Quotes About Time

What is life for?' he asked rhetorically. 'It's a way to evolve thought. And what is thought for? It's a way to be aware, a stage between the physical and the spiritual. And time? it's a good way to keep things separated.

Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

Some love comes like a wind off the sea, while others grow slowly from the seeds of friendship and kindness.

Seconds slowed and passed before Nicholas's mind's eye like a parade of snails upon the garden path.

The thought struck Dennis that a hundred years before he was even born Tinuva undoubtedly knew of the river. Again he realized just how ancient the elven race was and with it came the recognition of just how much they risked when facing battle: it wasn't just a score of years in the balance, it was a score of decades.

From our birth we are all dying, but some of us finish sooner than others.

What is this place? Who are you, and how did you know I was coming here?" "We know many things, son of Crydee. You are here because it is time for you to face that greatest of terrors, what you call the Enemy. You are here to learn. We are here to teach.

Caleb had understood that for mothers, sons never truly grow up.

time is coming, soon, when I will tell you things you will wish I had never told you.

The past can be a terrible weight bound to you by an unbreakable chain. You can drag it with you, forever looking over your shoulder at what holds you back. Or you can let it go and move forward. It's your choice. For those who live centuries, it's a very important choice.

Alors tu t'es bien amusée ? –Comme ça. –T'as vu le métro ? –Non. –Alors, qu'est-ce que t'as fait ? –J'ai vieilli

That a life lasts longer than the actual body through which it moves.

If you must fall in love, Calis, fall in love with someone who will live a long time.

It is easy to time-travel, the physicist says—we do it every day. Travelling backward is the problem.

And the freest of all is the philosopher who thinks so little of the ceaseless flow of time as to step out of it. This is why the philosopher often appears ridiculous in the practical affairs of life, because he or she has stepped out of the rush of time.

Plato dramatically puts the detachment of the philosopher from his time this way: to philosophize is to prepare to die. (Oddly, philosophy departments have forgone turning this into an enrollment-boosting slogan.)

So did he answer you? I finally had to ask her after a considerable pause, accompanied by the tapping of her fingernails. (illustration credit ill.3) Not really, she said. I'm not sure giving answers is in his bag of tricks. He seems to be more about messing with your mind so that you can't stop thinking about his questions. And if he thinks I can afford to keep stepping out of time like this, with my schedule, then, well, he's just way off. Maybe

The present rearranges the past. We never tell the story whole because a life isn't a story; it's a whole Milky Way of events and we are forever picking out constellations from it to fit who and where we are.

Perhaps it's that you can't go back in time, but you can return to the scenes of a love, of a crime, of happiness, and of a fatal decision; the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal. They become the tangible landscape of memory, the places that made you, and in some way you too become them. They are what you can possess and in the end what possesses you.

Language is like a road, it cannot be perceived all at once because it unfolds in time, whether heard or read. This narrative or temporal element has made writing and walking resemble each other.

Perhaps walking is best imagined as an 'indicator species,' to use an ecologist's term. An indicator species signifies the health of an ecosystem, and its endangerment or diminishment can be an early warning sign of systemic trouble. Walking is an indicator species for various kinds of freedom and pleasures: free time, free and alluring space, and unhindered bodies.

Musing takes place in a kind of meadowlands of the imagination, a part of the imagination that has not yet been plowed, developed, or put to any immediately practical use. [--] [T]ime spent there is not work time, yet without that time the mind becomes sterile, dull, domesticated. The fight for free space—for wilderness and for public space—must be accompanied by a fight for free time to spend wandering in that space.

Time always wins; our victories are only delays; but delays are sweet, and a delay can last a whole lifetime.

There are fossils of seashells high in the Himalayas; what was and what is are different things.