It’s About Time

January 1, 2001

As the new millennium begins (2000 was the last year of the prior millennium), some quotes on time:

Shakespeare has Jaques say (As You Like It, Act II, sc vii):

“And then he drew a dial from his poke,
And looking at it with lack-luster eye,
Says very wisely, ‘It is ten o’ clock.
Thus we may see,’ quoth he, ‘how the world wags
’Tis but an hour since it was nine,
And after one hour more, ’twill be eleven
And so from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale.’ ”

The following timely quotations are drawn from the Commonplace Book, “American Scholar”, Autumn 1999:

“Time will bring to light whatever is hidden, and it will conceal and cover up what is now shining with greatest splendor.”
Horace, 5 B.C.

“I propose to define time as the social interpretation of reality with respect to the difference between past and future.”
Nicklas Luhman, 1976

“The long run is a misleading guide to our current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.
John Maynard Keynes, 1923

“For new nobility is but the act of power; but ancient nobility is the act of time.”
Francis Bacon, 1597

“Oh, yes, I’d do it all again; the spirit is willing yet; I feel the same desire to do the work but the flesh is weak. It’s too bad that our bodies wear out while our interests are just as strong as ever.”
Susan B. Anthony, on her deathbed, 1906.

And to conclude with a famous line from the Bard of Avon, when Macbeth says:

“Come what come may.
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”