Time Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.

But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

John F. Kennedy

One of the first signs of the beginnings of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one will only in time come to hate.

And thus they give the time, that Nature meant for peaceful sleep and meditative snores, to ceaseless din and mindless merriment and waste of shoes and floors.

Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.

Rainer Maria Rilke

At rest, however, in the middle of everything is the sun. For, in this most beautiful temple, who would place this lamp in another or better position than that from which it can light up the whole thing at the same time?

Nicolaus Copernicus

Give us back our suffering, we cry to Heaven in our hearts — suffering rather than indifferentism; for out of nothing comes nothing. But out of suffering may come the cure. Better have pain than paralysis! A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore!

Florence Nightingale

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife.

Johannes Kepler

I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short.

Variant translation: I have made this one [letter] longer than usual because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.

Many a time,… from a bad beginning great friendships have sprung up.

It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.

Simone de Beauvoir

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:-
'Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you,
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.'
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

Rudyard Kipling

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.

There was a time when meanings were focused and reality could be fixed; when that sort of belief disappeared, things became uncertain and open to interpretation.

There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.

Alexis de Tocqueville

A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth.

Christopher Wren

Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.

Lyndon B. Johnson

A computer shall not waste your time or require you to do more work than is strictly necessary.

I've done it before. It won't be the last time. You're going to go years where you just don't win. That's okay, as long as you keep trying to improve.

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.