The authors below seem to agree that the embodiment of time you appreciate or ignore has a huge effect on your personal life and outlook. A lazy or disorganized life can prevent you from enjoying the one thing that isn’t going to wait around for you to catch up.
Jump ahead to these sections:
- Quotes About Love and Time
- Quotes About Time Passing
- Quotes About Time and Life
- Quotes About Time and Change
- Inspirational Quotes About Time
If these quotes do anything, perhaps they’ll help clear some mental clutter and provide balance. Some of the authors suggest that when you prioritize up your love, work, and personal life, your daily joy can improve.
Just be sure to slow down so life doesn’t keep flying by. A little time spent caring for possibilities can help you feel more calm and present in your daily life.
Quotes About Love and Time
In the quotes below, love and time aspire for the same goals: excess or endless amounts that lead to inspiration, fulfillment, malleability.
1. “It’s the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s most notable work, The Little Prince, is filled with page after page of philosophy for both children and adults. Here, the author explores the fullness of one’s heart in relation to the fullness of one’s time.
2. “And therein lies the whole of man’s plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.” – Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera's quote imbues with longing for a time that one will never have with their partner. If time only has a start and finish, then humanity is on a conveyor belt of experiences and loves with one possible finality.
3. “I give you this to take with you: Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.” – Judith Minty
When mothers can no longer bandage the external scrapes and scratches, they can offer wisdom to supplant the internal pangs.
Judith Minty’s advice suggests hardship is temporary and equally no match for the way that building oneself up can bring happiness.
4. “There is time for work and time for love. That leaves no other time.” – Coco Chanel
Coco Chanel’s success came with many heartaches. This quote seems to suggest that the only two things of value are work and love, everything else is trivial.
5. “I don’t love you…like I loved you…yesterday.” – Gerard Way
One could read this quote as a passing triviality of love in that it held significant value one day but moments later, it fell off of its heels.
Or, and more pragmatically, that one simply can't love anyone the very same way that they did even a day ago, because so much happens between then and now.
Quotes About Time Passing
Even though time is quick, straight, and determined, it won’t stop for anything or anyone. Certain authors think we’d lose appreciation for its funny little contradictions if it weren’t here before you know it.
6. “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.” – Anthony G. Oettinger
Oettinger's take on what time is to you versus what time is to a fruit fly is both funny and philosophical. Time may be of high regard to humanity, but the fruit fly is just trying to get in a meal.
7. “Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.” – Jean de La Bruyère
Jean de Bruyère's keen observation marks people who have too much time to spend complaining. For those who are doing what they love, each and every moment is a day spent in paradise.
8. “How did it get so late so soon. It’s night before it’s afternoon. December before it’s June. My goodness, how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?” – Dr. Seuss
Few authors had such a way with words as Dr. Seuss. Here, his quote about time acts much like a poem lamenting the idea about getting older.
9. “There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi's poem is a lesson in walking beside life not running out in front of it.
10. “Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back.” – Harvey Mackay
Harvey Mackay’s take on time is that the hardest lesson to understand about time is how although time may be your closest friend—it’s always working against you.
Quotes About Time and Life
Even if time weren’t illusory and we had the means to stop and admire it, some authors believe we’re prone to waste its beauty anyway.
11. “Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.” – Haruki Murakami
Perhaps the author envisioned a ball of twine. One that was unraveling and leaving a long line of string or a clump behind. Sooner or later, the ball of twine will expose it's beginning.
12. “Time is an illusion.” – Albert Einstein
Scientifically, light and images are perceived differently among all humans. Perhaps, too, reality is a different perception for us as well.
13. “The future is uncertain, but the end is always near.” – Jim Morrison
During his life, Jim Morrison was influenced by aesthetics, morality, and existentialism. Those philosophies were reflected not only in his music but in his poetry as well.
14. “Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.” – Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre's reflection about life is like seeing a synchronized high and low tide. Simultaneously, nothing good can happen anymore, but the night's escapades are too early to begin.
15. “The future starts today, not tomorrow.” – Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II’s quote seems to derive from the parables found in Ephesians, Romans, and Ecclesiastes, where the lessons include the sinfulness of wasting one’s time.
Quotes About Time and Change
The consensus is that for as much control as most people have about their beauty, character, and theories, time is the one thing that can’t be molded or shaped.
16. “Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.” – Shannon L. Alder
The author's words are a reminder that although someone may have beauty on the outside, that's not necessarily reflective of the inside. Those that toil for the sake of others are often worn, bruised, and wrinkled.
17. “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.” – William Shakespeare
Here, Shakespeare is recognizing age and idleness. In the beginning, his character was fruitless and often frittered about. Then, as they got older, they realized that time had the upper hand.
18. “This is a wonderful day. I have never seen this one before.” – Maya Angelou
This way of thinking is similar to the Shoshin Nyuanshin thought, also known as the “Beginner’s Mind.” Here, every single experience is brand new, unique, and needs to be appreciated like it’s the first time.
19. “It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.” – Samuel Beckett
Samuel Becket was a famous playwright and novelist. Here, you might imagine what time has made of someone who forgot to yearn for life—and finds the sour pill of unmet desires.
20. “It’s strange how time can make a place shrink, make its strangeness ordinary.” – Veronica Roth
Our brains have a cruel way of changing the beautiful madness and uniqueness of life into nothing more than a memory of a time when something once mattered.
Inspirational Quotes About Time
The authors below collectively suggest that time is everyone’s shadow, a traveling companion, and a relentless adversary. Whether it enables or prevents great things, if you’re don’t value it then you’re wasting it.
21. “The strongest of all warriors are these two—time and patience.” – Leo Tolstoy
Time will never leave your side and time is too patient to ever try. Whether that’s a good thing or not, is up to you to determine.
22. “Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.” – Alan Watts
Alan Watt’s words offer some sage advice for when you remember your family on holidays or other important times. Time will not only heal your wounds, but all the messiness will no longer be important.
23. “The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.” – C.S. Lewis
The quote is to remind us all that not one of us is above the laws of time—or physics.
24. “Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you won’t do anything about it.” – M. Scott Peck
The common denominator here is you, not time. Author M. Scott Peck hopes to inspire you to see how time is one of life’s greatest assets.
25. “Enjoy life. There’s plenty of time to be dead.” – Hans Christian Anderson
Because life is short and death is long, the only thing left to do is enjoy what you have while you have it.
26. “We are all migrants through time.” – Mohsin Hamid
Mohsin Hamid’s words especially resonate in today’s culture. Moreover, Hamid speaks of the sameness of paths that humans have been traveling throughout every moment in time.
Time as a Companion
As unique as we all are, each of the authors noted above seems to convey that no idiosyncrasy separates us from fate and friendship with time. If you’ve been waiting for inspiration or resolution, hopefully, one of these quotes has at least illuminated your path.
Sources
- Famous Quotes at Brainyquote. www.brainyquote.com/
- Popular Quotes. www.goodreads.com/quotes
- Z Quotes: Quotes for All Occasions. www.azquotes.com/