Quotes About Time

Á chaque instant il peut saisir la vérité intemporelle de son existence; mais entre le passé qui n'est plus, et l'avenir qui n'est pas encore, cet instant où il existe n'est rien.

The past is an appeal; it is an appeal toward the future which sometimes can save it only by destroying it.

All day long I thought of André, and from time to time there was something that flickered in my brain. Like having been hit on the head, when one's sight is disordered and one sees two different images of the world at different heights, without being able to make out which is above and which below. The two pictures I had, of the past André and the present André, did not coincide.

From the hour you're born you begin to die. But between birth and death there's life.

Au galop mes jours m'échappent et en chacun d'eux je languis.

She was often late, not because she didn't care, but because she had too many contradictory cares.

Pour moi, ma mère avait toujours existé et je n'avais jamais sérieusement pensé que je la verrais disparaître un jour, bientôt. Sa fin se situait, comme sa naissance, dans un temps mystique. Quand je me disais : elle a l'âge de mourir, c'étaient des mots vides, comme tant de mots. Pour la première fois, j'apercevais en elle un cadavre en sursis.

I realized that I had come here in the hope of once more finding that man so hopelessly in love: I had not seen him for years and years, although this memory lies like a transparency over all the visions I have of him. That evening, for the very reason that the surroundings were the same, the old image, coming into contact with a flesh and blood man smoking a cigarette, fell to dust and ashes, I had a shattering revelation: time goes by. I began to weep.

after Neruda a bronze song, something undone, salvia, a crushed butterfly. It is the blood on a light bulb, the seventh sadness, a fluctuation that closes oceans and eyes. The vermilion and solitary luminary shimmies and singes the feathers of the aviary. Moon, the clock's word, dear mother, ruin, rain. — Simone Muench, "Elegy for the Unsaid," Lampblack & Ash: Poems . (Sarabande Books; First Edition edition November 1, 2005)

Stars and blossoming fruit trees: Utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.

Time's violence rends the soul; by the rent eternity enters.

Monotony is the most beautiful or the most atrocious thing. The most beautiful if it is a reflection of eternity--the most atrocious if it is the sign of an unvarying perpetuity. It is time surpassed or time sterilized.

We are living through a period bereft of a future. Waiting for that which is to come is no longer a matter of hope, but of anguish.

It is only necessary to know that love is a direction and not a state of the soul. If one is unaware of this, one falls into despair at the first onslaught of affliction. He whose soul remains ever turned toward God though the nail pierces it finds himself nailed to the very center of the universe. It is the true center; it is not in the middle; it is beyond space and time; it is God.

Le temps, par son cours, use et détruit ce qui est temporel. Aussi y-a-t-il plus d'éternité dans le passé que dans le présent. Valeur de l'histoire bien comprise analogue à celle du souvenir dans Proust. Ainsi le passé nous présente quelque chose qui est à la fois réel et meilleur que nous, et qui peut nous tirer ver le haut, ce que l'avenir ne fait jamais.

You could not have wished to be born at a better time than this, when everything is lost.

Une uniformité qui imite les mouvements des horloges et non pas ceux des constellations, une variété qui exclut toute règle et par suite toute prévision, cela fait un temps inhabitable à l'homme, irrespirable.

How much time do you devote to thinking each day?

The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence. The fall of Troy. The fall of the petals from a fruit tree in blossom. To know that what is most precious is not rooted in existence— that is beautiful. Why? It projects the soul beyond time.

The destruction of Troy. The fall of petals from fruit trees in blossom. To know that what is most precious is not rooted in existence—that is beautiful. Why? It projects the soul beyond time.

Zburzenie Troi. Opadaj?ce p?atki kwitn?cych drzew owocowych. Wiedzie?, ?e to, co najcenniejsze, nie jest zakorzenione w istnieniu. To pi?kne. Dlaczego? Przenosi dusz? poza czas.

Il y a dans l'âme comme une phagocytose ; tout ce qui est menacé par le temps secrète du mensonge pour ne pas mourir, et à proportion du danger de mort. C'est pourquoi il n'y a pas d'amour de la vérité sans un consentement sans réserve à la mort.

Les choses sensibles sont réelles en tant que choses sensibles, mais irréelles en tant que biens. L'apparence a la plénitude de la réalité, mais en tant qu'apparence. En tant qu'autre chose qu'apparence, elle est erreur. (...) Le temps, à proprement parler, n'existe pas (sinon le présent comme limite), et pourtant c'est à cela que nous sommes soumis. Telle est notre condition. Nous sommes soumis à ce qui n'existe pas.

The greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day.