Temporal Understanding Quotes

I didn't know there were 2 ten o'clocks in a day.

Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backward. But then one forgets the other clause - that it must be lived forward. The more one thinks through this clause, the more one concludes that life in temporality never becomes properly understandable, simply because never at any time does one get perfect repose to take the stance - backward.

You can only understand the present age when it is past.

In a dog's world, only three states existed: "now," "in a while," and "forever." If someone left, he was gone "forever," and when he returned they rejoiced as much as if he were back from the dead precisely because he'd been gone "forever.

We think that the world is limited and explained by its past. We tend to think that what happened in the past determines what is going to happen next, and we do not see that it is exactly the other way around! What is always the source of the world is the present; the past doesn't explain a thing. The past trails behind the present like the wake of a ship and eventually disappears.

In history as it comes to be written, there is usually some Spirit of the Age which historians can define, but the shape of things is seldom so clear to those who live them. To most thoughtful men it has generally seemed that theirs was an Age of Confusion.

I have often said that just as the French revolution, for instance, understood itself through antiquity, I think our time can be understood through the French revolution. It is quite a natural process to use other times to understand your own time.

The past is all we know of the future.

‎The way you understand and investigate time is by moving inward, into metabolism. The human body is a knot in time.

Whenever I attempt to frame a simple idea of time, abstracted from the succession of ideas in my mind, which flows uniformly, and is participated by all beings, I am lost and embrangled in inextricable difficulties.

The present is the key to the past

Neither Goyl nor men lived long enough to understand that yesterday was born of tomorrow, just as tomorrow was born of yesterday.

‎No people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for 'tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip on the time.

History is really a study of the future, not the past.

Christian said he'd call the next day, but in boy time that meant Thursday.

It would be no reproach to a philosopher, that he knew the future better than the past, or even than the present. It is better worth knowing.

The time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.

They asked me what year it was, what month it was, etc. I easily answered these stupid questions.

Genius and science have burst the limits of space, and few observations, explained by just reasoning, have unveiled the mechanism of the universe. Would it not also be glorious for man to burst the limits of time, and, by a few observations, to ascertain the history of this world, and the series of events which preceded the birth of the human race?

I'm not good with time. Like, if I ask you the time and you say a quarter to 2, I wouldn't know. Why can't you just say 2:30?

I'm fascinated by the fact that we can't grasp anything about time.

Our linear concept of time means nothing to nature.

I feel like I don't understand time in novels, really. I bumble forward, is all.

I believe you can remember the future as much as the past.

Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?