Time quotes
3.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside time — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"The Past -- the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf --the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?"
"A word of the faith that never balks, Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely. It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all."
"Merely having seen the season change in a country gave one the sense of having been there for a long time."
"And God stands winding His lonely horn, And time and the world are ever in flight."
"My chair was nearest to the fire In every company That talked of love or politics, Ere Time transfigured me."
"But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked tune that Chronos sings, Words alone are certain good."
"How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?"
"The extreme parts of time extremely forms all causes to the purpose of his speed."
"We see which way the stream of time doth run."
"O time, thou must untangle this, not I. It is too hard a knot for me t'untie."
"See the minutes, how they run, How many make the hour full complete; How many hours bring about the day; How many days will finish up the year; How many years a mortal man may live."
"Time be thine, And thy best graces spend it at thy will."
"Time ... thou ceaseless lackey to eternity."
"Short time seems long in sorrow's sharp sustaining."
"Ruin has taught me to ruminate, That Time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death, which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose."
"Nothing 'gainst Times scythe can make defence."
"Old Time the clock-setter."
"I have seen better faces in my time Than stands on any shoulder that I see Before me at this instant."
"ROMEO to BALTHASAR But if thou, jealous, dost return to pry In what I further shall intend to do, By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs: The time and my intents are savage-wild, More fierce and more inexorable far Than empty tigers or the roaring sea."
"My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time's furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate."
