Quotes About Time

Though thou shouldst be going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses.

Or is it your reputation that's bothering you? But look at how soon we're all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of all those applauding hands. The people who praise us- how capricious they all are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region in which it all takes place. The whole earth a point in space- and most of it uninhabited. How many people there will be to admire you, and who they are.

Sixth, consider when thou art much vexed or grieved, that man's life is only a moment, and after a short time we are all laid out dead.

Remember: Matter. How tiny your share of it. Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate. How small a role you play in it.

Close to forgetting it all, close to being forgotten.

Don't live as though you were going to live a myriad years. Fate is hanging over your head; while you have a life, while you may, become good.

Casting therefore all other things aside, keep thyself to these few, and remember withal that no man properly can be said to live more than that which is now present, which is but a moment of time.

Call to mind the whole of Substance of which you have a very small portion, and the whole of time whereof a small hair's breadth has been determined for you, and of the chain of causation whereof you are how small a link.

There is nothing new: all things are both familiar and short-lived.

Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you'll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, "Is this necessary?

People out for posthumous fame forget that the Generations To Come will be the same annoying people they know now.

We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first.

The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have, you cannot lose.

Some things are hurrying into existence, and others are hurrying out of it;

Do, soul, do; abuse and contemn thyself; yet a while and the time for thee to respect thyself, will be at an end.

For a man cannot lose either the past or the future: for what a man has not, how can any one take this from him?

Does a man offend your pride? Remember he will be dead soon, as will you.

We live only in the present, in this fleet-footed moment. The rest is lost and behind us, or ahead of us and may never be found. Little of life we know, little the plot of earth on which we dwell, little the memory of even the most famous who have lived, and this memory itself is preserved by generations of little men, who know little about themselves and far less about those who died long ago. (Book 3, Verse 10)

Consider how quickly all things are dissolved and resolved: the bodies and substances themselves, into the matter and substance of the world: and their memories into the general age and time of the world.

hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of to-day's task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow's. While we are postponing, life speeds by. Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession.

You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind—things that exist only there—and clear out space for yourself: . . . by comprehending the scale of the world . . . by contemplating infinite time . . . by thinking of the speed with which things change—each part of every thing; the narrow space between our birth and death; the infinite time before; the equally unbounded time that follows.

But by all means bear this in mind, that within a very short time both thou and he will be dead; and soon not even your names will be left behind.

A man must not only consider how daily his life wasteth and decreaseth, but this also, that if he live long, he cannot be certain, whether his understanding shall continue so able and sufficient, for either discreet consideration, in matter of businesses; or for contemplation: it being the thing, whereon true knowledge of things both divine and human, doth depend.

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small—small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.