Quotes about Time

Remember: Matter. How tiny your share of it. Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate. How small a role you play in it.

Call to mind the whole of Substance of which you have a very small portion, and the whole of time whereof a small hair's breadth has been determined for you, and of the chain of causation whereof you are how small a link.

People out for posthumous fame forget that the Generations To Come will be the same annoying people they know now.

Casting therefore all other things aside, keep thyself to these few, and remember withal that no man properly can be said to live more than that which is now present, which is but a moment of time. Whatsoever is besides either is already past, or uncertain.

The next, that all these things, which now thou seest, shall within a very little while be changed, and be no more: and ever call to mind, how many changes and alterations in the world thou thyself hast already been an eyewitness of in thy time. This world is mere change, and this life, opinion.

Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present—and even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits. And if your mind tries to claim that it can't hold out against that . . . well, then, heap shame upon it.

How quickly all things disappear, in the universe the bodies themselves, but in time the remembrance of them;

As the heaps of sand piled on one another hide the former sands, so in life the events which go before are soon covered by those which come after.

And as for thy life, consider what it is; a wind; not one constant wind neither, but every moment of an hour let out, and sucked in again.

Give yourself a gift: the present moment. People out for posthumous fame forget that the Generations To Come will be the same annoying people they know now. And just as mortal. What does it matter to you if they say x about you, or think y?

How foolish it is, then, to puff yourself up with pride or berate yourself with worry. Think of the boundless abyss of the past behind you and the infinite future stretching out ahead. From this perspective, how small are your achievements—and how petty your troubles.

From Alexander the Platonic, not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, or to write in a letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of duties required by our relation to those with whom we live, by alleging urgent occupations.