Quotes About Past Time

“How ever did I pass
the time before I knew you?
I think of that past time
as now I pass each passing day
in lonely sorrow, lacking you.”

— Sei Shōnagon

“The Cloudy Vase
Past time, I threw the flowers out,
washed out the cloudy vase.
How easily the old clearness
leapt, like a practiced tiger, back inside it.”

— Jane Hirshfield

“Spreading rumours is our national past time”

— Monica Ali

“With large industries throwing out the factory model as counterproductive, it is long past time for schools to do the same. I wonder how many adults would do well at dealing with different job requirements and a different boss every 47 minutes.”

— Susan Ohanian

“It follows that the one thing we should not do to the men and women of past time, and particularly if they ghost through to us as larger than life, is to take them out of their historical contexts. To do so is to run the risk of turning them into monsters, whom we can denounce for our (frequently political) motives-an insidious game, because we are condemning in their make-up that which is likely to belong to a whole social world, the world that helped to fashion them and that is deviously reflected or distorted in them. Censure of this sort is the work of petty moralists and propagandists, not historians (p. 5).”

— Lauro Martines

“The embrace of present and past time, in which English antiquarianism becomes a form of alchemy, engenders a strange timelessness. It is as if the little bird which flew through the Anglo-Saxon banqueting hall, in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, gained the outer air and became the lark ascending in Vaughan Williams's orchestral setting. The unbroken chain is that of English music itself.”

— Peter Ackroyd

“You can't help being young, but it's past time that you stopped being stupid.”

— Scott Lynch

“Our ancestors have much to answer for.
Why? What did they do?
... Long ago, they used machines and drugs to keep the unhealthy and unfit ones of us alive. In that past time it was believed that all persons must have children. It was a right deemed so precious that it was forced upon even those who did not value it or should not have had it. If one of our people became pregnant, our people used all their knowledge to assure the young would be born, no matter how sick or disabled. Then, if the young lived, they injected them and dosed them and radiated them and transfused and transplanted them, to keep them alive, and then, when they were grown, they used all their skills in assisting them to have children of their own.”

— Sheri S. Tepper

“Even Def Leppard couldn't get him out of his funk. When the Def couldn't crank you, it was way past time to shoot someone.”

— Ken Bruen

“When that little clock on my wall says "Olaotan! Olaotan!! Olaotan!!! It's half past time to write", I only have three things at my disposal: A pen, A piece of paper, and a crowded mind.”

— Olaotan Fawehinmi

“In books lies the soul fo the whole past time.”

— Thomas Carlyle

“In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time: the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.”

— Thomas Carlyle

“Living was a dangerous past-time, and often quite painful-but there was also such joy in living, such beauty, things that one would otherwise never see, never experience, never know. The risk of pain and loss was a part of living.”

— Jim Butcher

“We won the war, but we are losing the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. It is past time for a new approach, one that relies on accountability, responsibility, and phasing down the scope of our military commitment.”

— Earl Blumenauer

“Health care for all Americans is the most pressing domestic issue today. It's far past time for the President and Congress to deliver health care to everyone.”

— Russ Feingold

“It is past time for Republican leadership to answer for record deficits and reckless spending, both in Iraq and in the U.S. It's time for a plan to bring our troops home.”

— Sherrod Brown

“When I get bored, or get stuck on an equation, I like to go ice skating, but it makes you forget your problem. Then you can tackle the problem with a fresh new insight. Einstein liked to play the violin to relax. Every physicist likes to have a past time. Mine is ice skating.”

— Michio Kaku

“Of all the islands he'd visited, two stood out. The island of the past, he said, where the only time was past time and the inhabitants were bored and more or less happy, but where the weight of illusion was so great that the island sank a little deeper into the river every day. And the island of the future, where the only time was the future, and the inhabitants were planners and strivers, such strivers, said Ulises, that they were likely to end up devouring one another.”

— Roberto Bolaño

“Bike lanes are the coolest. My favorite past time is flipping off cars from my bicycle. Just kidding - I'm more of a silent resentment kind of girl.”

— Mary Lambert

“He touched the tender skin of her palm and swiped a dot of blood off the tip of her finger. Without thinking, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her finger. She drew in a sharp breath but didn't make an effort to pull away from him. He met her gaze. The silkiness in the depths sent a tremor through his body. He pressed his lips against her smooth skin again, tasting the saltiness of her blood. His lips brushed a path to her palm, and in the tender, moist middle he pressed another kiss. Her chest rose and fell in rapid succession, but she still made no move. Instead, she watched him, almost as if she was remembering the kiss he'd given her on their wedding day, the same kiss that still haunted him. Maybe it was past time for him to give her another.”

— Jody Hedlund

“It is past time that consumers recognize the emerging power of 'Made In America' products and services. The nation's shopping list needs this header: Check out what is made here before you 'go' overseas.”

— Jackie Speier

“No matter how long you waited, no matter how hard you wished, no matter how much you missed the past, time marched forward.”

— Sarah Ockler

“We are as gods on our little rock in the vast bleak cosmos and it's way past time we started getting good at that instead of just posing on Olympus and photoshopping our zits out. The future is more than an Instagram filter.”

— Warren Ellis

“Therefore a man should examine for himself the great piles of superimposed strata, and watch the rivulets bringing down mud, and the waves wearing away the sea-cliffs, in order to comprehend something about the duration of past time, the monuments of which we see all around us.”

— Charles Darwin

“This book is about fighting back. The dominant culture -civilization- is killing the planet, and it is long past time for those of us who care about life on earth to begin taking the actions necessary to stop this culture from destroying every living thing.”

— Derrick Jensen

“Criticizing Fox News has nothing to do with criticizing the press. Fox News is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.”

— David Brock

“No matter the bad things that happened in past time, let's try to live the best we can now.”

— Ziggy Marley

“Yes, it is long past time we get serious about tackling the nation's ever-growing deficits. But the average American family drawn into serious debt cannot just threaten to stiff its creditors. It must cut its spending in the future, but also take responsibility for the debt incurred in the past.”

— Peter Welch

“It is past time for women to take their rightful place, side by side with men, in the rooms where the fates of peoples, where their children's and grandchildren's fates, are decided.”

— Hillary Clinton

“The last rain had come at the beginning of April and now, at the first of June, all but the hardiest mosquitoes had left their papery skins in the grass. It was already seven o'clock in the morning, long past time to close windows and doors, trap what was left of the night air slightly cooler only by virtue of the dark. The dust on the gravel had just enough energy to drift a short distance and then collapse on the flower beds. The sun had a white cast, as if shade and shadow, any flicker of nuance, had been burned out by its own fierce center. There would be no late afternoon gold, no pale early morning yellow, no flaming orange at sunset. If the plants had vocal cords they would sing their holy dirges like slaves.”

— Jane Hamilton

“It may be that the seemingly intrinsic attraction that past time has for me is merely a desire for escapism, as I look out at the nation and world with little optimism.”

— David Souter

“We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present.”

— Victor Hugo

“It's long past time we started focusing on the solutions that actually keep women healthy, instead of using basic aspects of women's health as a tool of cultural, moral, and political control.”

— Martha Plimpton

“It was long past time to change the subject. "The boy playing the bagpipes is really good," Prudie said.
If only she'd said it in French! Trey made a delighted noise. "Nessa Trussler. A girl. Or something."
Prudie looked at Nessa again. There was, she could see now, a certain plump ambiguity. Maybe Trey wouldn't tell anyone what she'd said. Maybe Nessa was perfectly comfortable with who she was. Maybe she was admired throughout the school for her musical ability. Maybe pigs could jig.”

— Karen Joy Fowler

“She needed him inside her. Now. "It's past time to put your money where your mouth is."
"You got that all in reverse, sweetheart." He cut off the water and backed her slowly to the wall, his lips curving into a dangerous smile. "It's time to put my mouth where your honey is.”

— Victoria Vane

“It is time, and long past time, to reread the gospels as what we can only call political theology-not because they are not after all about God and spirituality and new birth and holiness and all the rest, but precisely because they are.”

— N.T. Wright

“The irruption of the supernatural into our world is a much more enticing notion to explore than the same thing happening in some past time, or in a wholly imaginary world.”

— Elizabeth Hand

“It's a great humanitarian injustice. Their families are here and they've been here. It's long past time for them to be reunited.”

— Jeff Cohen

“Perpetual emotion is the past time of the undisciplined mind.”

— Ervin Seale

“Memory is not just the imprint of the past time upon us; it is the keeper of what is meaningful for our deepest hopes and fears.”

— Rollo May

“Men of Oregon, I invite you to become students of your events. Running, one might say, is basically an absurd past-time upon which to be exhausting ourselves. But if you can find meaning, in the kind of running you have to do to stay on this team, chances are you will be able to find meaning in another absurd past-time: life.”

— Bill Bowerman

“It's past time the feds scrapped the Canada Health Act.”

— Stephen Harper

“Life is made up of circles ... Life is not a straight line ... And sometimes we circle back to a past time. But we are not the same. We are changed forever.”

— Patricia MacLachlan

“Also, what mountains of dead ashes, wreck and burnt bones, does assiduous pedantry dig up from the past time and name it History.”

— Thomas Carlyle

“Tolerance of dissent is the hallmark of a mature party, and it is well past time for the Republican Party to grow up.”

— John McCain

“You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we're going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it's long past time for the GOP's leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.”

— Paul Krugman

“Historical investigation has for its aim to fix the order and character of events throughout past time and in all places. The task is frankly superhuman.”

— George Santayana

“I think their pasts are treated with a voice that sees their role as those of innocents. That's reflected in the past time sequences. They're less "written."”

— Chang-rae Lee

“The earth is warming at an alarming rate, we are running out of fossil fuels, and it is long past time for us to take action to correct these problems.”

— William J. Clinton

“The hours pass and the days and the months and the years, and the past time never returns.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero