Time

"La distance n'y fait rien; il n'y a que le premier pas qui coûte."

"Like the legend of the Phoenix All ends with beginnings What keeps the planets spinning (uh) The force from the beginning."

"In omnibus autem negotiis priusquam adgrediare, adhibenda est praeparatio diligens."

"The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. 'Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?' he asked. 'Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'"

"What one needs to do at every moment of one's life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world."

"End, begin, all the same. Big change. Sometimes good, sometimes bad."

"Le premier pas, mon fils, que l'on fait dans le monde, Est celui dont dépend le reste de nos jours."

"C'est le commencement de la fin."

"Quidquid cœpit, et desinit."

"Deficit omne quod nascitur."

"Principiis obsta: sero medicina paratur, Cum mala per longas convaluere moras."

"Cœpisti melius quam desinis. Ultima primis cedunt."

"Dimidium facti qui cœpit habet."

"Omnium rerum principia parva sunt."

"Il n'y a que le premier obstacle qui coûte à vaincre la pudeur."

"Incipe quidquid agas: pro toto est prima operis pars."

"The true beginning of our end."

"Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill."

"There is more real antiquity in the Veda than in all the inscriptions of Egypt or Ninevah . . . old thoughts, old hopes, old faith, and old errors, the old Man altogether."

"Remove not the ancient landmark."

"There were giants in the earth in those days."

"My copper-lamps, at any rate, For being true antique, I bought; Yet wisely melted down my plate, On modern models to be wrought; And trifles I alike pursue, Because they're old, because they're new."

"The discoveries of modern science do not disagree with the oldest traditions which claim an incredible antiquity for our race. Within the last few years geology, which previously had only conceded that man could be traced as far back as the tertiary period, has found unanswerable proofs that human existence antedates the last glaciation of Europe — over 250,000 years! A hard nut, this, for Patristic Theology to crack; but an accepted fact with the ancient philosophers.(3) We can judge, moreover, of the lofty civilization reached in some periods of antiquity by the historical descriptions of the ages of the Ptolemies, yet in that epoch the arts and sciences were considered to be degenerating, and the secret of a number of the former had been already lost. In the recent excavations of Mariette-Bey, at the foot of the Pyramids, statues of wood and other relics have been exhumed, which show that long before the period of the first dynasties the Egyptians had attained to a refinement and perfection which is calculated to excite the wonder of even the most ardent admirers of Grecian art.(5) It is to the priceless and accurate translations of the Vedic Books, and to the personal researches of Dr. Haug, that we are indebted for the corroboration of the claims of the hermetic philosophers. That the period of Zarathustra Spitama (Zoroaster) was of untold antiquity, can be easily proved.(7)"

"With sharpen'd sight pale Antiquaries pore, Th' inscription value, but the rust adore. This the blue varnish, that the green endears; The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years."

"In order to demonstrate that the notions which the ancients entertained about dividing human history into cycles were not utterly devoid of a philosophical basis, we will close this chapter by introducing to the reader one of the oldest traditions of antiquity as to the evolution of our planet. At the close of each "great year," called by Aristotle — according to Censorinus — the greatest, and which consists of six sars* our planet is subjected to a thorough physical revolution. The polar and equatorial climates gradually exchange places; the former moving slowly toward the Line, and the tropical zone, with its exuberant vegetation and swarming animal life, replacing the forbidding wastes of the icy poles. This change of climate is necessarily attended by cataclysms, earthquakes, and other cosmical throes. As the beds of the ocean are displaced, at the end of every decimillennium and about one neros, a semi-universal deluge like the legendary Noachian flood is brought about. (30)...(*Berosus... a Chaldean astrologer, at the Temple of Belus, at Babylon, gives the duration of the sar, or sarus, 3,600 years...)"

"The ancient and honorable."

"Antiquity, what is it else (God only excepted) but man's authority born some ages before us? Now for the truth of things time makes no alteration; things are still the same they are, let the time be past, present, or to come. Those things which we reverence for antiquity what were they at their first birth? Were they false?—time cannot make them true. Were they true?—time cannot make them more true. The circumstances therefore of time in respect of truth and error is merely impertinent."

"Nor rough, nor barren, are the winding ways Of hoar Antiquity, but strewn with flowers."

"There is nothing new except that which has become antiquated."

"Madness is the déjà-vu of death."

"The déjà vu that united us / comes around again / so we cave in once more | How often will it happen? / How much longer will it stay? / If the day comes when the hours run out…"

"They Romantics] all seem to have experienced paramnesia, the sensation of déjà vu, the total recollection which does not appear to be recollected; they all aimed at least at the total exclusion of the past from the present by a perfect absorption in the present, as if time stood still and became eternity."

"Rita: There is something so familiar about this. Do you ever have déjà vu? Phil: Didn't you just ask me that?"

"When some French were assembling an encyclopedia of paranormal experiences, they decided to leave déjà vu out, because it was so common it could not be considered paranormal."

"Good evening. Tonight on 'It's the Mind,' we examine the phenomenon of déjà vu. That strange feeling we sometimes get that we've lived through something before. That what is happening now has already happened tonight on 'It's the Mind,' we examine the phenomenon of déjà vu. That strange feeling we sometimes get that we've lived— (pause for realization) Anyway, tonight on 'It's the Mind,' we examine the phenomenon of déjà vu. That strange..."

"Boyd Rice: Speaking of numerology, I came here on Friday the 13th, the hotel is at 777 St. Clair, my room is 1111 and the address of your hotel is 1111. Marilyn Manson: I haven't finished my theory on it, but I feel we will develop the ability to send ourselves messages from the future. That's what I think deja vu is. Psychologists have a name for a disorder called "the delusional self" and that's when you think everything's related for a reason, but I think that it's a higher form of awareness."

"We wallow in nostalgia but manage to get it all wrong. True nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories … but American-style nostalgia is about as ephemeral as copyrighted déjà vu."

"The essential of the déjà vu is rather the negation of the present than the affirmation of the past."

"Often on the highway, weary and wary, we spurn the unknown and cheerfully drive on for the promise of a Howard Johnson's and its familiar déjà vu."

"To the category of the wonderful and uncanny we may also add that strange feeling we perceive in certain moments and situations when it seems as if we had already had exactly the same experience, or had previously found ourselves in the same situation. … I believe that it is wrong to designate the feeling of having experienced something before as an illusion. On the contrary, in such moments something is really touched that we have already experienced, only we cannot consciously recall the latter because it never was conscious. In short, the feeling of Déjà vu corresponds to the memory of an unconscious fantasy."

"In the condition of "deja vu" it is probable that what takes place is that one or several elements in the present situation are like those which had been experienced in the past, but that the dissimilarities in the situations are not observed. The individual has a memory defect in that he parallels or identifies a complex present experience with a similar complex past experience, although in the present experience the number of elements which are the same as those in the past may not be very great. In other words, the present experience is deemed to be the same as that of the past because of the fact that the past is not accurately remembered and properly localized in time."

"We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time — of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances — of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remembered it!"

"It's déjà vu all over again."

"There are some places which, seen for the first time, yet seem to strike a chord of recollection. "I have been here before," we think to ourselves, "and this is one of my true homes." It is no mystery for those philosophers who hold that all which we shall see, with all which we have seen and are seeing, exists already in an eternal now; that all those places are home to us which in the pattern of our life are twisting, in past, present and future, tendrils of remembrance round our heart-strings."

"For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, — The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, — puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know naught of?"

"Changing the length of a delay may utterly change behavior. [...] Overshoots, oscillations, and collapses are always caused by delays."

"In the one case, there is a straight road of a mile long, and without a turnpike in it: in the other case, you may go to, or at least towards, the same place by a road of a hundred miles in length—full, accordingly, of turnings and windings—full, moreover, of quicksands and pitfalls, and equally full of turnpikes. In conducting the traveller, nothing obliges the conductors to avoid the straight road, and drag him along the crooked one : nor would they ever have given themselves any such trouble, had it not been for the turnpikes, the tolls of which are so regularly settled, and the tills in such good keeping: learned feet, could they be prevailed on, are no less capable of treading the short road than unlearned ones."

"Lex reprobat moram: The law dislikes delay."

"Lex dilationes semper exhorret: The law always abhors delays."

"It is not to be imagined that the King will be guilty of vexatious delays."