Time

"'I could tell you my adventures — beginning from this morning,' said Alice a little timidly: 'but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.' 'Explain all that,' said the Mock Turtle. 'No, no! The adventures first,' said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: 'explanations take such a dreadful time.'"

"How we remember the past determines the shape of the future."

"Waiting for the time to pass you by; hope the winds of change will change your mind."

"The touch of time does more than the club of Hercules."

"Time changes all things and cultivates even in herself an appreciation of irony, — and, therefore, why shouldn't I have changed a trifle?"

"Spared and blessed by Time, Looking tranquility."

"O Time! the beautifier of the dead, Adorner of the ruin, comforter And only healer when the heart hath bled— Time! the corrector where our judgments err, The test of truth, love, sole philosopher, For all besides are sophists, from thy thrift Which never loses though it doth defer— Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift."

"When Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet."

"Yet Time, who changes all, had altered him In soul and aspect as in age; years steal Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb; And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim."

"You can never plan the future by the past."

"If there is one thing that I have come to hate more than the gods, it is time."

"... time is the friend of the wonderful business — it's the enemy of the lousy business."

"You shouldn't chase after the past or place expectations on the future. What is past is left behind. The future is as yet unreached. Whatever quality is present you clearly see right there, right there."

"Time is not bought ready-made at the watchmaker's."

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

"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."

"What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not."

"Die Zukunft wird nicht gemeistert von denen, die am Vergangenen kleben."

"They say time is the fire in which we burn. Right now, Captain, my time is running out. Because we leave so many things unfinished in our lives. And, by the way, I know you will understand."

"we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."

"Legitimate manners owe their value to the fact that they manifest the rarest conditions of acquisition, that is, a social power over time which is tacitly recognized as the supreme excellence: to possess things from the past, i.e., accumulated, crystallized history, aristocratic names and titles, châteaux or ’stately homes’, paintings and collections, vintage wines and antique furniture, is to master time, through all those things whose common feature is that they can only be acquired in the course of time, by means of time, against time, that is, by inheritance or through dispositions which, like the taste for old things, are likewise only acquired with time and applied by those who can take their time."

"And yet, and yet … Negar la sucesión temporal, negar el yo, negar el universo astronómico, son desesperaciones aparentes y consuelos secretos. Nuestro destino no es espantoso por irreal: es espantoso porque es irreversible y de hierro. El tiempo es la sustancia de que estoy hecho. El tiempo es un río que me arrebata, pero yo soy el río; es un tigre que me destroza, pero yo soy el tigre; es un fuego que me consume, pero yo soy el fuego. El mundo desgraciadamente es real; yo, desgraciadamente, soy Borges."

"Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures."

"The Garden of Forking Paths is an incomplete, but not false, image of the universe as Ts'ui Pên conceived it. In contrast to Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us."

"Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time."

"Time can't be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different."

"Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable. This is what makes it so disturbing to look back upon the time which we have lost. Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty."

"Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Time's swiftness Which is the swiftest of all things, all were eternal torment."

"Eternity is in love with the productions of time."

"I see the Four-fold Man. The Humanity in deadly sleep, And its fallen Emanation. The Spectre & its cruel Shadow. I see the Past, Present & Future, existing all at once Before me; O Divine Spirit sustain me on thy wings!"

"Captain James T. Kirk: But one man can change the present."

"Mirror Spock: One man cannot summon the future."

"Captain James T. Kirk: If change is inevitable, predictable, beneficial, doesn't logic demand that you be a part of it?"

"YEAR, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments."

"Once you realize you deserve a bright future, letting go of your dark past is the best choice you will ever make."

"In what time does man live? The thinkers have always known that he does not live in any time at all. The immortality of thoughts and deeds banishes him to a timeless realm at whose heart an inscrutable death lies in wait. ... Devoured by the countless demands of the moment, time slipped away from him; the medium in which the pure melody of his youth would swell was destroyed. The fulfilled tranquility in which his late maturity would ripen was stolen from him. It was purloined by everyday reality, which, with its events, chance occurrences, and obligations, disrupted the myriad opportunities of youthful time, immortal time. ... From day to day, second to second, the self preserves itself, clinging to that instrument: time, the instrument that it was supposed to play."

"I cannot exist entirely except when somehow I go beyond the stage of action. Otherwise I’m a soldier, a professional, a man of learning, not a “total human being.” The fragmentary state of humanity is basically the same as the choice of an object. When you limit your desires to possessing political power, for instance, you act and know what you have to do. … You insert your existence advantageously into time. Each of your moments becomes useful. With each moment, the possibility is given you to advance to some chosen goal, and your time becomes a march toward that goal—what’s normally called living. … Every action makes you a fragmentary existence. I hold on to my nature as an entirety only by refusing to act—or at least by denying the superiority of time, which is reserved for action."

"Time is... a Quantum in itself, tho' in Order to find the Quantity of it, we... call in Motion... as a Measure... and thus Time as measurable signifies Motion; for if all Things were to continue at Rest, it would be impossible to find out... how much Time has elaps'd... We perceive nothing, unless so far as we may be instigated by some Change affecting the Senses, or that our Souls are mov'd and excited by the internal Operation of the Mind. ...So that the Quantity of Time so far as we can observe; depends upon the Extension of Motion. ...It cannot be justly inferr'd... We do not perceive the Thing, therefore there is no such Thing, that is a false Illusion, a deceitful Dream, that wou'd cause us to join together two remote Instants of Time. But nevertheless this is very True... That is, for as much Motion as there was, so much Time seems to have been elapsed; nor, when we mention such a Quantity of Time, do we merely mean any Thing else, than the Performance of so much Motion, to the continued successive Extension of which we imagine the Permanency as Things is co-extended."

"[T]he Quantity of motive Force cannot be known without Time... Time (...abstractedly) is the continuance of any Thing in its own Being. ...Time absolutely... is Quantity, as admitting... Equality, Inequality, and Proportion... [Y]ou may ask, whether Time was not before the World was created? And if Time does not flow in the Extramundane Space, where nothing is: A mere Vacuum? ..[S]ince there was Space before the World was created, and... there now is an Extramundane, infinite Space, (where God is present)... Time existed before the World began... Some Sun might have given Light long before; and at present this, or some other like it, may diffuse Light thro' Imaginary Spaces. Time therefore does not imply an actual Existence, but only the Capacity or Possibility of the Continuance of Existence; just as Space expresses the Capacity of a Magnitude contain'd in it. ...[D]oes not Time imply Motion? I answer no... any more than it does Rest. ...[W]hether Things move on, or stand still; whether we sleep or wake, Time flows perpetually with an equal Tenor."

"The spiritual man is not conscious of time, once he is separated from the physical body. Time is the sequential registration by the brain of states of awareness, and of progressive contacts with phenomena. There is no such thing as time on the inner planes, as humanity understands it. There are only cycles of activity or of non-activity."

"And he that will not apply New Remedies, must expect New Evils: for Time is the greatest Innovateur..."

"With regard to authority, it is the greatest weakness to attribute infinite credit to particular authors, and to refuse his own prerogative to time, the author of all authors, and, therefore, of all authority. For truth is rightly named the daughter of time not of authority. It is not wonderful, therefore, if the bonds of antiquity, authority, and unanimity have so enchained the power of man, that he is unable (as if bewitched) to become familiar with things themselves."

"God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints."

"But if any excursive brain rove over the images of forepassed times, and wonder that Thou the God Almighty and All-creating and All-supporting, Maker of heaven and earth, didst for innumerable ages forbear from so great a work, before Thou Wouldest make it; let him awake and consider, that he wonders at false conceits. For whence could innumerable ages pass by, which Thou madest not, Thou the Author and Creator of all ages? or what times should there be, which were not made by Thee? or how should they pass by, if they never were? Seeing then Thou art the Creator of all times, if any time was before Thou madest heaven and earth, why say they that Thou didst forego working? For that very time didst Thou make, nor could times pass by, before Thou madest those times. But if before heaven and earth there was no time, why is it demanded, what Thou then didst? For there was no "then," when there was no time."

"O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time."

"Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted."

"Time is not composed of indivisible nows any more than any other magnitude is composed of indivisibles."

"Aristotle, Physics, as translated by Joe Sachs (Rutgers University Press: 2011), 217b30"

"That time either has no being at all, or is only scarcely and faintly, one might suspect from this: part of it has happened and is not, while the other part is going to be but is not yet, and it is out of these that the infinite, or any given, time is composed. But it would seem impossible for a thing composed of non-beings to have any share in being."

"Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Except are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love."