Quotes About Time

There's nothing like realizing that you don't have much time left to stimulate your appreciation for the moments of your life.

Everything in the universe is constantly changing, and nothing stays the same, and we must understand how quickly time flows by if we are to wake up and truly live our lives.

Great is the Matter of Birth and Death. Life is transient. Time will not wait. Wake up! Wake up! Do not waste a moment!

Space and time were hopelessly entangled, and the present moment was growing increasingly remote.

As he ran through the dense understory, he could read the signs of arboreal intrigue, the drama and power struggles as species vied for control over a patch of sunlight, or giant firs and fungal spores opted to work together for their mutual benefit. He could see time unfolding here, and history, embedded in the whorls and fractal forms of nature, and he would come home, sweating and breathless, and tell her what he'd seen.

When I stand on the edge of a tall place I feel like I'm on the edge of time, peering into forever. The question 'What if...?' rises up in my mind, and it's exciting because I know that in the next instant, in less time than it takes to snap my fingers, I could fly into eternity.

There used to be a middle way, too, when her attention was focused but vast, and time felt like a limpid pool, ringed by sunlit ferns. An underground spring fed the pool from deep below, creating a gentle current of words that bubbled up, while on the surface, breezes shimmered and played.

A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.

My last thoughts, measured out in drops of ink.

saddened. Cheered at the thought of the many instants that arise and are available to do good in the world. Saddened by all the misspent moments that have piled on top of each other and led us to this war.

A name, Ruth thought, could be either a ghost or a portent depending upon which side of time you were standing.

So then you ask her when her birthday is, and she says, "Hmm, I don't really remember being born . . ." And if you pester her some more and ask her how long she's been alive, she says, "I've always been here as far as I remember.

I have to hurry up and write them down before I forget. I have a pretty good memory, but memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.

It's probably the oldest question in the book, but that doesn't mean it's not special to you. Every person is trapped in their own particular bubble of delusion, and it's every person's task in life to break free. Books can help. We can make the past into the present, take you back in time and help you remember. We can show you things, shift your realities and widen your world, but the work of waking up is up to you.

If time is annihilated, mountains and oceans are annihilated.

I'm reaching through time to touch you...you're reaching back to touch me.

At one extreme...the hours seemed to aggregate and sell like a wave, swallowing huge chunks of her day. At the other extreme when her attention was disengaged and fractured she experienced time at its most granular wherein moments hung around like particles diffused and suspended and standing in water. There used to be a middle way, too, when her attention was focussed but vast and time felt like a limpid pool ringed by sunlit ferns.

time isn't something you can spread out like butter or jam, and death isn't going to hang around and wait for you to finish whatever you happen to be doing before it zaps you

And what does it mean to waste time anyway? If you waste time is it lost forever? And if time is lost forever, what does that mean? It's not like you get to die any sooner, right?

I whispered Now! ... Now! ... Now! ... over and over, faster and faster, into the wind as the world whipped by, trying to catch the moment when the word was what it is: when now became NOW. But in the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It's already then.

The eternal now," he said. "She wanted to catch it, remember? To pin it down. That was the point." "Of writing?" "Or suicide.

The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist? It feels like it exists, but where is it? And if it did exist but doesn't now, then where did it go?

I started to think about how words and stories are time beings, too

Somewhere D?gen wrote about the number of moments in the snap of a finger. I don't remember the exact figure, only that it was large and seemed quite arbitrary and absurd, but I imagine that when I am in the cockpit of my plane, aiming the nose at the hull of an American battleship, every single one will be clear and pure and discernible. At the moment of my death, I look forward at last to being fully aware and alive.