner does or says something mundane that you want to start a Mexican wave from here to Uzbekistan in utter delight.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Book of Tomorrow

Love, Thinking

“He was dirty, his hair unkempt, his clothes stained with blood. Heroes in stories somehow managed to rescue maidens while looking like court dandies. Next time he went adventuring he'd remember to bring a comb.”

J.V. Jones The Book of Words

Source: The Book of Words

Clothes

“If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: We all want everything to be okay. We don't even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Learning

“Give time time.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

“The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can't see, whose beginning you've forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable.”

Joyce Carol Oates book Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

Source: Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying:
'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.”

Idries Shah book Reflections

Source: Reflections

Truth, Thinking

“People are going to judge you all the time no matter what you do… Don't worry about other people. Worry about you.”

Jacqueline Woodson (1963) American writer

Source: The Dear One

People

“Looters become looted, while time and tide make us mercenaries all.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

Le Petit Soldat (film) (direction and screenplay, 1960).
[variation] Cinema is truth at twenty-four frames a second.

Truth

“Okay," I said, clasping her hand. "I swear it. The next time I do something stupid that might get me killed, you can come along.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Stupidity

“Its three in the morning,' she noted with dismay. 'Do you think Simon’s all right?'
'I think he‘s weird, actually,' said Jace. 'Though that has little to do with time.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Thinking

“There’s no good reason (and many bad reasons) colleges spend more time telling women how to survive predators than telling the other half of their students not to be predators.”

Rebecca Solnit book Men Explain Things To Me

Source: Men Explain Things to Me

Women

“When you apologize, try not to smile at the same time. It ruins the effect”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Burnt Offerings

Source: Burnt Offerings

Smile

“Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Heart

“You can not make yourself whole again by brooding one hundred percent of the time on the darkness of the world. We are the light of the world.”

Ivan Van Sertima (1935–2009) British Africanist in New Jersey

World, Light

“Then, bidding farewell to The Knick-Knack, I went to collect the few personal belongings which, at that time, I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Source: Gigi, Julie de Carneilhan, and Chance Acquaintances: Three Short Novels

Travel, Cats, Solitude, Personality

“… most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of the people around you.”

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

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Love, People

“The mercy of the world is time. Time does not stop for love, but it does not stop for death and grief, either.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: Jayber Crow

Love, Death, World

“Reckless,” he said. “You know, when I first showed up at the Institute, Alec called me reckless so many times that I went and looked it up in the dictionary”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“You can't fool me, comrade. You want to put on a cowboy hat and keep lawless bank robbers in line.''

"No time. I have enough trouble keeping you in line.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

Fools

“It will get easier each time, I think. I hope. I just have to keep trying.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Hope, Thinking

“The truth hit him. Jason wasn't quite Roman anymore. His time at Camp Half-Blood had changed him. Reyna had recognized that. Apparently, so did the undead legionnaires. If Jason no longer gave off the right sort of vibe, or aura of a Roman leader…”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Truth, Change

“There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there’s only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Source: Ethan Frome and Other Short Fiction

Way, Happiness

“How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans.”

Pablo Neruda book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Source: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Soul, Star, Kiss, Light

“Victory is a thousand times sweeter when you're the underdog.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

Victory

“Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else—cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments—as long as the paperwork’s filled out properly. And in on time.”

Connie Willis Bellwether

Source: Bellwether (1996), Chapter 4 “Rapids”, Section 1 (p. 140)

Forgiveness

“One day I was speeding along at the typewriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time - asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Daughters, Speed

“All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Five People You Meet In Heaven

“What a strange phrase — –not seeing other people. As if it’s been constructed to be a lie. We see other people all the time. The question is what we do about it.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

People, Lie, Question

“Do I look like the kind of person who wastes time turning goats into pin cushions?”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 1

Personality

“There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

World, Understanding, Learning, Heart

“Each time you look at a tangerine, you can see deeply into it. You can see everything in the universe in one tangerine. When you peel it and smell it, it’s wonderful. You can take your time eating a tangerine and be very happy.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Universe, Happiness

“I'm just saying it's not time for that either. We need to focus and having Maya moon over Rafe is making everyone uncomfortable."
Rafe grinned. "Doesn't bother me.”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

Source: The Calling

“My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Anna Karenina Notes

“I suppose this was the first time I had ever felt an urge not to be. Never an urge to die, far less an urge to put an end to myself - simply an urge not to be. This disgusting, hostile and unlovely world was not made for me, nor I for it.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

Hostility, World

“Look, I never wanted to be a half-blood. most of the time it gets you killed in nasty, dangerous ways.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Way

“It is good to be busy. Being busy takes our mind off being in love at the wrong time, in the wrong place and with the wrong guy.”

Melissa de la Cruz (1971) American writer

Source: Girl Stays in the Picture

Love, Guy, Business

“If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

“It's only adults who read the top layers most of the time. I think children read the internal meanings of everything.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

Source: The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to Present

Children, Thinking, Reading

“McGough: I'm sorry. I'm afraid I've caught poetry.

Mr Bones: Oh really? Well, don't worry, sir - I used to suffer from short stories.

McGough: Really? When?

Mr Bones: Oh, once upon a time…”

Graham Chapman (1941–1989) English comedian, writer and actor

Suffering

“Every time I look into his eyes I just want to take the ice cream or whatever I've got in my hand and rub it into his face. That's how much I like him.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Goodbye Tsugumi

Source: Goodbye Tsugumi

“When time is reduced to linear progress, it is emptied of presence.”

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

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

People, Justice, Way

“I have wanted you to see out of my eyes so many times.”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Source: The Pull of The Moon

“A long time ago I learned not to explain things to people. It misleads them into thinking they're entitled to know everything I do.”

Lisa Kleypas book Dreaming of You

Source: Dreaming of You

People, Thinking, Learning

“I'm not interested in those who do me wrong. There's not enough time in the day for them.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

“And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

Water

“by the time you open your eyes, the world might have already changed.”

Matsuri Hino Japanese manga artist

Source: ヴァンパイア騎士 7

World, Change

“Perfect Day:
It was a day filled with the glow of ordinary things & we passed them quietly from hand to hand for a long time & someone said she had picked a perfect day to be born & I think all of us felt the same.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Thinking, Perfection

“We tend to forget at times that it is the little ones, the children, who do suffer the greatest hurt. If we cannot comprehend why certain sorrows are visited upon us, how on earth can they?”

Sharon Kay Penman book The Sunne in Splendour

Source: The Sunne in Splendour

Children, Suffering, Hurt, Forgetting

“People learn twenty-five percent from their teacher, twenty-five percent from listening to themselves, twenty-five percent from their friends, and twenty-five percent from time.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

People, Learning, Teachers

“We are all feeding from each other, all the time, every day.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“As the Wheel of Time turns, places wear many names. Men wear many names, many faces. Different faces, but always the same man. Yet no one knows the Great Pattern the Wheel weaves, or even the Pattern of an Age. We can only watch, and study, and hope.”

Robert Jordan book The Eye of the World

Source: The Eye of the World

Men, Age, Hope, Study

“Love accepts. Forgiveness comes in time.”

Lisa Unger book Die for You

Source: Die for You

Love, Forgiveness

“It doesn't matter. You are what you are. I am what I am. We are the same-when you take the time to remember me.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: The Red Dice

“So of course time is necessary. But nevertheless damn painful, for it transforms all the pieces of your life - joy and sorrow, youth and age, love and hate, terror and bliss - from fire into smoke rising up the air and dissipating on a breeze.”

Charles Frazier (1950) American writer

Love, Life, Pain, Hate

“Each time I write a book, every time I face that yellow pad, the challenge is so great. I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody and they’re going to find me out.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Books, Game, Thinking

“Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Age

“Stupidity is like bumping into a wall all the time. After a while you get tired of it and try to look the situation over and see if there’s a doorway somewhere. I think most people eventually do look for the doorway and stop bumping into the wall”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

People, Stupidity, Thinking

“It was a nephilim.”

“A nephi-what?” asked Hugh, startled.

“Isn’t that a character on Sesame Street?” Peter spoke up for the first time.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Blues

“Our time here is brief, our risk enormous. Don't waste the one or increase the other, if you please.”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

“And if the man who once upon a time had been a boy who promised he'd never fall in love with another girl as long as he lived kept his promise, it wasn't because he was stubborn or even loyal. He couldn't help it.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Love, Girl, Boy, Help

“you ask me what I'm looking for, and I outline you.
you don't recognize the shape, offer other names.
you say my time will come, and I hope.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Hope

“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.”

Robert Jordan book The Eye of the World

Source: The Eye of the World

Age

“If you spend too much time trying to find out what is good or bad about someone else, you'll forget your own soul and end up exhausted and defeated by the energy you have wasted in judging others.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph (2011)
Context: What we aim to do is calm the spirit and get in touch with the source from which everything comes, removing any trace of malice or egotism. If you spend too much time trying to find out what is good or bad about someone else, you’ll forget your own soul and end up exhausted and defeated by the energy you have wasted in judging others.

Soul, Forgetting