Quotes About Time

Nothing has to be true forever. Just for long enough.

People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.

Things just happen, one after another. They don't care who knows. But history ... ah, history is different. History has to be observed. Otherwise it's not history. It's just... well, things happening one after another.

I REMEMBER WHEN ALL THIS WILL BE AGAIN.

But is all this true? said Brutha. Didactylos shrugged. Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork. You mean you don't KNOW it's true? said Brutha. I THINK it might be, said Didactylos. I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.

YOU'RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE, he said. That's what being alive is all about.

Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE? 'Yes. Yes, of course.' Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.

Living this long's not as wonderful as people think. I mean, you get the same amount of youth as everyone else, but a great big extra helping of being very old and deaf and creaky.

The reaper does not listen to the harvest.

EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS, STAYS HAPPENED. What kind of philosophy is that? THE ONLY ONE THAT WORKS.

Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, re-created anew. Therefore, he understood, there is, in truth, no Past, only a memory of the Past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.

People's whole lives do pass in front of their eye before dying. The process is called Living

The fastest way to travel is to be there already.

Just a minute, said Lobsang. Who are you? Time has stopped, the world is given over to...fairy tales and monsters, and there's a schoolteacher walking around? Best kind of person to have, said Susan. We don't like silliness. Anyway, I told you. I've inherited certain talents. Like living outside of time? That's one of them. It's a weird talent for a schoolteacher! Good for marking, though, said Susan calmly.

These are the Things that Make a Man Iron enough to make a nail, Lime enough to paint a wall, Water enough to drown a dog, Sulphur enough to stop the fleas, Potash enough to wash a shirt, Gold enough to buy a bean, Silver enough to coat a pin, Lead enough to ballast a bird, Phosphor enough to light the town, Poison enough to kill a cow, Strength enough to build a home, Time enough to hold a child, Love enough to break a heart.

The most important thing was that time had passed, pouring thousands of soothing seconds across the island. People need time to deal with the now before it runs away and becomes the then.

But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old.

Words have power, you understand? It is in the nature of our universe. Our library itself distorts time and space on quite a grand scale. Well, when the Post Office started accumulating letters, it was storing words. In fact, what was being created was what we call a 'gevaisa', a tomb of living words.

No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

Death stood alone, watching the wheat dance in the wind. Of course, it was only a metaphor. People were more than corn. They whirled through tiny crowded lives, driven literally by clock work, filling their days from edge to edge with the sheer effort of living. And all lives were exactly the same length. Even the very long and very short ones. From the point of view of eternity, anyway.

That's what the gods are! An answer that will do! Because there's food to be caught and babies to be born and life to be lived and so there is no time for big, complicated, and worrying answers! Please give us a simple answer, so that we don't have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be.

And the people next door oppress me all night long. I tell them, I work all day, a man's got to have some time to learn to play the tuba. That's oppression, that is. If I'm not under the heel of the oppressor, I don't know who is.

SEE! I HAVE TIME. AT LAST, I HAVE TIME Albert backed away nervously. 'And now that you have it, what are you going to do with it?' he said. Death mounted his horse. I AM GOING TO SPEND IT.

People are content to wait a long time for salvation, but expect dinner to turn up within the hour.