John Baker’s Blog

Time is a cage

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know. Saint Augustine

Every instant of time is a pinprick of eternity. Marcus Aurelius

Time is a violent torrent. Marcus Aurelius

The now is what is real. Dame Janet Baker

Time as such does not exist. There is no invisible river of time. But there are things that you could call instants of time, or ‘Nows’. As we live, we seem to move through a succession of Nows, and the question is, what are they? They are arrangements of everything in the universe relative to each other in any moment, for example, now. Julian Barbour

You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by. James Matthew Barrie

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. Louis Hector Berlioz

I’m concerned with time which is circular. Time is not linear, though it expresses itself in that way. Harrison Birtwistle

The tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity . . . it sets on fire the cycle of birth. James Boanerges

The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration. Jorge Luis Borges

Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. Jorge Luis Borges

Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them. Dion Boucicault (Dionysuis Boursiquot)

What’s not destroyed by Time’s devouring hand? James Branston

Time was made for slaves. John Baldwin Buckstone

The silent touches of time. Edmund Burke

Nae man can tether time or tide. Robert Burns

Time, the avenger! Lord Byron

As old Time makes these decay, So his flames must waste away. Thomas Carew

For Tyme ylost may nought recovered be. (for time you lost, may nothing be recovered) Geoffrey Chaucer

What is this life, if full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. W.H Davies (written when he was a homeless, jobless vagrant)

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

…the great end comes slowly, because time is long. W.E.B Du Bois

Dancers are the athletes of God. Albert Einstein

All my possessions for a moment of time. Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland 1533-1603, her last words

Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. William Faulkner

Why, I hold fate Clasped in my fist, and could command the course of time’s eternal motion, hadst thou been one thought more steady than an ebbing sea. John Ford

Remember that time is money. Benjamin Franklin

You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side. W.E. Gladstone

The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats. William Graves

Where time doth end, and thoughts accuse the dead. Fulke Greville

Perfection is the child of Time. Joseph Hall

…the bloody hand that drew from the womb of time… Heinrich Heine

Healing is a matter of Time. Hippocrates

Time has three dimensions and one positive pitch or direction. Gerard Manley Hopkins

What do the ravages of time not injure? Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)

And naked to the hangman’s noose, The morning clocks will ring, A neck God made for other use, Than strangling in a string. A.E. Housman

Heavily laden with time expired men, Bound for the land they adore. Hughes and Lake, Bless ‘em all 1940, (troop song in WW2)

Tomorrow never happens. It’s all the same fucking day, man. Janis Joplin

We are here to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. Karl Jung

They are only an illusion, time and space, and so in a certain part of our psyche time does not exist at all. C. G. Jung

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety not Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the first version of Edward Fitzgerald

Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them. Charles Lamb

And departing, leave behind us footprints in the sands of time. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The duende works on the body of the dancer like the wind works on sand. With magical force, it converts a young girl into a lunar paralytic; or fills with adolescent blushes a ragged old man begging handouts in the wineshops; or suddenly discovers the smell of nocturnal ports in a head of hair, and moment for moment, works on the arms with an expressiveness which is the mother of the dance of all ages. Federico Garcia Lorca

Dancing is as old as love. Lucian

Time has no divisions to mark it’s passage. Thomas Mann

Had we but world enough, and time… Andrew Marvell

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music. Angela Monet

I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, so as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. Vladimir Nabokov

I am just going outside and may be some time. Captain Lawrence Oates 1880-1912, English Polar explorer, Last words, in Scott’s Last Expedition 1913 (Scott’s diary entry 16-17 March 1912, as Oates, suffering from gangrene left the tent to die, leaving the precious provisions for the remaining party, who nod understandingly)

The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked. Tillie Olsen

Time, the devourer of everything. Ovid (Publius Ovidius, Naso)

Keeping time time time In a sort of Runic rhyme. Edgar Allan Poe

Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time. Alexander Pope

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours. John B. Priestly

In search of lost time. Marcel Proust

How we spend our time is how we create ourselves. Marcel Proust

Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free.
Rumi

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom. Bertrand Russell

Besmeared with sluttish time. William Shakespeare

The spirit of time will teach me speed. William Shakespeare

Time hath, my Lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he put alms for oblivion. William Shakespeare

Old Time the clock-setter, that bald sexton, Time. William Shakespeare

What seest thou else, In the dark backward and abysm of time? William Shakespeare

When in the chronicle of wasted time. William Shakespeare

When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced. William Shakespeare

Time’s thievish progress to eternity. William Shakespeare

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. William Shakespeare

The end crowns all, And that old common arbitrator, Time, Will one day end it. William Shakespeare

We are too much of slaves to words and logic. Daisetz Suzuki

Time with a gift of tears. Algernon Charles Swinburne

And time remembered is grief forgotten. Algernon Charles Swinburne

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. Henry David Thoreau

But meanwhile it is flying, irretrievable time is flying. Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)

Time like an ever rolling stream, Bears all it’s sons away. Isaac Watts

Time is the longest distance between two places. Tennessee Williams

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time. W.B Yeats

Procrastination is the thief of time. Edward Young