Quotes about timing
page 9

Josephs Quartzy photo

“silence serves time, for you and yourself,
though it tells nothing, it gives everything”

Josephs Quartzy (1999) Tanzanian actor

Source: Sweetest song I know

Neale Donald Walsch photo

“You begin on the road to your own glory when you begin on the road to your own truth. This path is taken when you declare that you will tell the truth all the time, about everything, to everyone. And that you will live your truth.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Source: https://www.facebook.com/NealeDonaldWalsch/posts/pfbid02YdVimv896xTUxM8Tx4Q27WXzEDdsZf4rd4bowY41iUqhn5CqutupKy8oHX6TPiJhl

Neale Donald Walsch photo
Neale Donald Walsch photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Stephen Hawking photo

“Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases.”

Source: A Brief History of Time (1988), Ch. 9
Context: Just like a computer, we must remember things in the order in which entropy increases. This makes the second law of thermodynamics almost trivial. Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases. You can’t have a safer bet than that!

Nicholas Sparks photo
Jean Vanier photo

“People cannot accept their own evil if they do not at the same time feel loved, respected and trusted.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Source: Community And Growth

Julio Cortázar photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Mitch Albom photo
Mark Twain photo

“I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Speech (23 September 1907)

Ernest Hemingway photo
Henry Rollins photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.”

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

Said often during his presidency (1981–1989)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Deeds need time, even after they are done, in order to be seen or heard.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Source: The Gay Science

Orhan Pamuk photo
Torquato Tasso photo
David Levithan photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”

Speech in the House of Commons, February 27, 1945 "Crimea Conference" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1945/feb/27/crimea-conference#column_1294; in The Second World War, Volume VI: Triumph and Tragedy (1954), Chapter XXIII – Yalta: Finale.
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Cleveland Amory photo
William Shakespeare photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo

“If you want anything done right you will have to see to it yourself every time.”

Source: True Grit (1968), Chapter 5, p. 75 : thoughts of 'Mattie Ross'

James Herriot photo
Orhan Pamuk photo
Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
Brian Andreas photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Douglas Adams photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Alice Hoffman photo
Lewis Carroll photo

“No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Henryk Sienkiewicz photo
William Faulkner photo
Mark Twain photo
Terry Pratchett photo

“If you trust in yourself… and believe in your dreams… and follow your star… you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

Variant: Now... if you trust in yourself... and believe in your dreams... and follow your star... you'll still get beaten by people who spenttime working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy. Goodbye.
Source: The Wee Free Men

Robert Browning photo
Quentin Crisp photo
Malcolm X photo

“Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth. And any time any one violates your human rights, you can take them to the world court.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
Context: When you expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights, you can then take the case of the black man in this country before the nations in the UN. You can take it before the General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam before a world court. But the only level you can do it on is the level of human rights. Civil rights keeps you under his restrictions, under his jurisdiction. Civil rights keeps you in his pocket. Civil rights means you’re asking Uncle Sam to treat you right. Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth. And any time any one violates your human rights, you can take them to the world court.

Tennessee Williams photo
Thomas Bernhard photo
Arthur Rimbaud photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“The greatest cure for love is still that time honoured medicine - love returned.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Douglas Adams photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Andrew Marvell photo

“Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.”

Source: To His Coy Mistress (1650-1652)
Context: Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right….”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

"Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution" (31 March 1968)
1960s
Variant: There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.
Source: A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
Context: On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.
Context: On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain't goin' study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.

Patrick Rothfuss photo
Michael Crichton photo
Steven Spielberg photo

“Every time I go to a movie, it's magic, no matter what the movie's about.”

Steven Spielberg (1946) American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur
Stephen King photo
Mark Twain photo
Jimmy Carter photo

“We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)
Drew Barrymore photo
Oscar Wilde photo

“There is no time for grief; there never is.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: The Red Dice

Barry Lyga photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Anthony Kiedis photo
Orhan Pamuk photo
Mitch Albom photo

“Fear is how you lose your life… a little bit at a time… What we give to fear, we take away from… faith.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

Rabindranath Tagore photo
Brian Jacques photo

“You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

Stanley Kubrick photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Albert Schweitzer photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
T.S. Eliot photo

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

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.

Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Tim McGraw photo
Tamora Pierce photo
Jean Rhys photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo

“Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke (1960)
Rilke's Letters
Context: What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.

Stephen King photo

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Variant: Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Henry David Thoreau photo

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
John Muir photo

“This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!”

Reprinted in The Wild Muir ISBN 0-939666-75-8 page 38, and Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 234
Source: 1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869

John Ruskin photo

“All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Source: Sesame and Lilies

Fernando Pessoa photo
Hayao Miyazaki photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo

“There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …
Julian Barnes photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Is not life a hundred times too short for us— to bore ourselves?”

Ist das Leben nicht hundert Mal zu kurz, sich in ihm— zu langweilen?
Beyond Good and Evil, Chapter VII, 227

Alice Munro photo
Corrie ten Boom photo