Time

"Because of the separation of time and space, things could appear and disappear suddenly, unaccountably: the dropping of a ship below the horizon no more needed an explanation than the dropping of a demon down the chimney. There was no mystery about the past from which they had emerged, no speculation about the future toward which they were bound: objects swam into vision and sank out of it with something of the same mystery in which the coming and going of adults affect the experience of young children, whose first graphic efforts so much resemble in their organization the world of the medieval artist. In this symbolic world of space and time everything was either a mystery or a miracle."

"Time-saving... became an important part of labor-saving. And as time was accumulated and put by, it was reinvested, like money capital, in new forms of exploitation. From now on filling time and killing time became important considerations: the early paleotechnic employers even stole time from their workers by blowing the factory whistle... earlier in the morning, or moving the hands of the clock... during lunch... Time was a commodity in the sense that money had become a commodity. Time as pure duration, time dedicated to contemplation and reverie, time divorced from mechanical operations, was treated as heinous waste. The paleotechnic world did not heed Wordsworth's Expostulation and Reply: it had no mind to sit on an old gray stone and dream its time away."

"Under capitalism time-keeping is not merely a means of co-ordinating and inter-relating complicated functions: it is also like money an independent commodity with a value of its own."

"Now if the laws of nature hold constant over time—if the rules and patterns of today are the same as those of yesterday and tomorrow—then a valid physical equation will depend only on elapsed time. ...Do we have a universe in which the rules of the game are fixed... or ...a universe in which they vary from moment to moment? ...Nobody knows for sure... On the largest scales, over unimaginably great intervals of space and time, the laws of nature do seem to show a sense of history. ...Newton's mechanical equations specify only differences in time, ascribing no absolute meaning to each instant. The same goes for Maxwell's electromagnetic equations. The same goes for Schrödinger's quantum mechanical equations. The same goes for Einstein's equations of relativity. The same goes for so many other equations that describe so much of the physical universe. For us, open-minded but nonetheless emphasizing this ahistorical aspect of nature, our clocks will tick and tock without any reference to any absolute starting point."

"The end crowns all, And that old common arbitrator, Time, Will one day end it."

"And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye, Says very wisely, "It is ten o'clock: Thus we may see," quoth he, "how the world wags.""

"The time is out of joint—O cursèd spite, That ever I was born to set it right!"

"'Gainst the tooth of time And razure of oblivion."

"Time passed as time ever does when passed monotonously, that is, with a degree of rapidity which only astonishes us when it is recalled to mind by some chance circumstance. Time should he reckoned by events, not hours ; the heart is its truest time-piece, at least as concerns ourselves."

"The history of a minute — why, it would give a bird's-eye view of every possible variety in human existence. Wonderful the many events that are happening together — life and death — joy and sorrow— the great and the mean — the common and the rare — good and evil — are all in the record of that brief segment of time."

"Every reference-body (co-ordinate system) has its own particular time; unless we are told the reference-body to which the statement of time refers, there is no meaning in a statement of the time of an event."

"Time past on as lightly as he always steps over flowers, Brussels carpets, marble terraces, green turfs, or whatever simile may best express a path without an impediment."

"Curious it is that every hour of our day is repeated from myriad chimes; and yet how rarely do we attend to the clock striking ! Alas ! how emblematic is this of the way in which we neglect the many signs of time ! How terrible, when we think of what time may achieve, is the manner in which we waste it! At the end of every man's life, at least three-quarters of the mighty element of which that life was composed will be found void—lost—nay, utterly forgotten ! And yet that time, laboured and husbanded, might have built palaces, gathered wealth, and, still greater, made an imperishable name."

"The line it is drawn The curse it is cast The slow one now Will later be fast As the present now Will later be past The order is rapidly fadin’ And the first one now will later be last For the times they are a-changin’."

"Nothing we do can change the past, but everything we do changes the future."

"That is the only true time, which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people’s time, not his."

"Time: a great engraver, or eraser."

"Time Prophet: Time begins and then time ends, and then time begins once again It is happening now, it has happened before, it will surely happen again."

"Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right."

"In many indigenous ways of knowing, time is not a river, but a lake in which the past, the present, and the future exist. Creation, then, is an ongoing process and the story is not history alone—it is also prophecy."

"If we consider eternity, into that time never entered; eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period; and eternity had been the same as it is, though time had never been."

"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived. After all Number One, we're only mortal."

"Time is the nurse and breeder of all good."

"If there is meaning in the past and in the imagined future, it is captured in the moment. When you have all the time in the world, you can spend it, not on going somewhere, but on being where you are."

"Time is not a river running inexorably to the sea, but the sea itself—its tides that appear and disappear, the fog that rises to become rain in a different river. All things that were will come again."

"Time is the simplest thing, and the most precious, for it cannot be made."

"The power of time is great. In time we may not perceive this, because time slyly steals from one a little at a time; perhaps we will really find this out for the first time in eternity, when we will once more, and in retrospect examine what we with the help of time and the forty hears have managed to pack up. Yes, time is a dangerous power. In time it is so easy to begin over again from the beginning and then forget where one left off. Therefore even when one begins to read a very big book and does not quite trust one’s memory, one puts marks in the book. Ah, but with regard to one’s whole life, how often a person forgets to put in marks in order to be able to take notice properly!"

"The misfortune of our age is precisely that it has become merely time by itself, temporality, which impatiently wants to hear nothing about eternity and subsequently, well-intentioned or furious, even wants to make the eternal utterly superfluous by means of a contrived imitation, which will never in all eternity succeed, because the more we think we are able to or harden our hearts to be able to dispense with the eternal, all the more do we stand basically in need of just that."

"The whole time of my life may be divided into an infinity of parts, each of which is in no way dependent on any other; and, accordingly, because I was in existence a short time ago, it does not follow that I must now exist, unless in this moment some cause create me anew as it were,—that is, conserve me."

": Nobody has ever found the gods so much his friends that he can promise himself another day."

"Without restlessness time does not really exist: it does not exist for the animal, which is completely devoid of restlessness; and the clock that tells the time cannot do so when the restlessness ceases. But when the restlessness, as in the case of the merely temporal expectancy oscillates between fulfillment and nonfulfillment in such a way that the movement becomes swifter in time because the vanishing of time, the fact that time is passing, accelerates the restlessness, then of course the fulfillment, it if does not come in time, cannot come at all-when this is the case, the expectancy corrodes. Finally the restlessness apparently passes away; alas, this is precisely when the sickness has taken the form of consumption."

"The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter — and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing"

"Time is fleeting. See what it brings."

"To say that the future will be different from the present is, to scientists, hopelessly self-evident. I observe regretfully that in politics, however, it can be heresy. It can be denounced as radicalism, or branded as subversion. There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed. It hardly seems necessary to point out in California - of all States -- that change, although it involves risks, is the law of life."

"There are those who regard this history of past strife and exile as better forgotten. But, to use the phrase of Yeats, let us not casually reduce "that great past to a trouble of fools." For we need not feel the bitterness of the past to discover its meaning for the present and the future."

"Rose: I can see everything. All that is, all that was, all that ever could be."

"Nemo tam divos habuit faventes, Crastinum ut possit sibi polliceri."

"Seconds, minutes, hours, they crawl by on hands and knees."

"Time's glory is to calm contending kings, To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light."

"But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future."

"In its [knowledge's] light, we must think and act not only for the moment but for our time. I am reminded of the story of the great French Marshal Lyautey, who once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow-growing and would not reach maturity for a hundred years. The Marshal replied, "In that case, there is no time to lose, plant it this afternoon"."

"He is changing times and seasons, removing kings and setting up kings."

"We must use time as a tool, not as a couch."

"My call is not to those who believe they belong to the past. My call is to those who believe in the future."

"Truth was the only daughter of Time."

"Urbes constituit ætas: hora dissolvit: momento fit cinis: diu sylva."

"We celebrate the past to awaken the future."

"Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past — let us accept our own responsibility for the future."

"Time," I said, "Well, I read somewhere that time is what keeps everything from happening at once."

"Times can blind us to certain truths."