Passage Of Time Quotes - Page 5

• I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story.

  John Irving

  Character, Stories, Fans

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• A civilization is complicated, in the first place, because it is dynamic; that is, it is constantly changing in the passage of time, until it has perished.

  Carroll Quigley

  Civilization, Firsts, Complicated

  Carroll Quigley (1979). “The evolution of civilizations: an introduction to historical analysis”, Liberty Fund Inc.

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• Bread, soup - these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.

  Elie Wiesel

  Night, Body, Soup

  Elie Wiesel (2000). “Night: with related readings”

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• Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest. A couple of lines or eight pages, a Middle Eastern stamp or a suburban postmark . . . I hoard all these letters like treasure. One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship. It will keep the vultures at bay.

  Jean-Dominique Bauby

  Children, Couple, Moving

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• So one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Love, Men, Order

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• Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.

  Richard Dawkins

  Business, Believe, Power

  "The Root of All Evil?". Documentary, January 2006.

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• I've found that music allows years to fold like an accordion over each other, so I guess you don't feel the passage of time as much.

  Amy Grant

  Years, Found, Accordions

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• Experience had taught me that even the most precious memories fade with the passage of time.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Memories, Taught, Moments

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• He spent six hours examining things, trying to find a difference from their appearance on the previous day in the hope of discovering in them some change that would reveal the passage of time.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Differences, Trying, Six

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2014). “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, p.70, Penguin UK

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• The poets and philosophers I once loved had it wrong. Death does not come to us all, nor does the passage of time dim our memories and reduce our bodies to dust. Because while I was considered dead, and a headstone had been engraved with my name, in truth my life was just beginning.

  Kevin Williamson

  Memories, Dust, Names

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• A mental stain can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any waters.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Water, Mind, Stains

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (1928). “De Re Publica”

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• But this same process of the old teaching the young can also cause errors and false conclusions to accumulate with the passage of time. One should therefore study ancient writings, not so much in the hope of finding lost wisdom as in the hope of locating the origin of errors that have been, and still are, accepted truths.

  Carl Eckart

  Teaching, Writing, Errors

  Carl Eckart (1984). “Our Modern Idol, Mathematical Science”

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• An accurate charting of American women's progress through history might look more like a corkscrew tilted slightly to one side, its loops inching closer to the line of freedom with the passage of time-but, like a mathematical curve approaching infinity, never touching its goal.

  Susan Faludi

  Curves, Rights, Goal

  Susan Faludi (1991). “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women”

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• Now more than ever I am aware that a person's significant birthdays can either mark the passage of time, or they can mark changes they've made in their lives to reach their potential and become the person they were created to be. With each passing year, I want to make good choices that make me a better person, help me become a better leader, and make a positive impact on others.

  John C. Maxwell

  Motivational, Years, Impact

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• If souls survive death for all eternity, how can the heavens hold them all? Or for that matter, how can the earth hold all the bodies that have been buried in it? The answers are the same. Just as on earth, with the passage of time, decaying and transmogrified corpses make way for the newly dead, so souls released into the heavens, after a season of flight, begin to break up, burn, and be absorbed back into the womb of reason, leaving room for souls just beginning to fly. This is the answer for those who believe that souls survive death.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Death, Believe, Heaven

  Marcus Aurelius, C. Scot Hicks, David Hicks (2002). “The Emperor's Handbook: A New Translation of The Meditations”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

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• André Bazin wrote that art emerged from our desire to counter the passage of time and the inevitable decay it brings. But in “Boyhood,” Mr. Linklater's masterpiece, he both captures moments in time and relinquishes them as he moves from year to year. He isn't fighting time but embracing it in all its glorious and agonizingly fleeting beauty.

  Manohla Dargis

  Art, Moving, Fighting

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• A good plan will therefore include alternative actions, the choice between them being left open until the passage of time indicates which is feasible and which is not.

  Carl Eckart

  Choices, Alternatives, Action

  Carl Eckart (1984). “Our Modern Idol, Mathematical Science”

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• It's really hard for me to use the term 'history' in the singular, because it suggests a reductivist view of how moments and events congeal and reflect the passage of time. I'd rather stick to the pluralness of 'histories' in order to suggest the simultaneity, the parallel forces at work, which produce lived experience.

  Barbara Kruger

  Views, Order, History

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