Quotes About Time

In five hundred years' time, to the historian writing the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, this little episode would not exist. There will be plenty of other causes. You and me and poor Jones will not even figure in a footnote. It will be all economics, politics, battles.

Ten years ago he would have followed her, but middle-age is the period of sad caution.

Human communication, it sometimes seems to me, involves an exaggerated amount of time. How briefly and to the point people always seem to speak on the stage or on the screen, while in real life we stumble from phrase to phrase with endless repetition.

And how is Uncle Edward? or is he dead? I've reached the time of life when relatives die unnoticed.

Rooms don't change, ornaments stand where you place them: only the heart decays.

One forgets the dead quite quickly; one doesn't wonder about the dead-what is he doing now, who is he with?

One can go back to one's own home after a year's absence and immediately the door closes it is as if one had never been away. Or one can go back after a few hours and everything is so changed that one is a stranger.

An artist paints his picture not in a few hours but in all the years of experience before he takes up the brush, and it is the same with failure.

Why do I love this place so much? Is it because here human nature hasn't time to disguise itself? Nobody here could talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, and on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up

Time has its revenges, but revenge seems so often sour.

So much of war is sitting around and doing nothing, waiting for somebody else. With no guarantee of the amount of time you have left it doesn't seem worth even starting a train of thought.

Un hombre sin recuerdos puede llegar a los cien años y sentir que su vida ha sido muy corta.

He watched her go out of the dark office like fifteen wasted years.

It was my bad luck that she caught me looking at my watch. I heard her voice say, 'I'm sorry. I came by bus and the traffic was bad.' I said, 'The tube's quicker.' 'I know, but I didn't want to be quick.

Think how complicated life would be if I had kept in touch with all the men I have known intimately. Some died, some I left, a few have left me. If they were all with me now we would have to take over a whole wing of the Royal Albion. I

Time gives poetry to a battlefield

Recordé el reloj con pulsera de oro de la señorita Keene, minúsculo como el de una muñeca, regalo de sir Keene por sus veintiún años. En su pequeña esfera contenía todas las cifras de las horas, como si todas ellas tuviesen la misma importancia y un deber especial que cumplir.

The place was very like the world: overcrowded with lust and crime and unhappy love, it stank to heaven; but he realized that after all it was possible to find peace there, when you knew for certain that the time was short.

Why, he wondered, swerving the car to avoid a dead pye-dog, do I love this place so much? Is it because here human nature hasn't had time to disguise itself? Nobody here could ever talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, and on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up.

One starts promiscuous and ends like one's grandfather, faithful to one woman.

Human communication, it sometimes seems to me, involves an exaggerated amount of time.

So much of war is sitting around doing nothing, waiting for someone else. With no guarantee of the amount of time you have left, it doesn't seem worth starting even a train of thought.

I've reached the age when sex isn't the problem so much as old age and death. I wake up with these in mind and not a woman's body. I just don't want to be alone in my last decade, that's all. I wouldn't know what to think about all day long.

He realised that for those who do not love time never stands still.