Time quotes
Quotations about time and mortality: Dickinson’s eternity made of Nows, Seneca on guarding our hours, Frost’s miles to go, Marlowe’s thousand ships. Time is one of the most misquoted themes, so each entry names its earliest verifiable source and, where it is a translation, the translator.
All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players;
Because I could not stop for Death – / He kindly stopped for me –
Break, break, break, / On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! / And I would that my tongue could utter / The thoughts that arise in me.
Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once.
Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.
But, dost thou love life? then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of,
Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered.
Forever—is composed of Nows—
History, despite its wrenching pain / Cannot be unlived, but if faced / With courage, need not be lived again.
O Wind, / If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
In the midway of this our mortal life, / I found me in a gloomy wood, astray / Gone from the path direct:
It was many and many a year ago, / In a kingdom by the sea,
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s account every day.
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough, always proves little enough.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep.
Music, when soft voices die, / Vibrates in the memory—
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
Nine-tenths of wisdom is to be wise in time, and at the right time;
Nature’s first green is gold, / Her hardest hue to hold.
Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time.
Ah, Faustus, / Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, / And then thou must be damn’d perpetually!
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, / Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
Remember me when I am gone away, / Gone far away into the silent land;
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll! / Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, / And never brought to mind?
So be my passing! / My task accomplished and the long day done, / My wages taken, and in my heart / Some late lark singing,
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
The old order changeth, yielding place to new, / And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.
There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! / No hungry generations tread thee down;
Come, my friends, / ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, / To the last syllable of recorded time;
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.
When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.
When I am dead, my dearest, / Sing no sad songs for me;