time philosophy Quotes

He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.

It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.

Nunc fluens facit tempus,nunc stans facit aeternitatum.(The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity.)

What is time? If I am not asked, I know; if I am asked, I don't.

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature flows equably without relation to anything external.

Time present and time past / are both perhaps present in time future.

The meeting of two eternities, the past and future....is precisely the present moment.

It is not true that people who accomplish things don't waste time and that people who waste time don't accomplish things. The very concept is ill-informed. You can't waste time and you can't save time; you can only choose what you do at any given moment.

Neither technology nor efficiency can acquire more time for you, because time is not a thing you have lost. It is not a thing you ever had.

Time is not a thing that passes ... it's a sea on which you float.

There is no other day. All days are present now. This moment contains all moments.

The past is history, the future's a mystery.

The present moment, if you think about it, is the only time there is. No matter what time it is, it is always now.

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time.

Today is always here,' said Sethe. 'Tomorrow, never.

I was just thinking – today is the first and last day of forever. It’s kind of hard to wrap my head around it. Even with all this extra room for wrapping.

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.

It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.

I've been bothered about time generally and our tripartite division of time into past, present, and future. I think I know what the past is, and I think I know what future is, but I'm really not comfortable with the notion of present.

It's all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won't be over until tomorrow.

We all live in the past, because there is nothing else to live in. To live in the present is like proposing to sit on a pin. It is too minute, it is too slight a support, it is too uncomfortable a posture, and it is of necessity followed immediately by totally different experiences, analogous to those of jumping up with a yell.

Past time is finite, future time is infinite.

Time. Time. What is time? Swiss manufacture it, French hoard it, Italians squander it, Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Know what I say? I say time is a crook.

time past and time future what might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present.