W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

When you are in the future, the past looks different.

My ideas about time all developed from the realization that if nothing were to change we could not say that time passes. Change is primary, time, if it exists at all, is something we deduce from it.

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

The future is an infinite succession of presents.

The mountains of today are the molehills of tomorrow.

The past is over; the present is fleeting; we live in the future.

History never looks like history when you are living through it.

Old is always fifteen years from now.

I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

Time is not a road - it is a room.

Time is born in the eyes, everybody knows that.

To realize the unimportance of time is the gate to wisdom.

When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain.

Five minutes are enough to dream a whole life, that is how relative time is.

Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.

Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be.

The past is the place we view the present from as much as the other way around.

As people used to be wrong about the motion of the sun, so they are still wrong about the motion of the future. The future stands still, it is we who move in infinite space.

The future will soon be a thing of the past.

I thought of the future, and spoke of the past.

I think all this talk about age is foolish. Every time I'm one year older, everyone else is too.

Look. We both know life is short, Macy. Too short to waste a single second with anyone who doesn't appreciate and value you." You said the other day life was long," I shot back. "Which is it?" It's both," she said, shrugging. "It all depends on how you choose to live it. It's like forever, always changing." Nothing can be two opposite things at once," I said. "It's impossible." No," she replied, squeezing my hand, "what's impossible is that we actually think it could be anything OTHER than that.

Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.

One good thing about the past is that you can't change it. So there's no reason to go back. It's there. It is what it is. The only thing you can change is right now and what's happening next.