Quotes About Time

but one cannot look backward, only forward. What has passed has passed forever.

You can step in the same river but the water will always be new.

One's own life seemed puny against the background of so much history.

She had had affairs over the years ... but she had never been pregnant, never been a mother or a wife and it was only when she realized that it was too late, that it could never be, that she understood what it was that she had lost. Pamela's life would go on after she was dead, her descendants spreading through the world like the waters of a delta, but when Ursula died she would simply end. A stream that ran dry.

Time is construct, in relativity every thing flows, no past or present, only the now.

He was a baby once, she thought. New and perfect, cradled in his mother's arms. The mysterious Sylvie. Now he was a feathery husk, ready to blow away. His eyes were half open, milky, like an old dog, and his mouth had grown beaky with the extremity of age, opening and closing, a fish out of water. Bertie could feel a continual tremor running through him, an electrical current, the faint buzz of life. Or death, perhaps. Energy was gathering around him, the air was static with it.

As you got older and time went on, you realized that the distinction between truth and fiction didn't really matter because eventually everything disappeared into the soupy, amnesiac mess of history. Personal or political, it made no difference.

Sweet sixteen, Hugh said, kissing her affectionately. Happy birthday, little bear. Your future's all ahead of you. Ursula still harbored the feeling that some of her future was also behind her but she had learned not to voice such things.

Time was a thief, he stole your life away from you and the only way you could get it back was to outwit him and snatch it right back.

it had probably been a long enough life. Yet suddenly it all seemed like an illusion, a dream that had happened to someone else. What an odd thing existence was.

There was now and it was followed by another now. If you were lucky.

Time isn't circular," she said to Dr. Kellet. "It's like a… palimpsest.

Truth is truth to the end of reckoning . What was that from? Measure for Measure ? But perhaps, truth was asleep until the end of reckoning. There was going to be an awful lot of reckoning when the time came.

Do you keep time in the same place that you save it? If so why is it always so difficult to find? It must be in a very safe place.

A handful of heartbeats. That was what life was. A heartbeat followed by a heartbeat. A breath followed by a breath. One moment followed by another moment and then there was a last moment. Life was a s fragile as a bird's heartbeat, fleeting as the bluebells in the wood.

In the half-century of his life, a tick on the Doomsday clock, he had borne witness to the most unbelievable technological advances. He had started off listening to an old Bush radio in the corner of the living room and now he had a phone in his hand on which he could pretend to throw a scrunched-up piece of paper into a waste bin. The world had waited a long time for that.

If Richard had lived, perhaps... but one cannot look backwards, only forwards. What has passed has passed for ever. What is it Heraclitus says? One Cannot step in the same river twice?' ... 'More or less. I suppose a more accurate way of putting it would be You can step in the same river but the water will always be new.

Before the beginning is the void and the void belongs in neither time nor space and is therefore beyond our imagination. Nothing will come of nothing unless it's the beginning of the world. This is how it begins, with the word and the word is life. The void is transformed by a gigantic firecracker allowing time to dawn and imagination to begin.

How wonderfully, joyously, untrammeled he had been then in his happiness. She thought it was fixed for ever, she didn't realize that childhood happiness dissolves away. If she had realized that Archie wasn't going to be that sunny innocent child for ever she would have laid up every moment as treasure.

Long lazy days like these will never come again in your life. You think they will but they won't.' -Sylvie

There were so many facts that Amelia no longer felt certain about (or perhaps she had never known them). She would soon be nearer fifty than forty, and she was sure that every day she could feel more neural pathways disappearing—fusing and arcing and dying—leaving her unable to retrieve information.

Sometimes Jackson thought that the past wasn't just another country, it was a lost continent somewhere at the bottom of an unknown ocean.

I dreamt of going on the stage once, he said, looking crestfallen. It's never too late, I said vaguely. A lie, of course, as often, unfortunately, it is much too late.

Another day where nothing has happened, he thought. That was a good thing, he reminded himself. What was the Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times.