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Quotes

There is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC

The best way to fill time is to waste it.

—Marguerite Duras, 1987

This is Year Zero.

—Pol Pot, 1975

We wish away whole years, and travel through time as through a country filled with many wild and empty wastes, which we would fain hurry over, that we may arrive at those several little settlements or imaginary points of rest which are dispersed up and down in it.

—Joseph Addison, 1711

No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.

—Jonathan Swift, 1706

Years are nothing to me—they should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or to consider them? In the world of wild nature, time is measured by seasons only—the bird does not know how old it is—the rose tree does not count its birthdays!

—Marie Corelli, 1911

Time rushes toward us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.

—Tennessee Williams, 1951

 Do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit.

—Ptahhotep, c. 2350 BC

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

My stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse.

—John Quincy Adams, 1844

Time’s ruins build eternity’s mansions.

—James Joyce, 1922

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BC

In time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.

—Novalis, c. 1798