Time and Its Passage

The good life is that which succeeds in existing for the moment, without reference to past or future, without condemnation or selection, in a state of absolute lightness, and in the finished conviction that there is no difference therefore between the instant and eternity.

It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds - this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply. Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.

The beast lives unhistorically; for it 'goes into' the present, like a number, without leaving any curious remainder.

Deeds need time, even after they are done, in order to be seen or heard.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

All great achievements require time.

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel just as good as ever.

Old age lives minutes slowly, hours quickly; childhood chews hours and swallows minutes.

You only live once. But if you work it right, once is enough.

Life is not dated merely by years. Events are sometimes the best calendars.

I love best to have each thing in its season, doing without it at all other times.

Butterflies count not months but moments, and yet have time enough.

Every man regards his own life as the New Year’s Eve of time.

A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o’clock has the whole afternoon ruined for him already.

Time marks us while we are marking time.

Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

All is flux, nothing stays still.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Years following years steal something every day; At last they steal us from ourselves away.

Our years Glide silently away.

The years teach much which the days never know.

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.