“Living it up” has become the leitmotif of modern man—a compulsive hyperactivity without any downtimes, no gap of unscheduled time, lest we end up alone with ourselves. The meaning doesn’t matter, so long as it’s intense. We feel that without constant activity, life would be fatally insipid. Friends of mine who lead cultural tours in Asia have told me how their clients can’t bear the least gap in their itinerary. “Is there really nothing scheduled between five and seven?” they ask anxiously. We are, it seems, afraid to turn our gaze in in upon ourselves. We are fully focused on the exterior world, as experienced through our five senses. It seems naive to believe that such a feverish search for intense experience can lead to a lasting enriched quality of life.
If we do take the time to explore our inner world, it’s in the form of daydreaming and imagination, dwelling on the past of fantasizing endlessly about the future. A genuine sense of fulfillment, associated with inner freedom, can also offer intensity to every living moment, but of an altogether different sort. It is a sparkling experience of inner well-being, in which the beauty of each thing shines through. It is knowing how to enjoy the present moment, the willingness to nurture altruism and serenity and bring the best part of ourselves to mature—transforming oneself to better transform the world.
—Matthieu Ricard in Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill
Today is today, yesterday is yesterday, the future is the time that is left.
—Karl Lagerfeld
To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
—Evelyn Waugh
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
—Douglas Adams
The richest love is that which submits to the arbitration of time.
—Lawrence Durrell
I don’t have a lot of people to talk to. Not a lot of people are worth my time.
—Julie Anne Peters in By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead
There’s no quick fix for grief. No shortcuts, no easy answer, no way to erase it. Only time can do that, and even then, just barely.
—Alyson Noël in Night Star
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
—Hunter S. Thompson
Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
—Steven Wright
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
—Willem de Kooning
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
—George Bernard Shaw
I am sometimes asked, “Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?” I answer, “I am working at the roots.”
—George T. Angell
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
—Sydney J. Harris
Life goes on, having nowhere else to go.
—Diane Ackerman