Quotes About Time

how can I write about this when I am afraid of not having time to finish and of stirring up all these thoughts in vain?

Time is but memory in the making.

The recollection also came back empty, and for the first time in all his life, perhaps, Luzhin asked himself the question – where exactly had it all gone, what had become of his childhood, whither had the veranda floated, whither, rustling through the bushes, had the familiar paths crept away?

We live in a stocking which is in the process of being turned inside out, without our ever knowing for sure to what phase of the process our moment of consciousness corresponds.

Time means succession, and succession, change: Hence timelessness is bound to disarrange Schedules of sentiment.

Two silent time zones had now merged to form the standard time of one man's fate; and it is not impossible that the poet in New Wye and the thug in New York awoke that morning at the same crushed beat of their Timekeeper's stopwatch.

The calendar says I had known him only a few months but there exist friendships which develop their own inner duration, their own eons of transparent time, independent of rotating, malicious music.

A jövÅ' azonban mit sem törÅ'dik érzéseinkkel és fantáziálásunkkal. A jövÅ' minden pillanatban a szétágazó lehetÅ'ségek végtelenje.

T)here exist friendships which develop their own inner duration, their own eons of transparent time.

As to the past, I would not mind retrieving from various corners of space-time certain lost comforts, such as baggy trousers and long, deep bathtubs.

I'm walking out now into the soft light, the cooling hum of evening, and I will love you tonight, and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and still many more, so very many more tomorrows. — Vladimir Nabokov, in a letter to his wife Véra [March 1925] Letters to Véra , tr. by Olga Voronin & Brian Boyd

the compensation for a death sentence is knowledge of the exact hour when one is to die.

Elmenni annyi, mint kicsit meghalni, és meghalni annyi, mint kicsit túl messze menni.

Az életnek, a szerelemnek, a könyvtáraknak nincs jövÅ'jük.

Amikor korábbi önmagunkra emlékezünk, mindig ott van az a hosszú árnyékot vetÅ' kis figura, amely mint egy bizonytalan, megkésett vendég áll meg a megvilágított küszöbön egy kifogástalanul sz?külÅ' folyosó túlsó végén.

As it happens with many people who do not trouble about religion in the ordinary trend of life, I hastily invented a soft, warm, tear-misty God, and whispered an informal prayer. Let me get there in time, let him hold out till I come, let him tell me his secret. Now it was all snow: the glass had grown a grey beard.

One night between sunset and river On the old bridge we stood, you and I. Will you ever forget it, I queried, - That particular swift that went by? And you answered, so earnestly: Never! And what sobs made us suddenly shiver, What a cry life emitted in flight! Till we die, till tomorrow, for ever, You and I on the old bridge one night.

The theme of the book is simple: a man is dying: you feel him sinking throughout the book; his thought and his memories pervade the whole with greater or lesser distinction (like the swell and fall of uneven breathing), now rolling up this image, now that, letting it ride in the wind, or even tossing it out on the shore, where it seems to move and live for a minute on its own and presently is drawn back again by grey seas where it sinks or is strangely transfigured.

Life, love, libraries, have no future.

of his lakeside shack A watchman, Father Time, all gray and bent, Emerged with his uneasy dog and went Along the reedy bank. He came too late.

As Ganin looked up at the skeletal roof in the ethereal sky he realized with merciless clarity that his affair with Mary was ended forever. It had lasted no more than four days—four days which were perhaps the happiest days of his life. But now he had exhausted his memories, was sated by them, and the image of Mary, together with that of the old dying poet, now remained in the house of ghosts, which itself was already a memory

And yet I have been fashioned so painstakingly,' thought Cincinnatus as he wept in the darkness. 'The curvature of my spine has been calculated so well, so mysteriously. I feel, tightly rolled up in my calves, so many miles that I could yet run in my lifetime. My head is so comfortable.' A clock struck a half, pertaining to some unknown hour. (Invitation to a beheading)

I think that here lies the sense of literary creation: to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in the far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade.

Kilencvennégy évesen is szerette újra átélni azt az elsÅ' szerelmes nyarat, s nem úgy, mint egy épp az imént látott álmot, hanem mint a múltbéli tudat felidézését, amelynek révén leküzdötte a szürke hajnali órákat a felületes alvás és az aznapi elsÅ' tabletta között.