Time

"A foot of jade is of no value, an inch of time is to be prized."

"All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle."

"I consider time as flowing or increasing by continual flux & other quantities as increasing continually in time & from ye fluxion of time I give the name of fluxions to the velocitys wth wch all other quantities increase. ...I expose time by any quantity flowing uniformly and represent its fluxion by an unit, & the fluxions of other quantities I represent by any other fit symbols... This Method is derived immediately from Nature her self."

"Hitherto I have laid down the definitions of such words as are less known, and explained the sense in which I would have them to be understood in the following discourse. I do not define time, space, place and motion, as being well known at all. Only I must observe, that the vulgar conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which, it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common. I. Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without regard to anything external, and by another name is called duration: relative, apparent and common time is some sensible and external (whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by means of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time; such as an hour, a day, a month or a year."

"The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future? [...] Nevertheless the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now."

"Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple—these are our faithful timekeepers; and reason corrects the feverish beat."

"Don't waste your time, or time will waste you."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"One... characteristic of medieval space must be noted: space and time form two relatively independent systems. First: the medieval artist introduced other times within his own spatial world, as when he projected the events of Christ's life within a contemporary Italian city, without the slightest feeling that the passage of time has made a difference, just as in Chaucer the classical legend of Troilus and Cressida is related as if it were a contemporary story. When a medieval chronicler mentions the King... it is sometimes difficult to find out whether he is talking about Caeser or Alexander the Great or his own monarch: each is equally near to him. ...the word anachronism is meaningless when applied to medieval art... in Botticelli's The Three Miracles of St. Zenobius, three different times are presented upon a single stage."

"The clock... is a piece of power-machinery whose "product" is seconds and minutes: by its essential nature it dissociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences: the special world of science. ...while human life has regularities of its own... time is measured not by the calendar but by the events that occupy it. ...if growth has its own duration and regularities, behind it are not simply matter and motion but the facts of development: in short, history. And while mechanical time is strung out in a succession of mathematically isolated instants, organic time—what Bergson calls duration—is cumulative in its effects. ...organic time moves only in one direction—through the cycle of birth, growth, development, decay, and death—and the past that is already dead remains present in the future that has still to be born."

"The clock, not the steam-engine, is the key-machine of the modern industrial age."

"Was it by reason of the collective Christian desire to provide for the welfare of souls in eternity by regular prayers and devotions that time-keeping and the habits of temporal order took hold of men's minds: habits that capitalist civilization presently turned to good account? One must perhaps accept the irony of this paradox. ...Time-keeping passed into time-serving and time-accounting and time-rationing. ...Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human activities."

"There was once a time when the life of men resembled that of beasts. They dwelt in mountain caves and dark ravines, for as yet there was no roofed house nor broad city fortified with stone towers. Nor did the curved ploughs cleave the black clod, nurse of the grain, nor the busy iron tend the fruitful rows of bacchic vines, but earth was barren. In mutual slaughter they dined on food of flesh. But when time, begetter and nurturer of all things, wrought a change in mortal life—whether of the solicitude of Prometheus, or from necessity, or by long experience, offering nature itself as teacher—then was discovered holy Demeter's gift, the nourishment of cultivated grain, and the sweet fount of Bacchus. The earth, once barren, began to be ploughed by yoked oxen, towered cities arose, men built sheltering homes and turned their lives from savage ways to civilized. From this time they made it a law to bury the dead or give unburied bodies their portion of dust, leaving no visible reminder of their former impious feasts."

"He who cannot find time to consult his Bible will one day find he has time to be sick; he who has no time to pray must find time to die; he who can find no time to reflect is most likely to find time to sin; he who cannot find time for repentance will find an eternity in which repentance will be of no avail; he who cannot find time to work for others may find an eternity in which to suffer for himself."

"Doctor Manhattan: There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet."

"Time is at once an agony of the Present, a long torment of the Past and the terrible prospect of countless Futures. Time is also a complex of subtly intersecting realities, of unguessable consequences and undiscoverable causes, of profound tensions and dependencies."

"You fail to understand, my friend. We do not control time. If anything, it controls us. We simply measure it."

"“I am already late, I fear. What time is it?” “Time? Why the present, of course.”"

"There are moments in our lives we fear to relive and others we long to repeat. While time cannot give us second chances, maybe people can."

"As to Duration, I still think it is absolutely impossible to conceive it without something that exists, and continues to exist, i.e. to endure. But how it should be a property of the thing existing is to me inconceivable. One thing... is absolutely certain, viz. that if eternal Duration be a property of the Supreme Being, Duration limited must be a property of inferior beings; so that we have here some common property. I find you agree with Dr Clarke, in considering Time and Duration as the same. But this is an error that Dr Clarke has fallen into, by not being learned in the Ancient Metaphysics; for there he would have learned that time is only the measure of motion. It therefore could not exist, but with the material world; so that, if we could suppose nothing existing but the Supreme Mind, which is immoveable, there would in that case be Duration, or αίών,—as the Greek Philosophers call it—but not χρόνος, or Time. And the Doctor should not have rejected the common distinction, made by all Philosophers and Divines before him, betwixt Time and Eternity, without assigning better reasons than he has done."

"The Doctor: Ook, sorry, I've got a bit of a complex life. Things don't always happen to me in quite the right order. Gets a bit confusing at times, especially at weddings. I'm rubbish at weddings, especially my own."

"The Doctor: People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non linear subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey...stuff."

"Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race: Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours, Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace; And glut thyself with what thy womb devours, Which is no more than what is false and vain, And merely mortal dross."

"Day and night, Seed-time and harvest, heat and hoary frost Shall hold their course, till fire purge all things new."

"We are being sucked into the body of eternity."

"Time is the alchemy that turns compassion into love."

"I pondered my personal goals, too. My life could have ended that day at the restaurant, but I’d been given more time to be with my children and continue building a legacy. In some ways, we are only what we leave behind... We have only so much time. We need to use it well."

"The first thing necessary for a constructive dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. For psychologically speaking, this present moment is all we have. The past and future have meaning because they are part of the present: a past event has existence now because you are thinking of it at this present moment, or because it influences you so that you, as a living being in the present, are that much different. The future has reality because one can bring it into his mind in the present. Past was the present at one time, and the future will be the present at some coming moment. To try to live in the "when" of the future or the "then" of the past always involves an artificiality, a separating one's self from reality; for in actuality one exists in the present. The past has meaning as it lights up the present, and the future as it makes the present richer and more profound."

"He that would enjoy life and act with freedom must have the work of the day continually before his eyes. Not yesterday's work, lest he fall into despair; nor to-morrow's, lest he become a visionary—not that which ends with the day, which is a worldly work; nor yet that only which remains to eternity, for by it he cannot shape his actions. Happy is the man who can recognise in the work of to-day a connected portion of the work of life and an embodiment of the work of Eternity. The foundations of his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily enterprises because the present is given him for a possession. Thus ought Man to be an impersonation of the divine process of nature, and to show forth the union of the infinite with the finite, not slighting his temporal existence, remembering that in it only is individual action possible; nor yet shutting out from his view that which is eternal, knowing that Time is a mystery which man cannot endure to contemplate until eternal Truth enlighten it."

"Who has time? Who has time? But then if we never take time, how can we have time?"

"Underlying this succession of moments which constitutes the superficial existence of beings and things, and which is continually modifying and transforming them, one can search for a truer, more essential character, which the artist will seize so that he may give to reality a more lasting interpretation."

"Look, I know that time is precious, but do you think you could give me a moment or two with Jack?"

"Non est, crede mihi, sapientis dicere ‘Vivam’: Sera nimis vita est crastina: vive hodie."

"Time plays now on the quietest of flutes."

"Time is composed of time-atoms, i.e., of many parts, which on account of their short duration, cannot be divided. The Mutakallemim undoubtedly saw how Aristotle proved that time, space, and locomotion are of the same nature. ...They, therefore, knew that if time were continuous and divisible ad infinitum, their assumed atom of space would of necessity likewise be divisible. Similarly, if it were supposed that space were continuous... the time-element... could also be divided. This has been shown by Aristotle in... Acroasis [Aristotelis stagyritae acroases physicae]. ...An hour is, e.g., divided into sixty minutes, the second into sixty parts and so on; at last after ten or more successive divisions by sixty, time-elements are obtained which are not subjected to division, and in fact are indivisible."

"Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit."

"How awful that silent, unceasing footfall of receding days is when once we begin to watch it! Inexorable, passionless— though hope and fear may pray, " Sun, stand thou still on Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon," — the tramp of the hours goes on. The poets paint them as a linked chorus of rosy forms, garlanded and clasping hands as they dance onwards. So they may be to some of us at some moments. So they may seem as they approach; but those who come hold the hands of those that go, and that troop have no rosy light upon their limbs, their garlands are faded, the sunshine falls not upon the gray and shrouded shapes, as they steal ghost like through the gloom."

"The Romans never allowed a trouble spot to remain simply to avoid going to war over it, because they knew that wars don't just go away, they are only postponed to someone else's advantage. Therefore, they made war with Philip and Antiochus in Greece, in order not to have to fight them in Italy... They never went by that saying which you constantly hear from the wiseacres of our day, that time heals all things. They trusted rather their own character and prudence — knowing perfectly well that time contains the seeds of all things, good as well as bad."

"Il tempo si caccia innanzi ogni cosa, e può condurre seco bene come male, male come bene."

"The modern Father Time, like the classical Saturn, reflected the paradox that time both consumes and brings to fruition. During the sixteenth century, just when Time was being portrayed as the most malevolent of creatures... he was also developing the dualism of a quite different reputation as the father of Truth. Samuel Chew, in The Virtues Reconciled, has shown that from the eleventh century there developed an important allegory in which Truth and Justice, Peace and Mercy were widely represented as the daughters of God. Fritz Saxl, in his essay "Veritas Filia Temporas," had earlier demonstrated that Time too had a paternity to Truth, who, according to Democritus, lay at the bottom of a deep well. Despite the implied sacrilege in the conflicting claims to paternity, Time's claim held good; this was probably because it was so useful an allegory in the conflict between Protestant and Catholic."

"The time is always right to do what’s right."

"Time exists not by itself; but simply from the things which happen, the sense apprehends what has been done in time past, as well as what is present, and what is to follow after."

"Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;"

"Time, like a preacher in the days of the Puritans, turned the hour-glass on his high pulpit, the church belfry."

"The more you observe life in relation to yourself the more you will see the fact that you are hardly ever correct when you think about something in the future. The future exists only in imagination; and that is why, no matter how hard you try to imagine it, you will not be able to predict the future with total certainty."

"I heard a million tales before I came to you One after the other said, "Time′s the only cure""

"There is only one thing in your life YOU can be sure of. That one thing is this moment, now. The last moment has gone forever. The next moment has not come. YOU can become fully conscious only when you are living in the moment. To begin to live in the moment you have to know it exists and understand it. To understand it you have to observe it in relation to yourself and in relation to life. When you understand it, when you become conscious, you will see it is all that exists. To see this is to glimpse reality."