Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow. Success depends upon using it wisely—by planning and setting priorities.
—Denis Waitley (1933–2025) American Speaker, Consultant, Self-help Pioneer
Time is not a line, but a series of now-points.
—Taisen Deshimaru (1914–82) Japanese Zen Buddhist Teacher, Founder of AZI
Time will explain it all. He is a talker, and needs no questioning before he speaks.
—Euripides (480–406 BCE) Ancient Greek Dramatist
I am ready any time. Do not keep me waiting.
—John Mason Brown (1900–69) American Author, Drama Critic
A person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, pockets your watch, and then sends you a bill for it.
—Unknown
It’s how we spend our time here and now, that really matters. If you are fed up with the way you have come to interact with time, change it.
—Marcia Wieder
The laboring man and the artificer knows what every hour of his time is worth, and parts not with it but for the full value: they are only noblemen and gentlemen, who should know best how to use it, that think it only fit to be cast away; and their not knowing how to set a true value upon this, is the true cause of the wrong estimate they make of all other things.
—Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609–74) English Statesman, Historian
Ah! the clock is always slow; it is later than you think.
—Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Canadian Poet, Writer
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
Time has no division to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire pistols.
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German Novelist, Critic, Philanthropist, Essayist
We pay when old for the excesses of youth.
—J. B. Priestley (1894–1984) English Novelist, Playwright, Critic
All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.
—C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) Irish-British Academic, Author, Literary Scholar
Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
No one can be right all of the time, but it helps to be right most of the time.
—Robert Half
As life runs on, the road grows strange with faces new—and near the end. The milestones into headstones change, Neath everyone a friend.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
Time, with all its celerity, moves slowly on to him whose whole employment is to watch its flight.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
I wasted time, and now time doth waste me.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.
—Barbara De Angelis (b.1951) American Self-Help Author
And only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live in every experience, painful or joyous; to live in gratitude for every moment, to live abundantly.
—Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American Journalist, Radio Commentator
There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
—James Baldwin (1924–87) American Novelist, Social Critic
The purpose of life is not to win. The purpose of life is to grow and to share. When you come to look back on all that you have done in life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasure you have brought into other people’s lives that you will from the times that you outdid and defeated them.
—Harold Kushner (1935–2023) American Rabbi, Author
Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity.
—Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss Theologian, Poet
Youth is not rich in time, it may be poor; part with it as with money, sparing; pay no moment, but in purchase of its worth; and what it’s worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy the sunlight today, mix good cheer with friends today, enjoy it and bless God for it. Do not look back on happiness—or dream of it in the future. You are only sure of today; do not let yourself be cheated out of it.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
To save time is to lengthen life.
—Unknown
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
We are condemned to kill time, thus we die bit by bit.
—Octavio Paz (1914–98) Mexican Poet, Diplomat
Today is life—the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.
—Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American Self-Help Author
Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.
—Jesse Jackson (b.1941) American Civil Rights Leader, Minister
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