What is time?
The shadow on a dial, the striking of the clock,
the running of the sand,
day and night, summer and winter, months, years, centuries -
these are but arbitrary and outward signs,
the measure of Time, not Time itself.
Time is the Life of the Soul.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

But there is something about Time.
The sun rises and sets.
The stars swing slowly across the sky and fade.
Clouds fill with rain and snow, empty themselves, and fill again.
The moon is born, and dies, and is reborn.
Around millions of clocks swing hour hands,
and minute hands, and second hands.
Around goes the continual circle of the notes of the scale.
Around goes the circle of night and day,
the circle of weeks forever revolving, and of months, and of years.
-Madeleine L'Engle

Different times of the day and night
have different qualities.
It's as though time has different personalities.
-Shirley Maclaine

There is no time
like the pleasant.
-Oliver Herford

Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine.
-Alexander Smith

The time that you enjoy wasting
is not wasted time.
-Bertrand Russell

Time is the most valuable thing
a man can spend.
-Theophrastus

An inch of time is an inch of gold:
Treasure it.
-Ching-Yuen

If you love life, don't waste time,
for time is what life is made up of.
-Bruce Lee

Controlled time is wealth.
-R. Buckminster Fuller

Time is the coin of your life.
It is the only coin your have,
and only you can determine how it will be spent.
Be careful lest other people spend it for you.
-Carl Sandburg

Oh, seize the instant time;
you will never power the mill
with waters that have already passed by.
-Richard Chenevix Trench

Take all the swift advantage of the hours.
-William Shakespeare

Be always resolute with the present hour.
Every moment is of infinite value.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I recommend you to take care of the minutes:
for the hours will take care of themselves.
-Philip Stanforth, Earl of Chesterfield

Hold fast the time!
Guard it, watch over it,
every hour, every minute!
Unregarded it slips away,
like a lizard smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife.
Hold every moment sacred.
Give each clarity and meaning,
each the weight of thine awareness,
each its true and due fulfillment.
-Thomas Mann

One always has time enough,
if one will apply it well.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The butterfly counts not months but moments,
and has time enough.
-Rabindranath Tagore

Time implies the old and the new as a movement
from the roots of yesterday to the flowering of tomorrow.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

...there must be time.
Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
-Epictetus

It takes time for a fruit
to mature and acquire sweetness  and become eatable;
time is a prime factor for most good fortune.
-Atharva Veda

Time is change, transformation, evolution.
-Isaac L. Peretz

Everything is flowing.
The Great River of Time takes everything with it,
and nothing in this world remains unchanged or unstabilized.
-Mouni Sadhu

In rivers, the water that you touch
is the last of what has passed
and the first of that which is to come;
so it is with present time.
-Leonardo da Vinci

Time has no divisions to mark its passage,
there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets
to announce the beginning of a new month or year.
-Thomas Mann

Th' inaudible and noiseless foot of
Time
-William Shakespeare

Waiting is the hoofs of time.

-Kahlil Gibran

Time flies but leaves its shadow behind.
-Nathaniel Hawthorne

Time does not fly.

It drops into the abyss.

-Sang H. Kim

Time goes, you say? Ah, no!
Alas, Time stays, we go.
-Austin Dobson

Time is a localized concept.
-Carolyn Mary Kleefeld

Time is but a mode of thought.
-Edith Nesbit

There is no beginning of time,
only a beginning of thought.
-Byron Katie

Time is a concept of the mind.
Without mind, there is no concept of time.
-Sivananda

We must realize that time is a strange thing;
it can dilate or shorten,
in accordance with our occupations, moods, emotional state
or the various images that are in our thoughts.
-Vanda Scarvelli

The sense of time has to do with the speed of the mind.
If the mind moves fast, then time seems to be moving fast;
if the mind is slowing down, time is slowing down;
when the mind is still, there is no sense of time.
-Imre Vallyon

Thought is movement in time...
non-movement is freedom from time.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Time is a convention of movement,
not a condition of existence.
-Aurobindo Ghose

Time is of your own making;
its clock ticks in your head.
The moment you stop thought
time too stops dead.
-Angelus Silesius

Time is that in which all things pass away.
-Arthur Schopenhauer

The fullness of time
is when time is no more.
-Meister Eckhart

In the fullness of time,
grace was born.
-Meister Eckhart

Time is not a line but a dimension,
like the dimensions of space.
-Margaret Atwood

There is no difference between Time
and of the three dimensions of Space
except that our consciousness moves along it.
-H. G. Wells

Time is the horizontal dimension of life,
the surface layer of reality.
-Eckhart Tolle

Time's arrow is bent into a loop.
-Endel Tulving

"Time" is an energetic process moving within a pattern.
The opening in the mandala.
-Marie-Louise von Franz

For time is the longest distance between two places.
-Tennessee Williams

Time is not a line,
but a series of now points.
-Taisen Deshimaru

Time is a continued over-dropping of moments,
which fall down one upon the other and evaporate.
-Jean Paul Richter

Time has only a relative existence.
-Thomas Carlyle

Our sense of time is notoriously subjective.
-Alan Watts

Time is pliable and subjective.
-Itzhak Bentov

Time, the human dimension,
which makes us everything we are.
-Martin Amis

Time is the school in which we learn,
time is the fire in which we burn.
-Delmore Schwartz

Time has no meaning in itself
unless we choose to give it significance.
-Leo Buscaglia

To have time implies the quality of elegance and ease
which gives poise to our movements and wisdom to our actions.
-Vanda Scaravelli

Time swallows up everything except character;
this is the only thing it cannot touch.
-Paramananda

Time is quantified eternity.
-Deepak Chopra

The child lives in the minute
The boy in the day
The instinctive man in the year
The imbued with history lives in the epoch
The true philosopher lives in eternity.
-Bertrand Russell

He who has no vision of eternity
has no hold on time.
-Thomas Carlyle

Only through time
time is conquered.
-T. S. Eliot

Here and henceforth it is all the same to me,
I accept Time absolutely.
-Walt Whitman

Once upon a time when there was no time.
-Celtic Proverb

No yesterday,
no tomorrow,
and no today.
-Sheng-Ts'an

Time is a stream I go a-fishing in.
I drink at it; but while I drink
I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.
Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.
-Henry David Thoreau

It is only in appearance that time is a river.
It is rather a vast landscape
and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.
-Thornton Wilder

Would it, then, be sound to define Time

as the Life of the soul in movement as it passes

from one state or act of experience to another?

-Plotinus

Time is simply a relative measure of perceived rate of change.

-Michael D. Robbins