Quotes About Time

The Tezuman priests have a sophisticated calendar and an advanced horology, quoted Rincewind. Ah, said Eric, Good. No, said Rincewind patiently. It means time measurement. Oh.

Old terror crouched in the shadows. It was one of the most ancient terrors, the one that meant that no sooner had mankind learned to walk on two legs than it dropped to its knees. It was the terror of impermanence, the knowledge that all this would pass away, that a beautiful voice or a wonderful figure was something whose arrival you couldn't control and whose departure you couldn't delay.

I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED "LIVING." WOULD YOU LIKE A PRAWN?

There are very few starts. Oh, some things seem to be beginnings. The curtain goes up, the first pawn moves, the first shot is fired - but that's not the start. The play, the game, the war is just a little window on a ribbon of events that may extend back thousands of years. The point is, there's always something before. It's always a case of Now Read On.

If you want something done, give it to someone who's busy!

That was always the dream, wasn't it? "I wish I knew then what I know now"? But when you got older, you found out that you now wasn't you then. You then was a twerp. You then was what you had to be to start out on the rocky road of becoming you now, and one of the rocky patches on that road was being a twerp. A much better dream, one that'd ensure sounder sleep, was not to know now what you didn't know then.

Tomorrow here is just like yesterday, warmed over.

I've been given something for a while, and the price of it is that I have to give it back.

The night is always old. He'd walked too often down dark streets in the secret hours and felt the night stretching away, and known in his blood that while days and kings and empires come and go, the night is always the same age, always aeons deep. Terrors unfolded in the velvet shadows and while the nature of the talons may change, the nature of the beast does not.

Seven thousand years is just one day at a time

Sometimes the moon is light and sometimes it's in shadow, but you should always remember it's the same moon.

What sound does forgetfulness make?' She hardly had to think. 'It's the sound of the wind in dead grasses on a hot summer's day.

and all those frogs going 'Rabbit, rabbit'... I think, sir, that it was 'Ribbit, ribbit'... So, what goes 'Rabbit, rabbit'? Rabbits, I think. All the time...

You couldn't put off the inevitable. Because sooner or later, you reached the place when the inevitable just went and waited.

A farmer who neglects to sow ordinary seeds only loses the crop, whereas anyone who forgets to sow seeds of a crop that has already been harvested twelve months before risks disturbing the entire fabric of causality, not to mention acute embarrassment.

Tiffany found her mind filling up with an invisible gray mist, and in that thought there was nothing but grief. She could feel herself trying to push back time, but even the best witchcraft could not do that.

I often thought that everyone has their, you know, natural age.

There had been a time when the continents were different, Rincewind understood, and then they'd sort of shuffled more comfortably together like puppies on a basket.

Everyday took an age to go by, which was odd, because days plural went past like a stampede.

Men come and go, but dust accumulates.

TAKE THESE THINGS, NOW, said Death, fingering a passing canape. I MEAN, MUSHROOMS YES, CHICKEN YES, CREAM YES, I'VE NOTHING AGAINST ANY OF THEM, BUT WHY IN THE NAME OF SANITY MINCE THEM ALL UP AND PUT THEM IN LITTLE PASTRY CASES? "Pardon?" said Mort. THAT'S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY'VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING.

That was the trouble with last nights. They were always followed by this mornings.

It is very easy to get ridiculously confused about the tenses of time travel, but most things can be resolved by a sufficiently large ego.

A certain realization dawned on him. 'Oh,' he said. YES, said Death. 'Not even time to finish my cake?' NO. THERE IS NO MORE TIME, EVEN FOR CAKE. FOR YOU, THE CAKE IS OVER. YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF CAKE.