Time and Its Passage

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapors weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan.

 

For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.

 

And Time, a maniac scattering dust, And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

 

Our little systems have their day.

 

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.

 

I know that age to age succeeds, Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds, A dust of systems and of creeds.

 

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day?

 

By many a temple half as old as Time.

 

What one refuses in a minute No eternity will return.

 

Slowly consumed, like fire down a candle; Forever flowing, like a passing river. Now, morning, I face my lone shadow: Suddenly my eyes are bleared with tears. 1

 

The clouds above us join and separate, The breeze in the courtyard leaves and returns. Life is like that, so why not relax? Who can stop us from celebrating?

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

Fugit inreparabile tempus .

Your Lordship will probably recollect where the Oriental tale occurs, of a Sultan who consulted Solomon on the proper inscription for a signet-ring, requiring that the maxim which it conveyed should be at once proper for moderating the presumption of prosperity and tempering the pressure of adversity. The apophthegm supplied by the Jewish sage was, I think, admirably adapted for both purposes, being comprehended in the words “And this also shall pass away.”

As years come in and years go out

Le temps s’en va, le temps s’en va, ma Dame ,

The idea of Time was of value to me for yet another reason: it was a spur. . . . This life that we live in half-darkness can be illumined, this life that at every moment we distort can be restored to its true pristine shape, that a life, in short, can be realized within the confines of a book! How happy would be, I thought, the man who had the power to write such a book! What a task awaited him!

The number of portraits one saw of [Emperor Franz Joseph] was almost as great as the number of inhabitants of his realms. . . . Believing in his existence was rather like seeing certain stars although they ceased to exist thousands of years ago.

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Time discovers truth.

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.

Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live.

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.

Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.