passing of time Quotes

“As I confronted her, the changes grew less apparent to me, her identity stronger. She was there, in the full vigor of her personality, battered but not diminished, looking at me, speaking to me in the husky, breathy voice I remembered so well.”

″‘And that means,’ continued Edmund, ‘that, once you’re out of Narnia, you have no idea how Narnian time is going. Why shouldn’t hundreds of years have gone past in Narnia while only one year has passed for us in England?‘”

“Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.”

“The price of lasting love is continuing to pay attention to a person, a place, or a work that has become familiar.”

“Time just gets away from us.”

“It hadn’t been so long ago, yet sometimes she felt that she’d been an altogether different person back then.”

“We rush back to our desks, we watch the clock, we live by appointments. And yet your time eventually runs out and you wonder in your heart of hearts if those seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and decades were being spent the best way they possibly could. In other words, if you could change anything, would you?”

“Good leadership is like exercise. We do not see any improvement to our bodies with day-to-day comparisons. In fact, if we only compare the way our bodies look on a given day to how they looked the previous day, we would think our efforts had been wasted. It’s only when we compare pictures of ourselves over a period of weeks or months that we can see a stark difference. The impact of leadership is best judged over time.”

“But the longer I’ve lived, the more I’ve lost what’s inside me—and ended up empty.”

“Evidently in the six months since I’d last seen them, I’d changed more than I realized.”

“She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year; the disastrous night of her life at Trantridge with its dark background of The Chase; also the dates of the baby’s birth and death; also her own birthday; and every other day individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share.”

“Every day, every hour, brought to him one more little stroke of her nature, and to her one more of his. Tess was trying to lead a repressed life, but she little divined the strength of her own vitality.”

“We won’t die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come. Bye now. You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life. The Great Work Begins.”

“It’s such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it.”

“The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized. Another war came, World War II, and I wanted to get in it. The war looked like my chance to realize my old dream of flying.

“The feelings were still fresh as if it all just happened yesterday.”

“After a while, though, even the deepest sorrow faltered, even the most penetrating despair lost its scalpel edge.”

“The house looks exactly like it did when I was a kid. And my girl did that.”

“I feel like the oldest person in the world with the longest stretch of life before me.”

“We are not going back because the principles we defend are principles which endure from one generation to another.”

“Until that summer, I had kept count of all the moons since the time my brother and I were alone upon the island. For each one that came and went I cut a mark in the pole beside the door of my house. There were many marks, from the roof to the floor. But after that summer I did not cut them any more. The passing of the moons now had come to mean little, and I only made marks to count the four seasons of the year. The last year I did not count those.”

“After all this time, I know exactly where I belong. Here. With Edmond. And that’s how I live now.”

“When I was seven the days had more hours than I had use for and the distance between sun up and down again was a vast and lazy sprawl.”

“Time passes slowly when you’re young, and quickens as you get old. Summer lasted forever when I was seven, but now it only visits.”

“She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.”

“And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, And then from hour to hour we rot and rot; And thereby hangs a tale.”

“My father had only been dead two years, so Mother knew just what lay in Eliza’s heart. They both supped sorrow with a big spoon, that’s what Mother said. It took years, but the smile slowly returned to Eliza’s face.”

“Yes, I’ve been through some hard times since I saw you, very hard times. And it was all on your account.”

“The sound of the living room clock striking midnight could not reach them; they never had permission to speak at all, and they lay in silence until another year had passed and they stood once more beneath the tree.”

“Too much time has passed for the father to ask his son how he’s doing, too much time for the son to be able to explain. The distance between them is too great now.”

“By-and-by, however, as I was curious to know how time was passing, I struck a match, and by its flame looked at my watch; it was within a few minutes of midnight. This gave me a sort of shock, for I suppose the general superstition about midnight was increased by my recent experiences.”