Quotes about minute

A collection of quotes on the topic of minute, doing, likeness, time.

Meryl Streep quote: “The minute you start caring about what other people think, is the minute you stop being yourself.”

Terry Pratchett quote: “There is always time for another last minute”

Quotes about minute

“He remained frozen for a few minutes, while urine fell from a limb dwarfed by the fear caused by the sensation of near death.”

José Baroja book El curioso caso de la sombra que murió como un recuerdo y otros cuentos

Fear, Death

“The minute you start caring about what other people think, is the minute you stop being yourself.”

Meryl Streep (1949) American actress

People, Thinking

“You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could've, would've happened… or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move on.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Variant: You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could've, would've happened... or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the f**k on.

Moving On

“If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.”

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

As quoted in The Wilson Era; Years of War and After, 1917–1923 (1946) by Josephus Daniels, p. 624. Referenced in "Bartleby.com" http://www.bartleby.com/73/1288.html 1920s and later

“I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.”

Meryl Streep (1949) American actress

Misattributed to Meryl Streep (and widely disseminated on the Internet as of August/September 2014), this quote is allegedly a translation of a text by the author José Micard Teixeira, the original of which begins (in Portuguese): "Já não tenho paciência para algumas coisas, não porque me tenha tornado arrogante..."
Misattributed

Love, Life, Hate, Friendship

“Rape is one of the most terrible crimes on earth. And it happens every few minutes.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

As quoted in New Musical Express (1991-11-23).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

“Democracy is a con game. It’s a word invented to placate people to make them accept a given institution. All institutions sing, ‘We are free.’ The minute you hear ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, watch out… because in a truly free nation, no one has to tell you you’re free.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Democracy, Singing, Freedom, Game

“There's a sucker born every minute.”

P.T. Barnum (1810–1891) American showman and businessman

Commonly attributed to Barnum, there is much testimony of contemporaries that he never actually said this, and in "P. T. Barnum Never Did Say "There's a Sucker Born Every Minute" http://www.historybuff.com/library/refbarnum.html R. J. Brown asserts that it actually originated with a banker named David Hannum, in reference to one of Barnum's hoaxes: a replica of the Cardiff Giant. Misattributed

“The most exquisite paradox… as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Dreams

“Those minutes that I'm on stage are the best! Being there and looking at the crowd and seeing their faces, hearing them sing the positive words from the songs.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

Singing

“I don't want to die as long as I can work; the minute I can not, I want to go.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

“Never waste a minute thinking about people you don't like.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

People, Thinking

“If you act like you've only got fifteen minutes, it will take all day. Act like you've got all day, it will take fifteen minutes.”

Monty Roberts (1935) Horse trainer

“A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

According to R. Ken Rasmussen in The Quotable Mark Twain (1998), this is most probably not Twain's.
Misattributed

Sun

“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

“If every cigarette you smoke takes seven minutes off of your life, every game of Dungeons & Dragons you play delays the loss of your virginity by seven hours.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Source: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

Life, Game, Loss

“What honey? What is that? It's a sign, I can't see it, wait a minute. Oh, thank you darlin', thank you very much. Oh, thank you. The thought is beautiful dear, and I love you for it, but I, I haven't been caught up in this thing and I can't accept this kingship thing because to me there's only one, which is Christ.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

September 30, 1974. South Bend, IN. Notre Dame Ath Center. Source: http://www.elvisconcerts.com/real/oct74-01.htm Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEZpSFnDxRg

Love, Beauty, Waiting, Christ

“It is inevitable that the mind which does not have a place to turn to or any stable base will undergo change from hour to hour and from minute to minute due to the variety of its distractions, and by the things that come to it from outside it will be continually transformed into whatever occurs to it at any given moment.”

John Cassian (360–435) Christian monk and theologian

The Conferences V.2 ( online http://books.google.com/books?id=k3CrvJJZkqEC&pg=PA44)

Change

“We reckon hours and minutes to be dollars and cents.”

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian-British politician, judge, and author

The Clockmaker (1836); comparable to "Remember that time is money" in "Advice to a Young Tradesman" (1748) by Benjamin Franklin

“In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.”

George Best (1946–2005) British footballer

Reported in Ned Sherrin, Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (2008), p. 153.

Life, Women, Alcohol

“Ask yourself what “problem” you have right now, not next year, tomorrow, or five minutes from now. What is wrong with this moment?”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997)

Problem

“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together…. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], a 1944 speech in Florence, Italy, Archiv zur Geschichte der Max&#8209; Planck&#8209; Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797; the German original is as quoted in The Spontaneous Healing of Belief https://archive.org/stream/GreggBradenTheSpontaneousHealingOfBelief/Gregg%20Braden/Gregg%20Braden%20-%20The%20Spontaneous%20Healing%20Of%20Belief#page/n1 (2008) by Gregg Braden, p. 212; Braden mistranslates intelligenten Geist as "intelligent Mind", which is an obvious tautology.

Life, Intelligence, Study, Science

“Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

30 December 1850
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship. Each star passes but once in the night through the meridian over our heads and shines there but an instant; so, in the heaven of the mind each thought touches its zenith but once, and in that moment all its brilliancy and all its greatness culminate. Artist, poet, or thinker, if you want to fix and immortalize your ideas or your feelings, seize them at this precise and fleeting moment, for it is their highest point. Before it, you have but vague outlines or dim presentiments of them. After it you will have only weakened reminiscence or powerless regret; that moment is the moment of your ideal.

Beauty, Feeling, Soul, Flowers

“Just sitting silently for a few minutes within the sphere of Dhyanalinga is enough”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Isha Insights Magazine, Spring Edition 2009
Sourced from newspapers and magazines
Context: Just sitting silently for a few minutes within the sphere of Dhyanalinga is enough to make even those unaware of meditation experience a state of deep meditativeness. - Sadhguru (on the Dhyanalinga meditation shrine at Isha Yoga Centre, India)

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Problem, Thinking

“Be in love with your life. Every minute of it.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

"Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" in a letter to Arabelle Porter (28 May 1955); published in Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940-1956 (1995). Sometimes misquoted as "Be in love with your life every minute of it."
Variant: Be in love with your life every detail of it

Beauty, For Wife, Love, Life

“Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. …Do human beings ever realize life while they live it? — Every, every minute?”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

"Emily Webb"
Our Town (1938)
Context: I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back — up the hill — to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths... and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.... Do human beings ever realize life while they live it? — Every, every minute?... I'm ready to go back... I should have listened to you. That's all human beings are! Just blind people.

Life

“A thousand years ago five minutes were
Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.
Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and
Infinite aftertime: above your head
They close like giant wings, and you are dead.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

Source: Pale Fire

Star, Dead

“But when I know that the glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.”

Ajahn Chah (1918–1992) thai Buddhist monk

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.”

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

Context: It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.

Motivational, Deep, Happy, Inspirational

“A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Fools, Boy

“The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody's ego, that's it, game over.”

Gordon Ramsay (1966) British chef, writer and TV presenter

Game

“EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it… every, every minute?"

STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe… they do some.”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

Source: Our Town

Life

“The minute I started breaking the all-time record in record sales—I broke Elvis's records, I broke Beatles records—the minute it became the all-time best-selling album in the history of the Guinness Book of World Records, overnight they called me a freak. They called me a homosexual. They called me a child molester. They said I bleached my skin. They made everything to turn the public against me.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Remarks at National Action Network headquarters (9 July 2002)

Books, World, History, Time

“A fool is always troublesome, a man of sense perceives when he pleases or is tiresome; he goes away the very minute before it might have been thought he stayed too long.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

2
Les Caractères (1688), De la société et de la conversation

Fools, Sense

“I walked into the range, rented a handgun from the ugly old redneck cashier, and started to practice shooting at paper targets. As I fired my first few rounds, I felt so sick to the stomach. I questioned my whole life, and I looked at the gun in front of me and asked myself “What am I doing here? How could things have led to this?” I couldn’t believe my life was actually turning out this way. There I was, practicing shooting with real guns because I had a plan to carry out a massacre. Why did things have to be this way, I silently questioned myself as I looked at the handgun I was holding in front of me. I paid my fee and left the range within minutes, feeling as if I was going to be sick.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

Life, Way, Feeling, Question

“One minute decides the outcome of a battle, one hour the success of a campaign, one day the fate of empires.”

Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800) Russian military commander

other version: One minute can decide the outcome of the battle, one hour - the outcome of the campaign, and one day - the fate of the country.
"Encyclopedia of Russian History" - Page 1504 by James R. Millar - Soviet Union - 2004.

Fate, Success

“I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark almost blue color, and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.””

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Love, Death, War, People

“Years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

To M——— (1829), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love

“I've almost asked that question, then realized it's good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We're ranking everybody every minute of the day.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Paris Review (Summer 1966)
Context: Success, instead of giving freedom of choice, becomes a way of life. There's no country I've been to where people, when you come into a room and sit down with them, so often ask you, "What do you do?" And, being American, many's the time I've almost asked that question, then realized it's good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We're ranking everybody every minute of the day.

Soul, Failure, Question, Thinking

“Dictators always look good until the last minutes.”

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937) First Czechoslovak president

“I’ve met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you’re twenty minutes!”

Billy Wilder (1906–2002) American filmmaker

Time

“As we grow up we learn that even the person that wasn't supposed to ever let
you down probably will. You will have your heart broken probably more than once
and it gets harder every time. You'll break hearts too, so remember how it felt
when yours was broken. You'll fight with your best friend. You'll blame a new
love for things an old one did. You'll cry because time is passing too fast, and
you'll eventually lose someone you love, so take many pictures, laugh too much
and love like you've never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is one minute of happiness you'll never get back.”

Andrew Biersack (1990) American singer-songwriter

Hurt, Time, Personality, Heart

“Man is not, as the croaking philosophers say, merely a rational animal, capable of understanding and knowledge; for, according to them, even irrational creatures appear possessed of understanding and knowledge. But man alone is the image and likeness of God ; and I mean by man, not one who performs actions similar to those of animals, but one who has advanced far beyond mere humanity — to God Himself. This question we have discussed more minutely in the treatise concerning animals. But the principal point to be spoken of now is, what is intended by the image and likeness of God.”

Tatian (120–180) Syrian writer

Ante-Nicene Christian library: v. 3 p. 20
Address to the Greeks

God, Understanding, Question, Knowledge

“The people were divided into the persecuted and those who persecuted them. That wild beast, which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free. The signal was given, the barriers were down. As has so often happened in the history of man, permission was tacitly granted for acts of violence and plunder, even for murder, if they were carried out in the name of higher interests, according to established rules, and against a limited number of men of a particular type and belief. A man who saw clearly and with open eyes and was then living could see how this miracle took place and how the whole of a society could, in a single day, be transformed. In a few minutes the business quarter, based on centuries of tradition, was wiped out. It is true that there had always been concealed enmities and jealousies and religious intolerance, coarseness and cruelty, but there had also been courage and fellowship and a feeling for measure and order, which restrained all these instincts within the limits of the supportable and, in the end, calmed them down and submitted them to the general interest of life in common. Men who had been leaders in the commercial quarter for forty years vanished overnight as if they had all died suddenly, together with the habits, customs and institutions which they represented.”

Ivo Andrič book The Bridge on the Drina

Source: The Bridge on the Drina (1945), Ch. 22

Courage, Law, History, Business

“And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path. It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working – bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming – all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned – reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone – one mind less, one world less.”

George Orwell book A Hanging

Source: "A Hanging", in The Adelphi (August 1931)

Understanding, Food, World, Life

“But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

“It was suicide. Others killed themselves with poison or with a revolver. I killed myself with minutes and hours.”

Henri Barbusse book Hell

Source: Hell

Suicide

“Committee - a group of men who keep minutes and waste hours.”

Milton Berle (1908–2002) American comedian and actor

Men, Funny

“Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Biff
Source: Death of a Salesman (1949)

Fools, Waiting

“Silence makes idiots seem wise even for a minute.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Silence

“No matter what she did with her hair it took about three minutes for it to tangle itself up again, like a garden hosepipe in a shed [Which, no matter how carefully coiled, will always uncoil overnight and tie the lawnmower to the bicycles].”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

“Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”

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

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Context: Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all: —
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.

Decision, Universe, Time

“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.”

William Shakespeare The Merry Wives of Windsor

Source: The Merry Wives of Windsor

Motivational, Success, Deep, Inspirational

“When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day — but by the minute.”

Iris Chang (1968–2004) American historian

Thinking, Future

“Don’t waste a minute not being happy. If one window closes, run to the next window—or break down a door.”

Brooke Shields (1965) US actress

Inspirational, Happiness

“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard

Understanding

“What win I if I gain the thing I seek?
A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.
Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?
Or sells eternity to get a toy?”

William Shakespeare book The Rape of Lucrece

Source: The Rape of Lucrece

Dreams, Joy

“Five minutes are enough to dream a whole life, that is how relative time is.”

Mario Benedetti (1920–2009) Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet

Life, Dreams, Time

“I'll be all right in a minute, I'm just bewildered - by life…”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Source: The Glass Menagerie

Life

“Give yourself five minutes to consider how you can turn a miserable situation to your benefit and that light bulb is going to click on.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

Light

“If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.”

Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Love, People

“Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds.
Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again.”

Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) British saint, poet, novelist

Thinking, Evil

“He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Fools

“Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver 5 minutes longer.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Variant: Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver five minutes longer.

“Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.”

James Frey My Friend Leonard

Source: My Friend Leonard

Life, Thinking

“Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us?" (1897)

“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.”

Terry Pratchett book Moving Pictures

Source: Moving Pictures

Life

“Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.”

Carol Shields (1935–2003) American author

Source: The Republic of Love

Books, Reading

“Nature is not primarily functional. It is primarily beautiful. Stop for a moment and let that sink in. We’re so used to evaluating everything (and everyone) by their usefulness that this thought will take a minute or two to begin to dawn on us. Nature is not primarily functional. It is primarily beautiful. Which is to say, beauty is in and of itself a great and glorious good, something we need in large and daily doses.”

Stasi Eldredge

Source: Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul

Beauty, Nature

“Because if she let go of her grief even for a minute it would only hit her harder when she bumped into it again.”

Alice Munro (1931) Canadian novelist

Family Furnishings: Selected Stories, 1995-2014 (2014)
Source: Away from Her

“How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to another.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Change

“There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Life, Perfection

“this satsangh?’ You just drop that. You don’t have to get anything, okay? You don’t have to benefit from this. Just waste half a day and go. (Laughter) Really. ‘What should I get out of my meditation?’ Nothing. Just waste fifteen-twenty minutes every day. So do not meditate; just learn to waste some time. Nothing needs to happen. This is not about resting; this is not about becoming healthy; this is not about becoming enlightened; this is not about reaching heaven. All this is just wasting time. When you are not trying to be anything, not trying to get anywhere, you are being.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Himalayan Lust

Laughter, Learning, Time

“But for half a minute she wished it was a different sort of day, even though she knew that nothing good could come from wanting at the world.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things

World

“Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference.
So unless were going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

Source: The Gun Seller (1996)

Death, Sense, Time

“A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

“If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Reality, Parting

“To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Life

“The minute you become conscious that you are doing good, that's the minute you have to stop because from then on it's wrong.”

Paula Fox (1923–2017) Amercian book author

“For the first half of your life each minute feels like a year, but for the second half, each year feels like a minute.”

Melanie Gideon (1964)

Source: Wife 22

Life, Feeling

“madam," the man cried, leaping to the ground, "you're hurt!" "I'm dead, sir!" she replied. A few minutes later, they became engaged.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Hurt, Dead

“If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Waiting, Weather

“And she felt as though she had been there, on that bench, for an eternity. For an infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Passion

“It can't be dead. It was alive just a minute ago.”

Sharon Creech (1945) American writer of children's novels

Dead

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Variant: If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster. Časopis LIFE, január 1984

“There is always time for another last minute”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

Time

“We haven’t met for many years, said Daisy, her voice as matter-of-fact as it could ever be.
"Five years next November."
The automatic quality set us all back at least another minute.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

“… there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:
"He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.”

P.G. Wodehouse book My Man Jeeves

Source: My Man Jeeves

Motivation

“True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.”

David Foster Wallace book The Pale King

Source: The Pale King

World, Exercises

“For weeks Tyrone thought he was going to die any minute, and there were also times when he was afraid he wasnt going to die.”

Hubert Selby Jr. Requiem for a Dream

Source: Requiem for a Dream

Time

“Those we love, we can grow to hate. And life… life can be perfect one minute and in shambles the next.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Through the Zombie Glass

Love, Life, Hate, Perfection

“It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God: but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

God, People, Learning

“In order to have a change of fortune at the last minute, you have to take your fortune to the last minute.”

Terry Pratchett book Thief of Time

Source: Thief of Time

Change

“Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world. Our hearing extends to a small distance. Our sight is impeded by intervening bodies and shadows. To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions. We must transmit our intelligence, travel, transport the materials and transfer the energies necessary for our existence. Following this thought we now realize, forcibly enough to dispense with argument, that of all other conquests of man, without exception, that which is most desirable, which would be most helpful in the establishment of universal peaceful relations is — the complete ANNIHILATION OF DISTANCE.
To achieve this wonder, electricity is the one and only means. Inestimable good has already been done by the use of this all powerful agent, the nature of which is still a mystery. Our astonishment at what has been accomplished would be uncontrollable were it not held in check by the expectation of greater miracles to come. That one, the greatest of all, can be viewed in three aspects: Dissemination of intelligence, transportation, and transmission of power.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)

World, Peace, Travel, Intelligence

“The information was correct but the interpretations were not. I did my duty up to the last minute.”

Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf (1940) Diplomatic politician and he was the Iraqi Information Minister under Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, acting as…

New York Times (12 July 2003) "AFTER THE WAR; Hussein's Perennial Optimist Reappears"

“Now, through my own infirmity I recover what he was to me: my opposite. Being naturally truthful, he did not see the point of these exaggerations, and was borne on by a natural sense of the fitting, was indeed a great master of the art of living so that he seems to have lived long, and to have spread calm round him, indifference one might almost say, certainly to his own advancement, save that he had also great compassion. […] We have no ceremonies, only private dirges and no conclusions, only violent sensations, each separate. Nothing that has been said meets our case. […] After a long lifetime, loosely, in a moment of revelation, I may lay hands on it, but now the idea breaks in my hand. Ideas break a thousand times for once that they globe themselves entire. […] I am yawning. I am glutted with sensations. I am exhausted with the strain and the long, long time — twenty-five minutes, half an hour — that I have held myself alone outside the machine.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Bernard on Percival, section V
The Waves (1931)

Truth, Art, Idea, Nature

“"Our Second Experiment", the Professor announced, as Bruno returned to his place, still thoughtfully rubbing his elbows, "is the production of that seldom-seen-but-greatly-to-be-admired phenomenon, Black Light! You have seen White Light, Red Light, Green Light, and so on: but never, till this wonderful day, have any eyes but mine seen Black Light! This box", carefully lifting it upon the table, and covering it with a heap of blankets, "is quite full of it. The way I made it was this - I took a lighted candle into a dark cupboard and shut the door. Of course the cupboard was then full of Yellow Light. Then I took a bottle of Black ink, and poured it over the candle: and, to my delight, every atom of the Yellow Light turned Black! That was indeed the proudest moment of my life! Then I filled a box with it. And now - would anyone like to get under the blankets and see it?"Dead silence followed this appeal: but at last Bruno said "I'll get under, if it won't jingle my elbows."Satisfied on this point, Bruno crawled under the blankets, and, after a minute or two, crawled out again, very hot and dusty, and with his hair in the wildest confusion."What did you see in the box?" Sylvie eagerly enquired."I saw nuffin!" Bruno sadly replied. "It were too dark!""He has described the appearance of the thing exactly!"”

Lewis Carroll book Sylvie and Bruno

the Professor exclaimed with enthusiasm. "Black Light, and Nothing, look so extremely alike, at first sight, that I don't wonder he failed to distinguish them! We will now proceed to the Third Experiment."
Source: Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), Chapter 21: The Professor's Lecture

Life, Way, Light, Silence

“A minute's success pays the failure of years.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

"Apollo and the Fates", line 210 (1887).

Success, Failure, Success