Quotes about Time

Schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community, require time to mature them for execution. An army, so large as seriously to menace those liberties, could only be formed by progressive augmentations; which would suppose, not merely a temporary combination between the legislature and executive, but a continued conspiracy for a series of time.

Did you know there's a difference between being busy and being fruitful? Did you ever stop to think that just being busy - running around in circles all day but not accomplishing anything - is the same as wasting your time? It's frustrating to expend so much energy and time and not have any fruit from your effort!

If we sleep more than is needful for the refreshment of the body, it is wasting the time with which the Lord has entrusted us as a talent, to be used for his glory, for our own benefit, and the benefit of the saints and the unbelievers around us.

Everyone looks at your watch and it represents who you are, your values and your personal style.

If your watch is slow by just four minutes, that's not much - unless you've been warned that if you're even one minute late ever again you will be fired. Then four minutes make a big difference.

With thoughts of the past and concerns about the future, we rob ourselves of a full experience of the present.

I]f thou loiter when thou shouldst labour, thou wilt lose the crown. O fall to work then speedily and seriously, and bless God that thou hast yet time to do it; and though that which is past cannot be recalled, yet redeem the time now by doubling thy diligence (260).

Thou art standing all this while at the door of eternity, and death is waiting to open the door, and put thee in(247).

O]ne duty may be said to be too long, when its shuts out another, and then it ceaseth, indeed, to be a duty(274).

If every work of the day had thus its appointed time, we should be better skilled, both in redeeming time and performing duty (556).

God did not just start talking to us with the Bible or the church or the prophets. Do we really think that God had nothing at all to say for 13.7 billion years, and started speaking only in the latest nanosecond of geological time? Did all history prior to our sacred texts provide no basis for truth or authority? Of course not. The radiance of the Divine Presence has been glowing and expanding since the beginning of time, before there were any human eyes to see or know about it.

The tragic sense of life is ironically not tragic at all, at least in the Big Picture. Living in such deep time, connected to past and future, prepares us for necessary suffering, keeps us from despair about our own failure and loss, and ironically offers us a way through it all. We are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us. The tragic sense of life is not unbelief, pessimism, fatalism, or cynicism.