Quotes About Time

Hurry up; there's no time to be lost; don't forget, it's Saturday!

he asked himself whether this period, upon which he had entered, was to last much longer, whether presently his mind's eye would cease to behold that dear countenance, save as occupying a distant and diminished position, and on the verge of ceasing to shed on him the radiance of its charm.

So that we always see as young those we knew young and those whom we knew as old people we embellish retrospectively with the virtues of old age,

For a long time, I went to bed early.

As on a plant whose flowers open at different seasons, I had seen, expressed in the form of old ladies, on this Balbec shore, those shrivelled seed-pods, those flabby tubers which my friends would one day be. But what matter? For the moment it was their flowering-time

Since railways came into existence, the necessity of not missing the train has taught us to take account of minutes whereas among the ancient Romans, who not only had a more cursory science of astronomy but led less hurried lives, the notion not of minutes but even of fixed hours barely existed.

Marcel Proust

Acontece que os diversos períodos da nossa vida vêm assim cruzar-se uns com os outros. Por causa de uma coisa que queremos hoje e amanhã nos será indiferente, negamo-nos a ver outra coisa que agora nada nos diz, mas que haveremos de querer mais adiante, e que, se houvéssemos consentido em vê-la, talvez tivéssemos desejado antes, abreviando assim as nossas dores atuais, se bem que na verdade para substituí-las por outras.

To reach the end of a day, natures that are slightly nervous, as mine was, make use, like motor-cars, of different 'speeds.' There are mountainous, uncomfortable days, up which one takes an infinite time to pass, and days downward sloping, through which one can go at full tilt, singing as one goes.

thus, in a wild desire to hurl myself into her arms, it was only at this instant—more than a year after her funeral, on account of the anachronism which so often prevents the calendar of facts from coinciding with that of our feelings—that I had just learned she was dead.

indeed when we are no longer in love with women whom we meet after many years, is there not the abyss of death between them and ourselves, just as much as if they were no longer of this world, since the fact that we are no longer in love makes the people that they were or the person that we were then as good as dead?

until custom had changed the colour of the curtains, made the clock keep quiet, brought

The difference in the making of these sorts of sorrows is that they come from the outside world and take the shortest and most painful route to the heart. The image of the woman we love, though we think it has a pristine authenticity, has actually been often made and remade by us. And the memory that wounds is not contemporaneous with the restored image; it dates from a very different time; it is one of the few witnesses to a monstrous past.

Ce tacere minunata, imi spuse el; un romancier pe care il vei citi mai tarziu pretindea ca inimilor ranite, precum este inima mea, li se potrivesc doar umbra si tacerea. Si iata, copilul meu, vine in viata un ceas, de care tu esti inca foarte departe, cand ochii obositi nu mai suporta decat o lumina, cea pe care o noapte frumoasa ca aceasta o pregateste si o picura odata cu intunericul, un ceas cand urechile nu mai pot asculta alta muzica decat cea cantata de clarul de luna pe flautul tacerii.

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfalteringly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

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A verdade que depositamos nas palavras não abre caminho diretamente, não tem irresistível evidência. Cumpre que decorra o tempo necessário para que se possa formar no interlocutor uma verdade da mesma espécie. E então o adversário político, que, apesar de raciocínios e provas, considerava traidor ao sectário da doutrina oposta, chega a compartilhar das detestadas convicções quando já não interessam àquele que antes tentava inutilmente difundi-las.

Most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has no need of their services. But on this morning of travel, the interruption of the routine of my existence, the unfamiliar place and time, had made their presence indispensable. My habits...for once were missing, and all my faculties came hurrying to take their place.

La force qui fait le plus de fois le tour de la terre en une seconde, ce n'est pas l'électricité, c'est la douleur.

enough to make the Avenue different. The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.

Time serves us powerfully by adding its influence to purely intellectual affinities; it is the passage of time that causes us to forget our antipathies, our contempts, and the very causes which gave birth to them.

That is how I see her to this day: standing there, her eyes shining under her toque, silhouetted against the backdrop of the sea, and separated from me by the transparent sky-blue stretch of time elapsed since that moment, the first glimpse of her in my memory, a very slight image of a face first desired and pursued, then forgotten, then found again, a face which since then I have often projected into the past, so as to say to myself, of a girl with me in my bedroom, 'That was her!

Regret, like desire, seeks satisfaction and not self-analysis: in the beginning of love, our time is spent not in finding out what love is made of, but in trying to make sure we can see each other tomorrow; and at the end of love, we do not try to ascertain the nature of our sorrow, but only to voice it in what we hope is its tenderest form to her who is the cause of it.

After all, my dear fellow, life, as Anaxagoras has said, is a journey.