Quotes about time
261 quotes from 169 people
Honoré de Balzac1799–1850Eugénie Grandet (1833), translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, ch. VI
Denis Diderot1713–1784Salon of 1767 (1798), Oeuvres esthétiques
John Lennon1940–1980Playboy interview (1980)You can’t undo the past but you can certainly not repeat it.
Bruce Willisborn 1955US Magazine. Issue 249.Nothing should be treasured more highly than the value of the day.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Maxims and Reflections (1833), Maxim 789, trans. StoppBetween too early and too late, there is never more than a moment.
Franz Werfel1890–1945Jacobowsky und der Oberst: Komödie einer Tragödie in drei Akten (1945), p. 52It is time which imparts strength to all things and brings them to maturity.
Hippocrates460–370 BCThe Law, 3.Yesterday is yesterday. If we try to recapture it, we will only lose tomorrow.
Bill Clintonborn 1946President Clinton’s speech at the 200th anniversary of the University of North Carolina.The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.
Franz Kafka1883–1924The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1954)The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time.
Joseph Brodsky1940–1996Less Than One: Selected Essays (1986), p. 28No matter how finely you subdivide time and space, each tiny division contains infinity.
Frank Herbert1920–1986Dune Genesis (1980)How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stol’n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
John Milton1608–1674On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-three (1631)Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence.
Tennessee Williams1911–1983“The Timeless World of a Play”, introductory essay to The Rose Tattoo (1951)Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.
Jonathan Edwards1703–1758Seventy Resolutions (1722-1723), No. 5.
Richard Bachborn 1936The Bridge Across Forever (1984), Ch. 46