You have officially sprung your clocks forward, and in honor of the country (minus Arizona) losing an hour, I’ve rounded up 15 quotes about time for us to all ponder over. Time is a weird concept, and the idea of losing time is an even weirder one. As if every hour isn’t already slipping through our fingers fast enough, once a year we actually have to voluntarily give up an hour. (True, we get to gain one later in the year, but it all still feels a little bizarre to me.)
While we run our lives around the idea of time, it is really just an intangible perception that helps keep routine for us. Yes, the earth spins and revolves around the sun in tune to the clock and calendar, but it’s not because of the clock and calendar that these things are happening. Just sit on that thought for a second.
Time is the one thing you cannot stop, not even for a second. Check out what these 15 well-written authors, inventors, and philosophers have to say about the subject, and take a precious moment (because each moment really is precious!) to ponder what exactly time means to you.
1. "Better three hours too soon than a minute too late." — William Shakespeare
2. "Time passes irrevocably." — Virgil
3. "My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time." — Steve Jobs
4. "How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?" — Dr. Seuss
5. "Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend." — Theophrastus
6. "The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is." — C.S. Lewis
7. "There's time enough, but none to spare." — Charles W. Chesnutt
8. "Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away." — Marcus Aurelius
9. "I must govern the clock, not be governed by it." — Golda Meir
10. "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." — St. Augustine
11. "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." — Bertrand Russell
12. "The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." — Albert Einstein
13. "Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today." — Philip Stanhope
14. "You may delay, but time will not." — Benjamin Franklin
15. "Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present." — Bill Keane
