Time quotes
3.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside time — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"In cases of this sort, let us say adultery, rightness and wrongness do not depend on committing it with the right woman at the right time and in the right manner, but the mere fact of committing such action at all is to do wrong."
"Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them."
"When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long."
"Time is a horse that runs in the heart, a horse Without a rider on a road at night. The mind sits listening and hears it pass."
"Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely."
"Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Time's swiftness Which is the swiftest of all things, all were eternal torment."
"And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind."
"Come now, what masques, what dances shall we have To wear away this long age of three hours Between our after-supper and bedtime?"
"Time is like a fashionable host That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arm outstretch'd, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer."
"Time travels in divers paces with divers persons."
"We are time's subjects, and time bids be gone."
"Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides: Who cover faults, at last shame them derides."
"The time is out of joint."
"Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short; youth is nimble, age is lame; Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, and age is tame."
"Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty; for in my youth I never did apply hot and rebellious liquors in my blood; and did not, with unbashful forehead, woo the means of weakness and debility: therefore my age is as a lusty winter, frosty but kindly."
"And oftentimes excusing of a fault Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse, As patches set upon a little breach, Discredit more in hiding of the fault Than did the fault before it was so patch'd."
"I wasted time, and now doth time waste me; For now hath time made me his numbering clock: My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch, Whereto my finger, like a dial's point, Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears. Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is Are clamorous goans, which strike upon my heart, Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans Show minutes, times, and hours."
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy."
"What I do know about physics is that to a man standing on the shore, time passes quicker than to a man on a boat - especially if the man on the boat is with his wife."
"The young feel tired at the end of an action, the old at the beginning."
