Quotes About Time

What good were the rules of time when the rules of magic contradicted them.

History's got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can't be untied.

As the proverb said, "Think in the morning, Act in the noon, Eat in the evening, Sleep in the night." Too late for thinking now. Too early for eating.

I think it's a rule that it's socially acceptable to wet yourself when aliens enter your mind for the first time. If it wasn't already, it is now.

Is the future, is the past, all that matters to you? Don't you have just a little bit of room for the present?

Why should I worry about uncreating so much of human history? Why should I care that it will be worse than forgotten, that it will be unknown? Why should that seem to be a crime, when all of human history is an eyeblink compared to the billions of years the stars have shone?

Fatherhood to us was an act of passion, soon forgot; but not to Orem ap Avonap. Never guessing that the blond and happy farmer was no blood of his, Orem had taken a part of that simple man into himself and saved it for this time. At any time in the Palace he might run by, Youth on this shoulders or, as time went by, toddling along behind.

But always a giant, long before his body showed it.

Who was more cursed, the one who died, unknowing until the very moment of his death, or the one who watched his destruction as it approached, step by step, for days and weeks and years?

My master wishes to see you, said the mounted man. When the planting's done, I said. Lord Barton is unaccustomed to waiting. Then he should rejoice, for he'll learn something new today. I went back to the garden. Soon the servant left.

Once these two had been joined together in love, or something like love; they had made two babies, and yet, only fifteen years later, the last tie between them was broken now. All lost, all gone. Nothing lasted, nothing. Even this forty-million-year world that the Oversoul had preserved as if in ice, even it would melt before the fire. Permanence was always an illusion, and love was just the disguise that lovers wore to hide the death of their union from each other for a while.

It might have been a single day; it might have been a week; from his dreams, it could have been months.

The prospect of sharing the rest of their lives held no dread for them. . . every word and movement between them carried their history and their future like background movement, shaping each moment even when they weren't aware of it.

There is nothing that doesn't decay. Some things decay more slowly than others, that's all.

How much time? Not as much as I had yesterday.

Miro, I'm so sorry. I always felt such pity for you humans because you could only think of one thing at a time and your memories were so imperfect and . . . now I realize that just getting through the day without killing somebody can be an achievement.

I am old enough now to have all the memories of my people locked within my head. I remember things that happened long before I was born. I remember things that never happened at all. I live in memory. –Anton

If I believe that, if I accept that, then I've got to sit back and watch while all the opportunities vanish, and then when I'm old enough it's too late.

Never mind,' said Mazer Rackham. 'The politicians are afraid of you, but they can't destroy your reputation yet. That won't be done until the historians get at you in thirty years.

the clock said 0340, and Ender felt groggy as he padded along the corridor behind Mazer. "Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.

Everything everybody does is a waste of time, until it isn't

The criminal misuse of time was pointing out the mistakes. Catching them — noticing them — that was essential. If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.

The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven. Maybe I could have been content. Maybe not.

Nobody knows more than can be learned in a single lifetime