Faster and faster, multi-tasking, more to do in less and less time. Chaos reigns as we speedball our fractured attention to the future. Time turns out to be the ultimate luxury: the thing we want most, don't have enough of, cannot control and now rely on as the primary excuse for every modern failure: “I didn't have the time.”
Herewith a scrapbook of carefully collected quotes about time.
It is my hope that one of these, any one of these, will hit you personally and inspire you to make better choices about your time. (Mine was the prayer, “Slow me down, Lord!” In its simple force, it struck me as my best wish, my heart's desire, my serenity. And as Emerson said, “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”)
There are many here; there need to be, because what works for you is different than what works for me. That's why you can read all the self-help books in the world and gain nothing until you write your own, as unmistakably as your autobiography. (In fact, what you do with your time is your autobiography.)
Eventually, you'll ask this question as regularly as breathing: “What is the best use of my time right now?” I hope the best use of your time will be to dwell here quietly, meditate, amble, make your way through the wisdom on the subject of your best possession and find what gives you back the gift of time.
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What is the best use of my time right now?
Terence Conran first gave things a big twist way back in the days of Mary Quant and even before the Beatles. He produced The House Book that showed the world how to live cheaply — and beautifully. This was a new thought. His King's Road store exploded because no such thing had ever been seen before: a store that sold tasteful, even exciting housewares and bath furnishings, and cheap. Design marries economy and a new world is born. Bingo.
What is the best use of my time right now?
Alan Lakein, How To Get Control of Your Time and Your Life
Have you got a minute?
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McDonald's billboard
Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Lewis Carroll
The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right.
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Hamlet, Shakespeare
Life happens 24 hours a day.
Tom Beebe
Be here now.
Buddhist tenet
The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
Abraham Lincoln
Time is nature's way of making sure everything doesn't happen at once.
unknown
Time, why [do] you punish me?
Hootie and the Blowfish
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin
Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.
Peter F. Drucker
You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.
Charles Bixton
This is the day the Lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 117
It's later than you think.
Chinese proverb
If you haven't got the time to do it right, when will you find the time to do it over?
Jeffrey J. Mayer
We will be held accountable for those permitted pleasures we failed to enjoy.
The Haggadah
You can't turn back the clock. But you can wind it up again.
Bonnie Prudden
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
Henry David Thoreau
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
Carl Sandburg
You are the CEO of your life.
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I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.
T.S. Eliot
All time-management begins with planning.
Tom Greening
Time = Life. Therefore, waste your time and waste your life, or master your time and master your life.
Alan Lakein
Humor is pain plus time.
Kathleen Passanisi
Wasting time is an important part of living.
unknown
Time is Too slow for those who Wait, Too swift for those who Fear, Too long for those who Grieve; Too short for those who Rejoice; But for those who Love, Time is Eternity.
Henry Van Dyke
We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which it was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.
Henry Ward Beecher
The surest poison is time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you want to make good use of your time, you have got to know what's most important, and then give it all you've got.
Lee Iacocca
Heck by the time a man scratches his behind, clears his throat, and tells me how smart he is, we've already wasted fifteen minutes.
Lyndon B. Johnson
The idea is to make decisions and act on them &endash; to decide what is important to accomplish, to decide how something can best be accomplished, to find time to work at it and to get it done.
Karen Kakascik
One realizes the importance of time only when there is little of it left. Every man's greatest capital asset is his unexplored years of productive life.
P.W. Litchfield
Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever.
Horace Mann
Think that this day will never dawn again.
Dante
The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday but never jam today.
The White Queen, Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll
TODAY
a carved stone on John Ruskin's desk
Every day is a new life to a wise man.
anonymous
May you live every day of your life.
Jonathan Swift
The Time Is Always NOW!
SoHo gallery
If not you, who? If not now, when?
Moses Maimonides