Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.
—Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–89) English Poet, Writer
A person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, pockets your watch, and then sends you a bill for it.
—Unknown
A lot of people go through life like they are rowing a boat. They look at where they have been (the PAST) rather than where they are going (the FUTURE).
—Unknown
These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Nothing lies on our hands with such uneasiness as time. Wretched and thoughtless creatures! In the only place where covetousness were a virtue we turn prodigals.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
Study the past, if you would define the future.
—Confucius (551–479 BCE) Chinese Philosopher
To save time is to lengthen life.
—Unknown
In politics a week is a very long time.
—Harold Wilson British Political Leader
The time is always right to do what’s right.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman
Time is like a snowflake—it melts away while we try to decide what to do with it.
—Anonymous
Time is the scarcest resource of the manager; If it is not managed, nothing else can be managed.
—Peter Drucker (1909–2005) Austrian-born Management Consultant
For time is the longest distance between two places.
—Tennessee Williams (1911–83) American Playwright
Yesterday is a cancelled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have—so spend it wisely.
—Unknown
Time goes by so fast, people go in and out of your life. You must never miss the opportunity to tell these people how much they mean to you.
—Unknown
The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
—Franz Kafka (1883–1924) Austrian Novelist, Short Story Writer
Time, whose tooth gnaws away at everything else, is powerless against truth.
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) English Biologist
A man’s time, when well husbanded, is like a cultivated field, of which a few acres produces more of what is useful to life, than extensive provinces, even of the richest soil, when overrun with weeds and brambles.
—David Hume (1711–76) Scottish Philosopher, Historian
Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
—Frank Zappa (1940–93) American Rock Guitarist, Singer, Composer
He that rises late must trot all day.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
What is time?—The shadow on the dial, the striking of the clock, the running of the sand, day and night, summer and winter, months, years, centuries—these are but the arbitrary and outward signs—the measure of time, not time itself. Time is the life of the soul.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
If you look back too much, you will soon be headed that way
—Unknown
We all run on two clocks. One is the outside clock, which ticks away our decades and brings us ceaselessly to the dry season. The other is the inside clock, where you are your own timekeeper and determine your own chronology, your own internal weather and your own rate of living. Sometimes the inner clock runs itself out long before the outer one, and you see a dead man going through the motions of living.
—Max Lerner (1902–92) Russian-born American Journalist
So, instead of wanting to throttle your loved ones when they give you a hard time, it is better to look at them as mirrors of what you still need to work on in terms of our personal growth.
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.
—Harvey Mackay (b.1932) American Businessman, Columnist, Author
Time is the rider that breaks youth.
—George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh Anglican Poet, Orator, Clergyman
Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards.
—Soren Kierkegaard (1813–55) Danish Philosopher, Theologian
Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence—neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish—it is an imponderably valuable gift. Each of us has a few minutes a day or a few hours a week which we could donate to an old folks home or a children’s hospital ward. The elderly whose pillows we plump or whose water pitchers we refill may or may not thank us for our gift, but the gift is upholding the foundation of the universe.
—Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American Poet
Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.
—Horace Mann (1796–1859) American Educator, Politician, Educationalist
Time is the most valuable coin in your life. You and you alone will determine how that coin will be spent. Be careful that you don’t let other people spend it for you.
—John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright
Time stays, we go.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
Time spent with cats is never wasted.
—Colette (1873–1954) French Novelist, Performer
City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their mind’s eye the notion of a better life ahead.
—Edward Hoagland (b.1932) American Essayist, Novelist
I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry. It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It’s a dream already ended. There’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of The Mind vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.
—Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American Novelist, Poet
Time is the longest distance between two places.
—Tennessee Williams (1911–83) American Playwright
Love is hard work; and hard work sometimes hurts.
—Unknown
Time is like money, the less we have of it to spare the further we make it go.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (1818–85) American Humorist, Author, Lecturer
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
—C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) Irish-born British Academic, Author, Literary Scholar
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead, adorer of the ruin, comforter and only healer when the heart hath bled… Time, the avenger!
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life’s lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
You are not born for fame if you don’t know the value of time.
—Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–47) French Moralist, Essayist, Writer
The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb, for we have no word to speak about it.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist