Quotes About Time

Mathematical studies may serve for a pleasant entertainment for those hours which young men are apt to throw away upon their vices.

the past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present. (...) we would seem forced to say that no phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. The universe does not 'exist, out there' independent of all acts of observation. Instead, it is in some strange sense a participatory universe

What we call the past is built on bits.

The promise of learning is a delusion.... Tomorrow would alter the sense of what had already been learned, that the learning process is extended in this way, so that from this standpoint none of us ever graduates from college, for time is an emulsion, and probably thinking not to grow up is the brightest kind of maturity for us, right now at any rate.

What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?

We might realize that the present moment may be one of an eternal or sempiternal series of moments, all of which will resemble it because, in some ways, they are the present, and won't in other ways, because the present will be the past by that time.

The seasons are no longer what they once were,But it is the nature of things to be seen only once,As they happen along, bumping into other things, getting alongSomehow. That's where Orpheus made his mistake.

It was always November there.

The seasons are no longer what they once were, But it is the nature of things to be seen only once, As they happen along, bumping into other things, getting along Somehow.

Placed in a puzzling light, and moving, Our days put on such reticence These accents seem their own defense.

Tomorrow would alter the sense of what had already been learned, That the learning process is extended in this way, so that from this standpoint None of us ever graduates from college, For time is an emulsion, and probably thinking not to grow up Is the brightest kind of maturity for us, right now at any rate.

We never live long enough in our lives to know what today is like. — John Ashbery, from "The Improvement," And the Stars were Shining (Noonday Press, 1994)

And time shall force a gift on each.

Think spring. We do. Slow down.

Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen. The days and hours of it are flying over our heads like clouds of windy day never to return—more every thing presses on—

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.

We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.

Yes, this is what I thought adulthood would be, a kind of long indian summer, a state of tranquility, of calm incuriousness, with nothing left of the barely bearable raw immediacy of childhood, all the things solved that had puzzled me when I was small, all mysteries settled, all questions answered, and the moments dripping away, unnoticed almost, drip by golden drip, toward the final, almost unnoticed, quietus.

The instant is not in time -- time is in the instant.

If time is a line, it is a special one.

I think everyone always has time to suffer.

Amatus waited a long time, but at last he broke the silence. "There is much I don't understand." "That will never change," Mortis said decisively. "Except that what you don't understand will change.

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.

You never realize how short a month is until you have to pay alimony.