Time

"But words are things, and a small drop of ink,      Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;      ’T is strange, the shortest letter which man uses Instead of speech, may form a lasting link      Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces Frail man, when paper — even a rag like this, Survives himself, his tomb, and all that’s his."

"Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,So do our minutes hasten to their end;Each changing place with that which goes before,In sequent toil all forwards do contend."

"The most important thing I learnt on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. When any Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments."

"Fear of death is form of stasis horrors. The dead weight of time."

"But thoughts the slave of life, and life, Time’s fool,And Time, that takes survey of all the world,Must have a stop."

"I've changed my ways a little, I cannot now Run with you in the evenings along the shore,Except in a kind of dream, and you, if you dream a moment,You see me there."

"My best day ever. Got up. Had breakfast. Came to school. Bored, as usual. Wishing I wasn't there, like usual. Kids ignoring me, suits me fine. Sitting with the other retards—we’re so special. Wasting my time. Yesterday was the same, and it's gone, anyway. Tomorrow may never come. There is only today. This is the best day and the worst day. Actually it's crap."

"I'm not ashamed of heroic ambitions. If man and woman can only dance upon this earth for a few countable turns of the sun... let each of us be an Artemis, Odysseus, or Zeus... Aphrodite to the extent of the will of each one."

"For while directly we say that it [the length of human life] is ages long, we are reminded that it is briefer than the fall of a rose leaf to the ground."

"A life is not a waste of time"

"We are all the fools of time and terror: Days Steal on us and steal from us; yet we live,Loathing our life, and dreading still to die."

"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students."]"

"Time was the most precious thing in the world to me, and I’d just given her all of it. Because I was falling for her. Because I cared for her. Because I wanted to give her something to remember me by, even if it would eventually fade like its namesake. Time… what an absolute horror-inducing word"

"Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind."

"Grimly, she realized that clocks don't make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of a grave."

"Today will die tomorrow."

"You have made flowers grow where I cultivated dust and stones. Remember this, on this journey you insist on making. If you die, I will not survive you long."

"Usually time alters and affects everything, but when someone you love dies time cannot change that, no amount of time will ever change that, so time stops having any meaning."

"They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."

"I'm wishing he could see that music lives. Forever. That it's stronger than death. Stronger than time. And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can."