Quotes About Time

Old. I'm almost forty, probably as close now to Mrs. Masicotte's age as I am to the age of my parents as they sat on that lawn, laughing and blowing dandelion puffs at me, smoking their shared Pall Mall cigarettes and thinking Mrs. Masicotte was the answer to their future—that that black-and-white Emerson television set was a gift free and clear of the strings that would begin our family's unraveling.

Life is a river, she repeated. Only in the most literal sense are we born on the same day we leave our mother's womb. In the larger, truer sense, we are born of the past--connected to its fluidity, both genetically and experimentally.

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

The future is no more uncertain than the present.

To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.

I accept Time absolutely. It alone is without flaw, It alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baffling wonder.

And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and can be none in the future, And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn'd to beautiful results, And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death, And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are compact, And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, / And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten / million years, / I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning! It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time, I will have thousands of globes and all time.

The past and the present wilt. I have fill'd them, emptied them, And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Gliding o'er all, through all,Through Nature, Time, and Space, As a ship on the waters advancing, The voyage of the soul—not life alone, Death, many deaths I'll sing.

See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that, Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that. -from Song of Myself

The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them. And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

The city sleeps and the country sleeps, The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife; And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, And such as it is to be of these more or less I am, And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young, The young are beautiful—but the old are more beautiful than the young

O I see life is not short but immeasurably long -from Myself and Mine

Por qué voy a empeñarme en que Dios sea otra cosa mejor que este día? En cada hora hay algo de dios y en cada minuto también.

Más allá de mis ojos está el espacio sin límites y más allá de mis números está el tiempo sin ritmo: Dios.

El reloj marca los minutos… pero ¿y la eternidad? ¿Qué marca la eternidad?

I conn'd old times, I sat studying at the feet of the great masters, Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me.

O soul, thou pleasest me—I thee; Sailing these seas, or on the hills, or waking in the night, Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time, and Space, and Death, like waters flowing, Bear me, indeed, as through the regions infinite, Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear—lave me all over; Bathe me, O God, in thee—mounting to thee, I and my soul to range in range of thee. O Thou transcendent, Nameless, the fibre and the breath. from "Passage to India

There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Victory, union, faith, identity, time, The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery, Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports. This, then, is life; Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions. -from Starting from Paumanok