Octavian Paler Quotes

Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.

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

The tide tarrieth no man.

O time, swift robber of all created things, how many kings, how many nations hast thou undone, and how many changes of states and of various events have happened since the wondrous forms of this fish perished here in this cavernous and winding recess. Now destroyed by time thou liest patiently in this confined space with bones stripped and bare; serving as a support and prop for the superimposed mountain.

If I could, I would stop the passage of time. But hour follows on hour, minute on minute, each second robbing me of a morsel of myself for the nothing of tomorrow. I shall never experience this moment again.

Time perfects all living beings as well as kills them; it alone is awake when all others are asleep. Time is insurmountable.

Don't keep saying, "I don't know where the time goes." It goes the same place it's always gone and no one has ever known where that is.

Today's today. Tomorrow we may be ourselves gone down the drain of Eternity.

Does it matter how long they were together that night? To lovers, an hour can last a century. But even for lovers, every hour ends.

Everything has an end, if only you live long enough to see it.

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced The rich proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main, Increasing store with loss and loss with store; When I have seen such interchange of state, Or state itself confounded to decay; Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, That Time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

Each moment has its sickle, emulous Of Time's enormous scythe, whose ample sweep Strikes empires from the root.

The present is the funeral of the past, And man the living sepulchre of life.

Who knows but the world may end tonight

Speak the name, and death will come. On the morrow, at the turn of the moon, a year from this day, it will come. A man does not fly like a bird, but one foot moves and then another and one day a man is there.

Time touches all things with a destroying hand.

I can't destroy things so beautiful." "Time will destroy them if you don't. Time destroys everything. But if you destroy them, it will mean something.

Everything's going to end eventually. I don't know if we're rushing it or making it faster.

Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away to be forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man.

The cancer of time is eating us away