Time wounds all heels.
Alain (Émile-Auguste Chartier) 1868-1951
Time must needs call the tune and man must follow it.
Anonymous
(inscription on a sundial)
Time wastes our bodies and our wits;
But we waste time, so we are quits.
Anonymous
It takes time to be a success, but time is all it takes.
Anonymous
Truth is the daughter of time.
Aurelius Marcus 121-180
Every instant of time is a pinprick of eternity. All things
are petty, easily changed, vanishing away.
Aurelius Marcus 121-180
Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought
to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.
Bacon Francis 1561-1626
Essays ‘Of Dispatch'
To choose time is to save time.
Bacon Francis 1561-1626
Essays ‘Of Nobility'
New nobility is but the act of power, but ancient nobility is the act of time.
Barrymore John 1882-1942
The trouble with life is that there are so many
beautiful women and so little time.
Berlioz Hector 1803-1869
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
The Bible (Authorized Version)
Old Testament: Ecclesiastes ch.3 v.1
To every thing there is a seasons, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
The Book of Common Prayer
Morning Prayer, Versicle
Give peace in our time, O Lord.
Bramston James c.1694-1744
The Art of Politics
What's not destroyed by Time's devouring hand?
Where's Troy, and where's the Maypole in the
Strand?
Browne Sir Thomas 1605-1682
Religio Medici
Who can speak of eternity without a solecism, or think thereof without an ecstasy?
Time we may comprehend, ‘tis but five days elder than ourselves.
Burns Robert 1759-1796
‘Tam o' Shanter'
Nae man can tether time or tide.
Chanel Coco 1883-1971
There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time.
Comden Betty and Green Adolph 1919- and 1915-
‘The Party's Over'
The party's over, it's time to call it a day.
Disraeli Benjamin 1804-1881
Henrietta Temple
Time is the great physician.
Disraeli Benjamin 1804-1881
(Maiden speech)
Though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear me.
Dobson Henry Austin 1840-1921
‘The Paradox of Time'
Time goes, you say? Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go.
Donne John 1572-1631
„The Sun Rising"
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Dryden John 1631-1700
The Secular Masque
A very merry, dancing, drinking,
Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.
Durant Will 1885-1981
Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four
hours and too little on the last six thousand years.
Edison Thomas Alva 1847-1931
I am long on ideas, but short on time. I expect to live only about a hundred years.
Eliot T. S. 1888-1965
What is actual is actual only for one time.
And only for one place.
Franklin Benjamin 1706-1790
Advice to a Young Tradesman
Remember that time is money.
Gibbon Edward 1737-1794
Memoirs of My Life
The abbreviation of time, and the failure of hope, will
always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life.
Gide André 1869-1951
Our judgements about things vary according to the
time left us to live - that we think is left us to live.
Galdstone W. E. 1809 1898
You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.
Gorky Maxim 1868-1936
Every new time will give its law.
Gracian Baltasar 1601-1658
Time and I against any two.
Graham Martha 1893-1991
No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just
that others are behind the time.
Hammarskjöld Dag 1905-1961
Time goes by: reputation increases, ability declines.
Herrick Robert 1591-1674
‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time'
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying.
Hupfeld Herman 1894-1951
‘As Time Goes By'
You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss,
A sigh is just a sigh;
The fundamental things apply,
As time goes by.
Ingersoll Robert G. 1833-1899
My creed is that:
Happiness is the only good.
The place to be happy is here.
The time to be happy is now.
The way to be happy is to make others so.
Jonson Ben c.1573-1637
„To the Memory of...William Shakespeare"
He was not of an age, but for all time!
Koestler Arthur 1905-1983
The Ghost in the Machine
God seems to have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out.
The Koran
Give God time.
Lamartine Alphonse de 1790-1869
Le Lac
O time, suspend your flight, and you, happy hours, stay your feet! Let
us savour the swift delights of our life's loveliest days!
Lamb Charles 1775-1834
The only true time which a man can properly call his own, is that which he has all to himself;
the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people's time, not his.
Larkin Philip 1922-1985
‘An Arundel Tomb'
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
Laver James 1899-1975
Taste and Fashion
The same costume will be
Indecent ... 10 years before ist time
Shameless ...5 years before its time
Outré (daring) 1 year before its time
Smart
Dowdy ... 1 years after its time
Hideous ...10 years after its time
Ridiculous ...20 years after its time
Amusing ...30 years after its time
Quaint ... 50 years after its time
Charming ... 70 years after its time
Romantic ... 100 years after its time
Beautiful ... 150 years after its time
Lawrence D. H. 1885-1930
‘Song of a Man who has Come Through'
Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
Lerner Alan Jay 1918-1986
Gigi ‘I Remember it Well'
We met at nine.
We met at eight.
I was on time.
No, you were late.
Ah yes! I remember it well.
Lincoln Abraham 1809-1865
(attributed)
You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of
the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time.
Long Huey 1893-1935
(attributed)
The time has come for all good men to rise above principle.
Longfellow Henry Wadsworth 1807-1882
‚,A Psalm of Life"
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
MacNeice Louis 1907-1963
‘Meeting Point'
Time was away and somewhere else,
There were two glasses and two chairs
And two people with the one pulse
(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):
Time was away and somewhere else.
Manley Mrs 1663-1724
The Lost Lover
No time like the present.
Mann Thomas 1875-1955
Habituation is a falling asleep or fatiguing of the sense of time; which explains why young years pass slowly, while later life flings itself faster and faster upon its course.
Mann Thomas 1875-1955
The Magic Mountain
Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new
century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.
Mann Thomas 1875-1955
The Magic Mountain
Waiting we say is long. We might just as well - or more accurately - say it is short, since it consumes whole spaces of time without our living them or making any use of them as such.
Mann Thomas 1875-1955
Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.
Mencken H. L. 1880-1956
Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals.
Milne A.A. 1882-1956
Winnie-the-Pooh
Time for a little something.
Milton John 1608-1674
‘On the Morning of Christ's Nativity'
For if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold,
And speckled vanity
Will sicken soon and die.
Milton John 1608-1674
Paradise Lost
God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more
Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise.
With thee conversing I forget all time.
Milton John 1608-1674
Sonnet 7 ‘How soon hath time'
How soon hath time the subtle thief of youth,
Stol'n on his wing my three and twentieth year!
Moliére 1622-1673
Le Dépit amoureux
One dies only once, and it's for such a long time!
Montgomery Robert 1807-1855
The Omnipresence of the Deity
And thou, vast ocean! on whose awful face
Time's iron feet can print no ruin-trace.
Morris William 1834-1896
The Earthly Paradise ‘An Apology'
Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,
Telling a tale not too importunate.
Oates Captain Lawrence 1880-1912
(last words)
I am just going outside and may be some time.
Osborne John 1929-
Look Back in Anger
They spend their time mostly looking forward to the past.
Ovid 43 BC-AD c.17
Metamorphoses
Time the devourer of everything.
Parker Dorothy 1893-1955
‘Unfortunate Coincidence'
By the time you say you're his,
Shivering and sighing
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
Parkinson Northcote 1909-1993
Parkinson's Law
Time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.
Parnell Thomas 1679-1718
Let time that makes you homely, make you sage.
Plomer William 1903-1973
‘Playboy of the Demi-World: 1938'
A rose-red sissy half as old as time.
Poe Edgar Allan 1809-1849
‘The Bells'
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells.
Pound Ezra 1885-1972
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain ‘the sublime'
In the old sense. Wrong from the start -
Powell Anthony 1905-
(after the painting by Nicolas Poussin)
A dance to the music of time.
Proust Marcel 1871-1922
A la recherché du temps perdu.
In search of lost time.
Proust Marcel 1871-1922
Swann's Way
For a long time I used to go to bed early.
Proverbs and Sayings
Maltese
Time gives good advice.
Proverbs and Sayings
Medieval
Time is the measure of movement.
Proverbs and Sayings
Rabbinical
Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.
Proverbs and Sayings
Scottish
What may be done at any time will be done at no time.
Pushkin Alexander 1799-1837
"It's Time"
It's time, my dear, it's time! The heart demands its quittance -
As day flies after day and each bears off its pittance
Withdrawn from living's store and meanwhile you and I
Draw up our plans to live ... And then, why then, we'll die.
Ralegh Sir Walter 1552-1618
The History of the World
[History] hath triumphed over time, which besides it,
nothing but eternity hath triumphed over.
Rogers Will 1879-1935
Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with
the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
Ruskin John 1819-1900
Sesame and Lilies
All books are divisible into two classes, the books of
the hour, and the books of all time.
Scott Sir Walter 1771-1832
Rob Roy
There's a gude time coming.
Seneca c.4 BC-AD 65
Time discovered truth.
Sahkespeare William 1564-1616
Hamlet
The time is out of joint; O cursèd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Henry IV, Part 1
O gentlemen! the time of life is short;
To spend that shortness basely were too long.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Julius Caesar
That we shall die, we know; ‘tis but the time
And drawing days out, that men stand upon.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
King John
Old Time the clock-setter.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Macbeth
Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Othello
There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Richard II
How sour sweet music is,
When time is broke, and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Richard II
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Richard III
Sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Troilus and Cressida
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Troilus and Cressida
The end crowns all,
And that old common arbitrator, Time,
Will one day end it.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
The Rape of Lucrece
Time's glory is to calm contending kings,
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Sonnet 106
When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights.
Shaw George Bernard 1856-1950
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
Singer Isaac Bashevis 1904-1991
Writing has power, but its power has no vector. Writers can stir the mind, but they
can't direct it. Time changes things, God changes things, the dictators change
things, but writers can't change anything.
Sitwell Sir Osbert 1892-1969
‘Milordo Inglese'
In reality, killing time
Is only the name for another of the multifarious ways
By which Time kills us.
Smith Stevie 1902-1971
A good time was had by all.
Sophocles c.496-406
Time is a kindly god.
Spencer Herbert 1820-1903
Definitions
Time: That which man is always trying to kill,
but which ends in killing him.
Stevenson Robert Louis 1850-1894
Keep busy at something. A busy person never has time to be unhappy.
Strachey Lytton 1880-1932
Eminent Victorians ‘Cardinal Manning'
The time was out of joint, and he was only too delighted to have been born to set it right.
Taylor Ann and Taylor Jane 1782-1866 and 1783-1824
Rhymes for the Nursery ‘The Way to be Happy'
How pleasant it is, at the end of the day,
No follies to have to repent;
But reflect on the past, and be able to say,
That my time has been properly spent.
Taylor Joe
It takes time to save time.
Tennyson Alfred Lord 1809-1892
‘Locksley Hall'
I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time.
Tennyson Alfred Lord 1809-1892
In Memoriam A.H.H.
Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.
Tennyson Alfred Lord 1809-1892
‘The Princess'
Quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long,
That on the stretched forefinger of all Time
Sparkle for ever.
Thomas Dylan 1914-1953
‘Fern Hill'
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Thompson William Hepworth 1810-1886
(of Sir Richard Jebb)
What time he can spare from the adornment of his
person he devotes to the neglect of his duties.
Thoreau Henry David 1817-1862
Walden ‘Economy'
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Thoreau Henry David 1817-1862
Walden ‘Where I Lived, and What I Lived For'
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
Vaughan Henry 1622-1695
Silex Scintillans ‘The World'
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow moved; in which the world
And all her train were hurled.
Virgil 70-19 BC
Georgics no.3
Irretrievable time is flying.
Voltaire 1694-1778
( when asked to renounce the Devil, on deathbed)
This is no time for making new enemies.
Wells H. G. 1866-1946
I want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own.
White E.B. 1899-1985
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the
people are right more than half of the time.
Wilde Oscar 1854-1900
Punctuality is the thief of time.
Williams Tennessee 1911-1983
I don't ask for your pity, but just your understanding - no, not even that - no. Just
for your recognition of me in you, and the enemy, time, in us all.
Williams Tennessee 1911-1983
The Glass Menagerie
I didn't go to the moon, I went much further - for time
is the longest distance between two places.
Yeats William Butler 1865-1939
„In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz"
The innocent and the beautiful
Have no enemy but time.
Yeats William Butler 1865-1939
‘Song of Wandering Aengus'
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
Yevtushenko Yevgeny 1933-
Time has a way of demonstrating ... the most subborn are the most intelligent.