Quotations about Effort

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.  ~William Faulkner


Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.  ~John Archibald Wheeler


As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.  ~Henry David Thoreau, "Economy," Walden, 1854


Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark-spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror.  It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving.  ~Martin Amis, Money


The clock talked loud.  I threw it away, it scared me what it talked.  ~Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle


Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.  ~Dion Boucicault


Time goes, you say?  Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go.
~Henry Austin Dobson


For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.  ~Doug Larson


But what minutes!  Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.  ~Benjamin Disraeli


Old Time, that greatest and longest established spinner of all!.... his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his hands are mutes.  ~Charles Dickens


Time wastes our bodies and our wits, but we waste time, so we are quits.  ~Author Unknown


Time is the fire in which we burn.  ~Delmore Schwartz, "Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day," 1937  (Thanks, George)


Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
~William Shakespeare


You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.  ~James Matthew Barrie


A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.  ~John B. Priestly


It strikes! one, two,
Three, four, five, six. Enough, enough, dear watch,
Thy pulse hath beat enough. Now sleep and rest;
Would thou could'st make the time to do so too;
I'll wind thee up no more.
~Ben Jonson


The flower that you hold in your hands was born today and already it is as old as you are.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


It's a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up.  ~J.K. Rowling, "The Hungarian Horntail," Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2000


Who forces time is pushed back by time; who yields to time finds time on his side.  ~The Talmud


Old Time, in whose banks we deposit our notes
Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats;
He keeps all his customers still in arrears
By lending them minutes and charging them years.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes


Time is like the wind, it lifts the light and leaves the heavy.  ~Doménico Cieri Estrada


Time is making fools of us again.  ~J.K. Rowling


El tiempo da buen consejo.  ~Proverb


There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men:  time.  ~Napoleon I, Maxims, 1815


Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.  ~Faith Baldwin


Why won't they let a year die without bringing in a new one on the instant, can't they use birth control on time?  I want an interregnum.  The stupid years patter on with unrelenting feet, never stopping - rising to little monotonous peaks in our imaginations at festivals like New Year's and Easter and Christmas - But, goodness, why need they do it?  ~John Dos Passos, 1917


How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on.  ~Zall's Second Law


The years like great black oxen tread the world
And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.
~William Butler Yeats, The Countess Cathleen


Time! the corrector when our judgments err.  ~Lord Byron


Time is the coin of your life.  It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent.  Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.  ~Carl Sandburg


I am tired of the imposed rhythms of men,
Tethered time, restrained and trained
To a monotonous beat
Digital time blinking exactness
Unliving.
~Phillip Pulfrey, "Conjecture," Beyond Me, www.originals.net


If you want work well done, select a busy man - the other kind has no time.  ~Elbert Hubbard


Time flies on restless pinions - constant never.  ~Friedrich Schiller


The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.  ~C.S. Lewis


Time is a brisk wind, for each hour it brings something new... but who can understand and measure its sharp breath, its mystery and its design?  ~Paracelsus


The time you think you're missing, misses you too.  ~Ymber Delecto


What then is time?  If no one asks me, I know what it is.  If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.  ~Saint Augustine


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


The inertia hardest to overcome is that of perfectly good seconds.  ~Martin H. Fischer


Watches are so named as a reminder - if you don't watch carefully what you do with your time, it will slip away from you.  ~Drew Sirtors


Time is the wisest counsellor of all.  ~Pericles


Time is the only thief we can't get justice against.  ~Astrid Alauda


There are whole years for which I hope I'll never be cross-examined, for I could not give an alibi.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


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, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires.  ~Charles Caleb Colton


Time is what we want most, but... what we use worst.  ~Willaim Penn


Time is the longest distance between two places.  ~Tennessee Williams


Can an afternoon revert?  ~Carrie Latet


Pick my left pocket of its silver dime, but spare the right - it holds my golden time!  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


Man goes nowhere.  Everything comes to man, like tomorrow.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Whether we wake or we sleep,
Whether we carol or weep,
The Sun with his Planets in chime,
Marketh the going of Time.
~Edward Fitzgerald


Time, the cradle of hope.... Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it:  he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends.  ~Charles Caleb Colton


Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.  ~Henry David Thoreau


The Present is a Point just passed.  ~David Russell


Methinks I see the wanton hours flee,
And as they pass, turn back and laugh at me.
~George Villiers


Time is an equal opportunity employer.  Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day.  Rich people can't buy more hours.  Scientists can't invent new minutes.  And you can't save time to spend it on another day.  Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving.  No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.  ~Denis Waitely


Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.  ~Charles Caleb Colton


One must learn a different... sense of time, one that depends more on small amounts than big ones.  ~Sister Mary Paul


Day, n.  A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.  ~Ambrose Bierce


Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.  ~Louis Hector Berlioz


Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.  ~Author Unknown