Sydney Smith Quotes

Why is life speeded up so? Why are things so terribly, unbearably precious that you can't enjoy them but can only wait breathless in dread of their going?

He seemed to be talking about my fears, my insecurity, and my unwillingness to see what was wonderful because tomorrow it might disappear and I might suffer. The gods throw the dice, and they don't ask whether we want to be in the game or not.

For me, it's always a failure of the imagination. I have that anxiety that time is passing, that everything is ultimately fleeting and impermanent. I better take advantage of every single moment.

I'll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I'm afraid it could be taken away.

But we are not interested in death at all: rather, we escape the facts, we are continuously escaping the facts. Death is there, and every moment we are dying. Death is not something far away, it is here and now: we are dying. But while we are dying we go on being concerned about life. This concern with life, this over concern with life, is just an escape, just a fear. Death is there, deep inside - growing.

You can't buy time. Everything, for me, seems to be a race against time. Especially musically.

Our time is short and history is watching.

Time is not a friend.

I fear that the day I die, I am going to die without accomplishing what I have in my mind. Life is too short, and a lot of things can happen, and I am really keen to see it with my own eyes - and that is why I am in a hurry.

We have our moments of emotional vulnerabilities as any other human being, and my greatest fear gnawing away at me is losing my loved ones.

I tell myself to hurry up, that I have to do everything before death catches me.

A weird side effect of being in close proximity to death is an urgency.

I'm not cynical, but the reality is that life is mortal. Terrible, sad things happen. Everybody loses friends and family. I'll be on tour and get really scared if my wife won't answer her phone within one minute. I'm sensitive.

Death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit.

Want a sugar cube? [...] They're supposed to be for the horses, but who cares? They've got years to eat sugar, whereas you and I . . . well, if we see something sweet we better grab it quick. [...] You're absolutely terrifying me in that get-up. What happened to the pretty little-girl dresses?

but it's not safe and I can feel him slipping away, so I just get out one more sentence. "Stay with me." As the tendrils of sleep syrup pull me down, I hear him whisper a word back but I don't catch it.

There is a thing where I get scared watching other people, and really realize, My God, their happy lives are going to stop. Sometimes you feel that people have 19 jokers in their back pocket and, because of the way they're living, you're like, Do you know that this is not going to happen over and over again forever?

One lives one's life under constant tension, until it's time to go for good

How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who know they will live forever. So what do we do? We men turn terribly mean, because we can't hold to the world or ourselves or anything. We are blind to continuity, all breaks down, falls, melts, stops, rots, or runs away. So, since we cannot shape Time, where does that leave men? Sleepless. Staring.

From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year...death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever.

Everything is barely weeks. Everything is days. We have minutes to live.

It is a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up.

I'm hopeless - all I know is that time is going past so fast.

Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand.

I feel the fear touches on something deeper. A sense perhaps of, "My life is speeding past me and I can't get a handle on it."