Quotes About Time

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell

First we were so young and then we were so busy and then one day we awoke to discover that we were an age we once thought of as old.

The difference between fifty and sixty is nothing; the difference between eight and eighteen is more or less a lifetime.

No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office.

How many times she had heard women in New York - maybe women everywhere, for all she knew - speak lyrically of how they would't see friends for months, perhaps even years, and then it was as though they had never been apart. Picked up where we left off was the common phrase. It was supposed to signal some magical communion, but if you looked it right in the eye, it came down to this: the kind of people they considered friends they might not even actually see for a long long time.

Even in a marriage as truncated as her own—nine years, more or less—most of it is the mundane middle part. That was the part Peter couldn't bear. That was the part Rebecca had liked most.

Thank God! We are in time, said the young man, and thank you too my friend and your good horse; you have saved me more than money can ever pay for; take this extra half-crown.

in most Western countries, most of the time, there was a single, national debate. Opinions differed, but at least most people were arguing within agreed parameters. That world has vanished.

Two years hence you will be as calm as I am now, - and far, far happier, I trust, for you are a man and free to act as you please

But he has promised to write often, and made me promise to write still oftener, because he will be busy settling his affairs, and I shall have nothing better to do.

governess was not in yet; then

Why so? one would think at such a time you would most exult in your privilege of being able to imitate the various brilliant and delightful touches of nature.

And if I,' said she, 'am young in years, I am old in sorrow;

Her past is behind her, her future is of little concern. She moves towards the grave, at her own speed.

My life seems too fast now, so obstructions bother me less than they once did. I am no longer in a hurry to see what is around the next bend. I find myself wanting to backferry, to hover midstream, suspended. If I could do that, I might avoid many things: harsh words, foolish decisions, moments of inattention, regrets that wash over me, like water. (196)

Paper is more patient than man.

In the future I'm going to devote less time to sentimentality and more time to reality.

Sleep makes the silence and the terrible fear go by more quickly, helps pass the time, since it's impossible to kill.

Time to get up time to get washed time to have lunch time to go to bed. What's the point if I never get up again what difference would it make? I might just as well be dead. You might just as well be dead. We all just as well be dead! This isn't living. This is…

PS. Will the reader please take into consideration that this story was written before the writer's fury had cooled?

La carta è più paziente degli uomini.

There is a saying that, paper is more patient than man.

Paper is more patient than people.

if I only knew how much longer we had to put up with each other's company, I'd start counting the days.