Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Time
Six years—six little years—six drops of time.
Matthew Arnold—Mycerinus. St. 11.
Modo, et modo, non habebent modum.
By-and-by has no end.
St. Augustine—Confessions. Bk. VIII. 5. 12.
Backward, flow backward, O full tide of years!
I am so weary of toil and of tears,
Toil without recompense—tears all in vain,
Take them and give me my childhood again.
I have grown weary of dust and decay,
Weary of flinging my heart’s wealth away—
Weary of sowing for others to reap;
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep.
A. M. W. Ball—Rock me to Sleep, Mother. Attributed to Elizabeth Akers Allen. See Northern Monthly. Vol. II. 1868. Pub. by Allen L. Bassett, Newark, N. J. Appendix to March, Vol. II. 1868. Ball shows proof that he wrote it in 1856–7. Produces witness who saw it before 1860. Mrs. Allen says she wrote it in Italy, 1860. It was published in The Knickerbocker Mag., May, 1861.
Backward, turn backward, then time in your flight;
Make me a child again just for tonight.
Mother, come back from the echoeless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore.
A. M. W. Ball—Rock me to Sleep, Mother.
Why slander we the times?
What crimes
Have days and years, that we
Thus charge them with iniquity?
If we would rightly scan,
It’s not the times are bad, but man.
Dr. J. Beaumont—Original Poems.
Wherever anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is being inscribed.
Henri Bergson—Creative Evolution. Ch. I.
Le temps fuit, et nous traîne avec soi:
Le moment où je parle est déjà loin de moi.
Time flies and draws us with it. The moment in which I am speaking is already far from me.
Boileau—Épîtres. III. 47.
What’s not destroyed by Time’s devouring hand?
Bramston—Art of Politicks.
Think not thy time short in this world, since the world itself is not long. The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity, and a short interposition, for a time, between such a state of duration as was before it and may be after it.
Sir Thomas Browne—Christian Morals. Pt. III. XXIX.
Time was made for slaves.
John B. Buckstone—Billy Taylor.
Time is money.
Bulwer-Lytton—Money. Act III. Sc. 3.
Behind, he hears Time’s iron gates close faintly,
He is now far from them;
For he has reached the city of the saintly,
The New Jerusalem.
Rev. James D. Burns—Poem of a Death Believer. In the Vision of Prophecy.
Some wee short hour ayont the twal.
Burns—Death and Dr. Hornbook.
Nae man can tether time or tide.
Burns—Tam o’ Shanter.
How slowly time creeps till my Phœbe returns!
While amidst the soft zephyr’s cool breezes I burn.
Methinks if I knew whereabouts he would tread,
I could breathe on his wings and ’twould melt down the lead.
Fly swifter, ye minutes, bring hither my dear,
And rest so much longer for ’t when she is here.
John Byrom—A Pastoral.
The good old times—all times when old are good—
Are gone.
Byron—Age of Bronze.
Yet Time, who changes all, had altered him
In soul and aspect as in age; years steal
Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb;
And life’s enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.
Byron—Childe Harold. Canto III. St. 8.
When Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet.
Byron—Childe Harold. Canto III. St. 22.
O Time! the beautifier of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin, comforter
And only healer when the heart hath bled—
Time! the corrector where our judgments err,
The test of truth, love, sole philosopher,
For all besides are sophists, from thy thrift
Which never loses though it doth defer—
Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift
My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift.
Byron—Childe Harold. Canto IV. St. 130.
Spared and blessed by Time,
Looking tranquility.
Byron—Childe Harold. Canto IV. 146. Same expression used by Congreve—Mourning Bride. Act II. Sc. 1, and by Lamb—A Quaker’s Meeting.
Thinkst thou existence doth depend on time?
It doth; but actions are our epochs; mine
Have made my days and nights imperishable,
Endless, and all alike.
Byron—Manfred. Act II. Sc. 1.
Out upon Time! it will leave no more
Of the things to come than the things before!
Out upon Time! who forever will leave
But enough of the past for the future to grieve.
Byron—Siege of Corinth. St. 18.
He more we live, more brief appear
Our life’s succeeding stages;
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.
Campbell—A Thought Suggested by the New Year.
Time’s fatal wings do ever forward fly;
To every day we live, a day we die.
Thomas Campion—Come, Cheerful Day.
That great mystery of T
Carlyle—Heroes and Hero Worship. Lecture I.
No ay memoria à quien el tiempo no acabe, ni dolor que nuerte no le consuma.
There is no remembrance which time does not obliterate, nor pain which death does not put an end to.
Cervantes—Don Quixote. III. 1.
I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.
Chesterfield—Letter. Oct. 4, 1746.
Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.
Chesterfield—Letters to his Son. Dec. 26, 1749.
Opinionum enim commenta delet dies; naturæ judicia confirmat.
Time destroys the groundless conceits of men; it confirms decisions founded on reality.
Cicero—De Natura Deorum. II. 2.
O tempora! O mores!
O what times (are these)! what morals!
Cicero—Orationes in Catilinam. I. 2.
No! no arresting the vast wheel of time,
That round and round still turns with onward might,
Stern, dragging thousands to the dreaded night
Of an unknown hereafter.
Charles Cowden Clarke—Sonnet. The Course of Time.
Hours are Time’s shafts, and one comes winged with death.
On the clock at Keir House, near Denblane, the Seat of Sir William Stirling Maxwell.
Sex horas somno, totidem des legibus æquis
Quatuor orabis, des epulisque duas;
Quod superest ultra sacris largire Camœnis.
Six hours in sleep, in law’s grave study six,
Four spend in prayer, the rest on nature fix.
Coke introduced this as “ancient verses” in Institutes of the Laws of England. Bk. II. Ch. I. Section 85. See also Gilbert’s Law of Evidence. (1784). “Sex horis dormire sat est juvenique senique: / Septem vix pigro; nulli concedimus octo.” Six hours in sleep is enough for youth and age. Perhaps seven for the lazy, but we allow eight to no one. Version from Collectio Salernitans. Ed. De Renzi. Vol. II. L. 130.
Now is the accepted time.
II Corinthians. VI. 2.
Touch us gently, Time!
Let us glide adown thy stream
Gently,—as we sometimes glide
Through a quiet dream!
Barry Cornwall—A Petition to Time.
Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise,
He who defers this work from day to day,
Does on a river’s bank expecting stay,
Till the whole stream, which stopped him, should be gone,
That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on.
Cowley—The Danger of Procrastination. Translation of Horace. 1. Ep. II. 4.
Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal Now does always last.
Cowley—Davideis. Bk. I. L. 361.
His time’s forever, everywhere his place.
Cowley—Friendship in Absence. St. 3.
Time, as he passes us, has a dove’s wing,
Unsoil’d, and swift, and of a silken sound.
Cowper—The Task. Bk. IV. L. 211.
See Time has touched me gently in his race,
And left no odious furrows in my face.
Crabbe—Tales of the Hall. Bk. XVII. The Widow. St. 3.
Swift speedy Time, feathered with flying hours,
Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.
Samuel Daniel—Delia.
Che’l perder tempo a chi più sa più spiace.
The wisest are the most annoyed at the loss of time.
Dante—Purgatorio. III. 78.
Old Time, that greatest and longest established spinner of all!… his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his Hands are mutes.
Dickens—Hard Times. I. 14.
But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day and the race a life.
Benj. Disraeli—Sybil. Bk. I. Ch. II.
Time, to the nation as to the individual, is nothing absolute; its duration depends on the rate of thought and feeling.
Draper—History of the Intellectual Development of Europe. Vol. I. Ch. I.
When Time shall turne those Amber Lockes to Gray.
Drayton—England’s Heroical Epistles.
(Time) with his silent sickle.
Dryden—Astræa Redux. L. 110.
And write whatever Time shall bring to pass
With pens of adamant on plates of brass.
Dryden—Palamon and Arcite.
Who well lives, long lives: for this age of ours
Should not be numbered by years, daies and hours.
Du Bartas—Divine Weeks and Workes. Second Week. Fourth Day. Bk. II.
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
Ecclesiastes. III. 1.
Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.
Ecclesiastes. VII. 10.
Let us leave hurry to slaves.
Emerson—Essay on Manners.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
Emerson—Society and Solitude. Work and Days.
Dilatio damnum habet, mora periculum.
Procrastination brings loss, delay danger.
Erasmus—Adolescens.
The four eights, that ideal of operative felicity, are here (New Zealand) a realized fact.
J. A. Froude—Oceana. Ch. XIV. The four eights are explained in a footnote to be “Eight to work, eight to play, eight to sleep, and eight shillings a day.”
I count my time by times that I meet thee;
These are my yesterdays, my morrows, noons,
And nights, these are my old moons and my new moons.
Slow fly the hours, fast the hours flee,
If thou art far from or art near to me:
If thou art far, the bird’s tunes are no tunes;
If thou art near, the wintry days are Junes.
R. W. Gilder—The New Day. Pt. IV. Sonnet VI.
So schaff’ ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit.
Thus at Time’s humming loom I ply.
Goethe—Faust. I. 1. 156.
Ein stiller Geist ist Jahre lang geschäftig;
Die Zeit nur macht die feine Gährung kräftig.
Long is the calm brain active in creation;
Time only strengthens the fine fermentation.
Goethe—Faust. I. 6. 36.
Mein Vermächtniss, wie herrlich weit und breit;
Die Zeit ist mein Vermächtniss, mein Acker ist die Zeit.
My inheritance, how wide and fair
Time is my estate; to Time I’m heir.
Goethe—Wilhelm Meister’s Travels. Trans. by Carlyle in Sartor Resartus. “My inheritance how lordly wide and fair; / Time is my fair seed-field, to Time I’m heir.” Carlyle’s version in Chartism. Ch. X. “Mein Erbteil wie herrlich, weit und breit; / Die Zeit ist mein Besitz, mein Acker ist die Zeit.” Goethe—Westöstliche Divan. VI. Buch der Sprüche. (Original version.)
Die Zeit ist selbst ein Element.
Time is itself an element.
Goethe—Sprüche in Prosa. III.
Rich with the spoils of time.
Gray—Elegy in a Country Churchyard. St. 13.
I made a posy while the day ran by;
Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band.
But time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away,
And wither’d in my hand.
Herbert—The Temple. Life.
Thus times do shift; each thing his turne does hold;
New things succeed, as former things grow old.
Herrick—Ceremonies for Candlemas Eve.
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a flying,
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying.
Herrick—Hesperides. 208. Same found in Ausonius—Idyllia. 14.
But what says the Greek? “In the morning of life, work; in the midday, give counsel; in the evening, pray.”
Hesiod—Fragments.
Old Tune, in whose banks we deposit our notes,
Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats;
He keeps all his customers still in arrears
By lending them minutes and charging them years.
Holmes—Poems of the Class of ’29. Our Banker. (1874).
Dum loquimur, fugerit invida
Ætas: carpe diem.
While we are speaking envious time will have fled. Seize the present day.
Horace—Carmina. Bk. I. 11. 7.
Carpe diem, quam minime credula postero.
Enjoy the present day, trusting very little to the morrow.
Horace—Carmina. Bk. I. 11. 8.
Eheu fugaces Postume, Postume,
Labuntur anni, nec pietas moram
Rugis et instanti senectæ
Afferet, indomitæ que morti.
Poetumus, Postumus, the years glide by us:
Alas! no piety delays the wrinkles,
Nor the indomitable hand of Death.
Horace—Carmina. Bk. II. 14. 1.
Damnosa quid non imminuit dies?
What does not destructive time destroy?
Horace—Carmina. Bk. III. 6. 45.
Quidquid sub terra est, in apricum proferet ætas;
Defodiet condetque nitentia.
Time will bring to light whatever is hidden; it will cover up and conceal what is now shining in splendor.
Horace—Epistles. I. 6. 24.
Singula de nobis anni prædantur euntes.
Each passing year robs us of some possession.
Horace—Epistles. II. 2. 55.
Horæ
Memento cita mors venit, aut victoria læta.
In the hour’s short space comes swift death, or joyful victory.
Horace—Satires. Bk. I. 1. 7.
How short our happy days appear!
How long the sorrowful!
Jean Ingelow—The Mariner’s Cave. St. 38.
To the true teacher, time’s hour-glass should still run gold-dust.
Douglas Jerrold—Specimens of Jerrold’s Wit. Time.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle.
Job. VII. 6.
And panting Time toil’d after him in vain.
Samuel Johnson—Prologue on Opening the Drury Lane Theatre. L. 6.
Seven hours to law, to soothing slumber seven,
Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven.
Sir Wm. Jones—Ode in Imitation of Alcæus. See Lord Teignmouth—Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Sir William Jones. Letter to Charles Chapman. Aug. 30, 1784. Also Errata. P. 251. “The muses claim the rest,” or “the muse claims all beside” are the changes made by Jones, according to Andrew Amos—Four Lectures on the Advantages of a Classical Education. London, 1846. P. 78.
That old bald cheater, Time.
Ben Jonson—The Poetaster. Act I. Sc. 5.
The noiseless foot of Tune steals swiftly by
And ere we dream of manhood, age is nigh.
Juvenal—Satires. IX. 129. Gifford’s trans.
Time, that aged nurse
Rocked me to patience.
Keats—Endymion. Bk. I.
Time’s waters will not ebb nor stay.
Keble—Christian Year. First Sunday after Christmas.
Memento semper finis, et quia perditum non redit tempus.
Remember always your end, and that lost time does not return.
Thomas à Kempis. Bk. I. Ch. XXV. 11.
Time, which strengthens Friendship, weakens Love.
La Bruyère—The Characters or Manners of the Present Age. Ch. IV.
Vingt siècles descendus dans l’éternelle nuit.
Y sont sans mouvement, sans lumière et sans bruit.
Twenty ages sunk in eternal night. They are without movement, without light, and without noise.
Lemoine—Œuvres Poétiques. Saint Louis.
Potius sero quam nunquam.
Better late than never.
Livy. IV. II. 11. Bunyan—Pilgrim’s Progress. Pt. I. Dionysius of Halicarnassus. IX. 9. Matthew Henry—Commentaries. Matthew XXI. Murphy—School for Guardians. Act I. Tusser—Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry. An Habitation enforced.
Time has laid his hand
Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it,
But as a harper lays his open palm
Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations.
Longfellow—The Golden Legend.
Time is the Life of the Soul.
Longfellow—Hyperion. Bk. II. Ch. VI.
Alas! it is not till Time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of human passion with, from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.
Longfellow—Hyperion. Bk. IV. Ch. VIII.
A handful of red sand from the hot clime
Of Arab deserts brought,
Within this glass becomes the spy of Time,
The minister of Thought.
Longfellow—Sand of the Desert in an Hour-Glass.
What we want, we have for our pains
The promise that if we but wait
Till the want has burned out of our brains,
Every means shall be present to state;
While we send for the napkin the soup gets cold,
While the bonnet is trimming the face grows old,
When we’ve matched our buttons the pattern is sold,
And everything comes too late—too late.
FitzHugh Ludlow—Too Late.
Volat hora per orbem.
The hours fly around in a circle.
Manilius—Astronomica. I. 641.
Æquo stat fœdare tempus.
Time stands with impartial law.
Manilius—Astronomica. III. 360.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near.
Marvell—To his coy Mistress.
Such phantom blossoms palely shining
Over the lifeless boughs of Time.
E. L. Masters—Spoon River Anthology. Russell Kincaid.
The signs of the times.
Matthew. XVI. 3.
Time is a feathered thing,
And, whilst I praise
The sparkling of thy looks, and call them rays,
Takes wing,
Leaving behind him as he flies
An unperceivèd dimness in thine eyes.
Jasper Mayne—Time.
However we pass Time, he passes still,
Passing away whatever the pastime,
And, whether we use him well or ill,
Some day he gives us the slip for the last time.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—The Dead Pope.
Who can undo
What time hath done? Who can win back the wind?
Reckon lost music from a broken lute?
Renew the redness of a last year’s rose?
Or dig the sunken sunset from the deep?
Owen Meredith—Orval, or the Fool of Time. Second Epoch. Sc. 1. Said to be a translation of a French translation of The Inferno. See Saturday Review. London. Feb. 27, 1869.
When time is flown, how it fled
It is better neither to ask nor tell,
Leave the dead moments to bury their dead.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—Wanderer. Bk. IV. Two out of the Crowd. St. 17.
Time, eftsoon will tumble
All of us together like leaves in a gust,
Humbled indeed down into the dust.
Joaquin Miller—Fallen Leaves Down into the Dust. St. 5.
Time will run back and fetch the age of gold.
Milton—Hymn on the Nativity. L. 135.
Day and night,
Seed-time and harvest, heat and hoary frost
Shall hold their course, till fire purge all things new.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. XI. L. 898.
Le temps … souverain médecin de nos passions.
Time is the sovereign physician of our passions.
Montaigne—Essays. Bk. III. Ch. IV. Same idea in Euripides—Alcestis.
Time softly there
Laughs through the abyss of radiance with the gods.
W. V. Moody—The Fire-Bringer. Act I.
A wonderful stream is the river of Time
As it runs through the realms of tears,
With a faultless rhythm and musical rhyme,
And a broader sweep and a surge sublime,
And blends with the ocean of years.
Appeared in Moore’s Rural New Yorker. May 31, 1856, probably from Whyte Melville’s Uncle John.
Time, still as he flies, adds increase to her truth,
And gives to her mind what he steals from her youth.
Edward Moore—The Happy Marriage.
Surely in a matter of this kind we should endeavor to do something, that we may say that we have not lived in vain, that we may leave some impress of ourselves on the sands of time.
From an alleged Letter of Napoleon to his Minister of the Interior on the Poor Laws. Pub. in The Press, Feb. 1, 1868.
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
Arthur O’Shaughnessy—Ode. We are the Music Makers.
Labitur occulte, fallitque volubilis ætas,
Ut celer admissis labitur amnis aquis.
Time steals on and escapes us, like the swift river that glides on with rapid stream.
Ovid—Amorum. I. 8. 49.
Dum loquor hora fugit.
While I am speaking the hour flies.
Ovid—Amorum. Bk. I. 11. 15.
Tempore difficiles veniunt ad aratra juvenci;
Tempore lenta pati frena docentur equi.
In time the unmanageable young oxen come to the plough; in time the horses are taught to endure the restraining bit.
Ovid—Ars Amatoria. Bk. I. 471.
Nec, quæ præteriit, iterum revocabitur unda:
Nec, quæ præteriit, hora redire potest.
Neither will the wave which has passed be called back; nor can the hour which has gone by return.
Ovid—Ars Amatoria. Bk. III. 63.
Ludit in humanis divina potentia rebus,
Et certam præsens vix habet hora fidem.
Heaven makes sport of human affairs, and the present hour gives no sure promise of the next.
Ovid—Epistolæ Ex Ponto. IV. 3. 49.
Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis;
Et fugiunt fræno non remorante dies.
Time glides by, and we grow old with the silent years; and the days flee away with no restraining curb.
Ovid—Fasti. VI. 771.
Assiduo labuntur tempora motu,
Non secus ad flumen. Neque enim consistere flumen.
Nec levis hora potest.
Time glides by with constant movement, not unlike a stream. For neither can a stream stay its course, nor can the fleeting hour.
Ovid—Metamorphoses. XV. 180.
Tempus edax rerum.
Time that devours all things.
Ovid—Metamorphoses. XV. 234.
Temporis ars medicina fere est.
Time is generally the best medicine.
Ovid—Remedia Amoris. 131.
These are the times that try men’s souls.
Thomas Paine—The American Crisis. No. 1.
Let time that makes you homely, make you sage.
Parnell—An Elegy to an Old Beauty. L. 35.
Time, the foe of man’s dominion,
Wheels around in ceaseless flight,
Scattering from his hoary pinion
Shades of everlasting night.
Thomas Love Peacock—The Genius of the Thames. Pt. II. St. 42.
The present is our own; but while we speak,
We cease from its possession, and resign
The stage we tread on, to another race,
As vain, and gay, and mortal as ourselves.
Thomas Love Peacock—Time. L. 9.
Man yields to death; and man’s sublimest works
Must yield at length to Time.
Thomas Love Peacock—Time. L. 65.
Time is lord of thee:
Thy wealth, thy glory, and thy name are his.
Thomas Love Peacock—Time. L. 71.
His golden locks Time hath to silver turned,
O time too swift! O swiftness never ceasing!
His youth ’gainst Time and Age hath ever spurned,
But spurned in vain! Youth waneth by increasing.
George Peele—Sonnet. Polyhymnia. Another version published in Seger’s Honor Military and Civil. (1602).
Seize time by the forelock.
Pittacus of Mitylene. Thales of Miletus.
Tanto brevius omne, quanto felicius tempus.
The happier the time, the quicker it passes.
Pliny the Younger—Epistles. VII. 14.
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime
Out of Space—out of Time.
Poe—Dreamland. L. 7.
Years following years steal something ev’ry day.
At last they steal us from ourselves away.
Pope—Imitations of Horace. Bk. II. Ep. 2. L. 72.
Time conquers all, and we must time obey.
Pope—Winter. L. 88.
Gone! gone forever!—like a rushing wave
Another year has burst upon the shore
Of earthly being—and its last low tones,
Wandering in broken accents in the air,
Are dying to an echo.
George D. Prentice—Flight of Years.
A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
Psalms. XC. 4.
We spend our years as a tale that is told.
Psalms. XC. 9.
Expect, but fear not, Death: Death cannot kill,
Till Time (that first must seal his patent) will.
Would’st thou live long? keep Time in high esteem:
Whom gone, if thou canst not recall, redeem.
Quarles—Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man. Ep. 6.
Dum deliberamus quando incipiendum sit, incipiere jam serum est.
Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.
Quintilian. XII. 6. 3.
He briskly and cheerfully asked him how a man should kill time.
Rabelais—Works. Bk. IV. Ch. LXIII.
E’en such is time! which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have;
And pays us naught but age and dust,
Which, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
And from which grave, and earth, and dust,
The Lord will raise me up, I trust.
Sir Walter Raleigh. Written in his Bible. Cayley’s Life of Raleigh. Vol. II. Ch. IX.
Hour after hour departs,
Recklessly flying;
The golden time of our hearts
Is fast a-dying:
O, how soon it will have faded!
Joy droops, with forehead shaded;
And Memory starts.
John Hamilton Reynolds—Hour After Hour.
Time, like a flurry of wild rain,
Shall drift across the darkened pane!
C. G. D. Roberts—The Unsleeping.
By many a temple half as old as Time.
Samuel Rogers—Italy.
To vanish in the chinks that Time has made.
Samuel Rogers—Italy. Pæstum. L. 59.
Que pour les malheureux l’heure lentement fuit!
How slowly the hours pass to the unhappy.
Saurin—Blanche et Guiscard. V. 5.
Tag wird es auf die dickste Nacht, und, kommt
Die Zeit, so reifen auch die spät’sten Früchte.
Day follows on the murkiest night, and, when the time comes, the latest fruits will ripen.
Schiller—Die Jungfrau von Orleans. III. 2. 60.
O, wer weiss
Was in der Zeiten Hintergrunde schlummert.
Who knows what may be slumbering in the background of time!
Schiller—Don Carlos. I. 1. 44.
Time flies on restless pinions—constant never.
Be constant—and thou chainest time forever.
Schiller—Epigram.
Spät kommt ihr—doch ihr kommt!
You come late, yet you come!
Schiller—Piccolomini. I. 1. 1.
Dreifach ist der Schritt der Zeit:
Zögernd kommt die Zukunft hergezogen,
Pfeilschnell ist das Jetzt entflogen,
Ewig still steht die Vergangenheit.
Threefold the stride of Time, from first to last:
Loitering slow, the Future creepeth—
Arrow-swift, the Present sweepeth—
And motionless forever stands the Past.
Schiller—Sprüche des Confucius.
Doch zittre vor der langsamen,
Der stillen Macht der Zeit.
Yet tremble at the slow, silent power of time.
Schiller—Wallenstein’s Tod. I. 3. 32.
Upon my lips the breath of song,
Within my heart a rhyme,
Howe’er time trips or lags along,
I keep abreast with time!
Clinton Scollard—The Vagrant.
Time rolls his ceaseless course.
Scott—The Lady of the Lake. Canto III. St. 1.
Infinita est velocitas temporis quæ magis apparet respicientibus.
The swiftness of time is infinite, which is still more evident to those who look back upon the past.
Seneca—Epistolæ Ad Lucilium. XLIX.
Volat ambiguis
Mobilis alis hora.
The swift hour flies on double wings.
Seneca—Hippolytus. 1141.
Nullum ad nocendum tempus angustum est malis.
No time is too short for the wicked to injure their neighbors.
Seneca—Medea. 292.
Urbes constituit ætas: hora dissolvit: momento fit cinis: diu sylva.
An age builds up cities: an hour destroys them. In a moment the ashes are made, but a forest is a long time growing.
Seneca—Quæstionum Naturalium. Bk. III. 27.
Nemo tam divos habuit faventes,
Crastinum ut possit sibi polliceri.
Nobody has ever found the gods so much his friends that he can promise himself another day.
Seneca—Thyestes. 619.
Let’s take the instant by the forward top;
For we are old, and on our quick’st decrees
The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time
Steals ere we can effect them.
All’s Well That Ends Well. Act V. Sc. 3. L. 39.
And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
Says very wisely, “It is ten o’clock:
Thus we may see,” quoth he, “how the world wags.”
As You Like It. Act II. Sc. 7. L. 21.
Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I’ll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.
As You Like It. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 326.
Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let Time try.
As You Like It. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 203.
There’s a time for all things.
Comedy of Errors. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 66.
The time is out of joint.
Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 5. L. 189.
Time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop.
Henry IV. Pt. I. Act V. Sc. 4. L. 82.
See the minutes, how they run,
How many make the hour full complete;
How many hours bring about the day;
How many days will finish up the year;
How many years a mortal man may live.
Henry VI. Pt. III. Act II. Sc. 5. L. 25.
So many hours must I take my rest;
So many hours must I contemplate.
Henry VI. Pt. III. Act II. Sc. 5. L. 32.
Minutes, hours, days, months, and years,
Pass’d over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
Ah, what a life were this!
Henry VI. Pt. III. Act II. Sc. 5. L. 35.
Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides;
Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.
King Lear. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 283.
Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
Macbeth. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 146.
’Gainst the tooth of time
And razure of oblivion.
Measure for Measure. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 12.
We should hold day with the Antipodes,
If you would walk in absence of the sun.
Merchant of Venice. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 127.
Time goes on crutches till love have all his rites.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 372.
Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.
Othello. Act II. Sc. 3. L. 385.
Time’s the king of men,
He’s both their parent, and he is their grave,
And gives them what he will, not what they crave.
Pericles. Act II. Sc. 3. L. 45.
O, call back yesterday, bid time return.
Richard II. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 69.
Yet, do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.
Sonnet XIX.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow.
Sonnet LX.
O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
Sonnet LXV.
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes;
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour’d
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done.
Troilus and Cressida. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 145.
Time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly
Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles.
Troilus and Cressida. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 165.
Beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
Troilus and Cressida. Act III. St. 3. L. 171.
The end crowns all,
And that old common arbitrator, Time,
Will one day end it.
Troilus and Cressida. Act IV. Sc. 5. L. 224.
The whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
Twelfth Night. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 384.
Time is the nurse and breeder of all good.
Two Gentlemen of Verona. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 243.
Make use of time, let not advantage slip;
Beauty within itself should not be wasted:
Fair flowers that are not gather’d in their prime
Rot and consume themselves in little time.
Venus and Adonis. L. 129.
The flood of time is rolling on;
We stand upon its brink, whilst they are gone
To glide in peace down death’s mysterious stream.
Have ye done well?
Shelley—Revolt of Islam. Canto XII. St. 27.
Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality!
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore,
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable sea?
Shelley—Time.
Per varios præceps casus rota volvitur ævi.
The wheel of time rolls downward through various changes.
Silius Italicus—Punica. VI. 121.
For time would, with us, ’stead of sand,
Put filings of steel in his glass,
To dry up the blots of his hand,
And spangle life’s page as they pass.
Since all flesh is grass ere ’tis hay,
O may I in clover lie snug,
And when old Time mow me away,
Be stacked with defunct Lady Mugg!
Horace and James Smith—Rejected Addresses. The Beautiful Incendiary, by the Hon. W. S. 10.
For the next inn he spurs amain,
In haste alights, and skuds away,
But time and tide for no man stay.
W. C. Somerville—The Sweet-Scented Miser. L. 98.
Time wears all his locks before,
Take thou hold upon his forehead;
When he flies he turns no more,
And behind his scalp is naked.
Works adjourn’d have many stays,
Long demurs breed new delays.
Rob’t Southwell—Loss in Delay.
Goe to my Love where she is carelesse layd
Yet in her winter’s bowere not well awake;
Tell her the joyous time will not be staid
Unlesse she doe him by the forelock take.
Spenser—Amoretti. LXX.
Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time.
Spenser—The Faerie Queene. Bk. III. Canto XII. St. 75.
Too late I staid, forgive the crime,
Unheeded flew the hours;
How noiseless falls the foot of Time
That only treads on flow’rs!
What eye with clear account remarks
The ebbing of his glass,
When all its sands are diamond sparks
That dazzle as they pass?
Ah! who to sober measurement
Time’s happy swiftness brings,
When birds of Paradise have lent
Their plumage for his wings?
W. R. Spenser—To the Lady Anne Hamilton.
Long ailments wear out pain, and long hopes joy.
Stanislaus (King of Poland)—Maxims.
I see that time divided is never long, and that regularity abridges all things.
Abel Stevens—Life of Madame de Staël. Ch. XXXVIII.
In time take time while time doth last, for time
Is no time when time is past.
Written on the title page of MS. account book of Nicholas Stone, mason to James I. In the Soane Museum.
Nick of Time!
Sir John Suckling—The Goblins. Act V.
Ever eating, never cloying,
All-devouring, all-destroying,
Never finding full repast,
Till I eat the world at last.
Swift—On Time.
Lauriger Horatius
Quam dixisti verum;
Fugit euro citius
Tempus edax rerum.
Laurel crowned Horatius
True, how true thy saying,
Swift as wind flies over us
Time devouring, slaying.
Anon. Trans. by John Addington Symonds.
A wonderful stream is the River Time,
As it runs through the realms of Tears,
With a faultless rhythm, and a musical rhyme,
And a broader sweep, and a surge sublime
As it blends with the ocean of Years.
Benjamin F. Taylor—The Long Ago.
He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend:
Eternity mourns that. ’Tis an ill cure
For life’s worst ills to have no time to feel them.
Sir Henry Taylor—Philip Van Artevelde. Act I. Sc. 5.
Come, Time, and teach me many years,
I do not suffer in dream;
For now so strange do these things seem,
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears.
Tennyson—In Memoriam. Pt. XIII.
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.
Tennyson—Vision of Sin. St. 9. (“Minute” for “moment” in early Ed.) “Every minute dies a man, / And one and one-sixteenth is born.” Parody on Tennyson by a Statistician.
Heu! universum triduum!
Alas! three whole days to wait!
Terence—Works. II. 1. 17. (Sometimes “totum” given for “universum.”)
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.
Francis Thompson—Hound of Heaven. L. 143.
Once in Persia reigned a king
Who upon his signet ring
Graved a maxim true and wise,
Which if held before the eyes
Gave him counsel at a glance
Fit for every change and chance.
Solemn words, and these are they:
“Even this shall pass away.”
Theodore Tilton—The King’s Ring. (All Things Shall Pass Away.)
Time tries the troth in everything.
Tusser—Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie. The Author’s Epistle. Ch. I.
Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus.
But meanwhile time flies; it flies never to be regained.
Vergil—Georgics. III. 284.
The soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d,
Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made.
Waller—On the Divine Poems. Epilogue.
To wind the mighty secrets of the past,
And turn the key of time.
Henry Kirk White—Time. L. 249.
And let its meaning permeate
Whatever comes, This too shall pass away.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox—This too shall pass away.
He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.
Oscar Wilde—Picture of Dorian Gray. Ch. III.
Our time is a very shadow that passeth away.
Wisdom of Solomon. II. 5.
Delivered from the galling yoke of time.
Wordsworth—Laodamia.
Therefore fear not to assay
To gather, ye that may,
The flower that this day
Is fresher than the next.
Thos. Wyatt—That the Season of Enjoyment is Short.
Nought treads so silent as the foot of Time;
Hence we mistake our autumn for our prime.
Young—Love of Fame. Satire V. L. 497.
The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
But from its loss: to give it then a tongue
Is wise in man.
Young—Night Thoughts. Night I. L. 55.
Procrastination is the thief of time:
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
Young—Night Thoughts. Night I. L. 390.
Time is eternity;
Pregnant with all eternity can give;
Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile.
Who murders Time, he crushes in the birth
A power ethereal, only not adorn’d.
Young—Night Thoughts. Night II. L. 107.
Time wasted is existence, used is life.
Young—Night Thoughts. Night II. L. 149.
We push time from us, and we wish him back;
******
Life we think long and short; death seek and shun.
Young—Night Thoughts. Night II. L. 174.
In leaves, more durable than leaves of brass,
Writes our whole history.
Young—Night Thoughts. Night II. L. 275.
We see time’s furrows on another’s brow,
*****
How few themselves in that just mirror see!
Young—Night Thoughts. Night V. L. 627.
In records that defy the tooth of time.
Young—The Statesman’s Creed.