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Quotes About Time

Some people mocked you if you said that you joined others when your time came. Well, they could laugh, those clever people, but we surely had to hope, and a life without hope of any sort was no life: it was a sky without stars, a landscape of sorrow and emptiness.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
YES, THOUGHT Mma Ramotswe, the world can be very discouraging. But we cannot sit and think about all the things that have gone wrong, or could go wrong. There was no point in doing that because it only made things worse. There was much for which we could be grateful, whatever the sorrows of this world. Besides, dwelling on the trials and tribulations of life was time-consuming, and ordinary duties still have to be performed; livings have to be earned
~ Alexander McCall Smith
Let's not have a sniffle, let's have a jolly good cry And always remember, the longer you live, the sooner you jolly well die.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
Il va arriver. Quand il aura fini de danser avec de jeunes demoiselles ou de faire ce qu'il est en train de faire, il viendra.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
She had lost her baby, and where was she? She hoped that her baby was happy and would be waiting for her when she left Botswana and went to heaven. Would Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni get round to naming a wedding date before then? She hoped so, although he certainly seemed to be taking his time. Perhaps they could get married in heaven, if he left it too late. That would certainly be cheaper.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
Time, she felt, made quite enough claims on us, without our conniving in its relentless tyranny.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
We all have Proustian moments, but don't really know about it until we read Proust.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
But you can certainly take fifteen years off everything these days." She paused. "But you can't take height off a mountain.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
your mind like that, then you kept it in good order for a longer period of time, and you put off the day when you would be sitting in the sun, like some of the very old people, not exactly sure which day of the week it was and wondering why the world no longer made the sense that it once did. Yet such people were often happy, he reminded himself, possibly because it did not really matter what day of the week it was anyway.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
Annabelle finished the explanation. "It's just that they take some time to happen. That's the difference.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
Had he sailed too close to the wind? No, in his case another meteorological metaphor was appropriate perhaps: he had reaped whirlwinds—or at least what he had sown. She looked at her watch.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
The obvious, Ulf once observed, is rarely the obvious until the passage of time has proved it so.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
modern people always appeared to be rushing about doing things, having no time, it seemed, for looking at the sky
~ Alexander McCall Smith
she sipped at her 1st cup of red bush tea, not in any hurry to do whatever it was that she had to do next. That, of course, is always a good time to think - when you know that you are going to have to do something, but you know that you do not have to do it just yet.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
Use the last report," Anna suggested. "Simply delete 'efficiency' or whatever and insert 'restructuring.' That will save you a great deal of time." Ulf acknowledged the wisdom of this advice. "Restructuring" would go away, just as "efficiency" and "skills development" had gone away. But hoops had to be jumped through in order for this to happen, and Ulf would have to do that.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni," she asked, "do you think that our souls grow as we get older?" He did not answer immediately, but when he did, she thought his answer quite perfect. "Yes," he said. "Our souls get wider. They grow like the branches of a tree—growing outwards. And
~ Alexander McCall Smith
telephoned Jamie the next morning at the earliest decent hour; nine o'clock, in her view. Isabel observed an etiquette of the telephone: a call before eight in the morning was an emergency; between eight and nine it was an intrusion; thereafter calls could be made until ten in the evening, although anything after nine-thirty required an apology for the disturbance. After ten one was into emergency time again.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
But then one thing you did learn with the passage of time was not to ask too many questions. That was the difference, she decided, between being twenty and being forty. That, and other things, of course.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
We must think of late people because I believe they're still with us—in a way. And so a late person can stay with you all your life, until it is your turn to become late too. And the late person doesn't want you to be miserable. A late person doesn't want you to think that your work is no use. A late person wants you to get on with life, to do things, to make good use of your time.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
Invisibility to the young of course is a quality that grows slowly: by thirty one is beginning to get fainter, by forty one is starting to disappear, by fifty the metaphorical hill has been crossed and one is simply no longer ther.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
You'll grow up. People did not like to be told that, she thought, because we all think that what we are now is what we shall be tomorrow. That was clearly false—but we all believed it.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
And thus they aged, as do all mortals. Until at last the husband found That death had opened wide its portals, Through which he entered, newly crowned.
~ Alexander Pushkin
oamenii, nefiind niciodat? mulÈ›umiÈ›i de prezent, È™i înv??ând s? aib? puÈ›ine speranÈ›e în viitor, înfrumuseÈ›eaz? cu toate florile închipuirii tot ce a trecut È™i nu se mai întoarce.
~ Alexander Pushkin
Alt?n çaÄŸ, bütün halklar?n ortak düÅŸüncesidir ve insanlar?n, bugünden hiçbir zaman hoÅŸnut olmay?p ve geleceÄŸine iliÅŸkin olarak da pek az ümit beslemek gerektiÄŸini deneyleriyle öÄŸrenip, bir daha dönülemeyecek olan geçmiÅŸi düÅŸ güçlerinin bütün çiçekleriyle süslediklerini kan?tlar sadece.
~ Alexander Pushkin