Quotes about Time

“For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of — to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone.”

— To the Lighthouse (1927)

Mrs Ramsay's moment of solitary respite. Woolf captures the deep need for a self that exists apart from social roles — the luxury of simply being.

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

— The Tempest (1611)

Prospero's speech in Act IV. Often read as Shakespeare's own farewell to the stage — life as a brief performance between two silences.

“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

— As You Like It (1599)

Jaques's famous speech in Act II. The theatrum mundi metaphor — life as performance — becomes Shakespeare's commentary on identity as a series of roles.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

— In Search of Lost Time (The Captive) (1923)

Proust's argument that perception is more important than geography. Travel changes nothing if you bring the same eyes; transformation happens through altered vision.

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”

— In Search of Lost Time (Swann's Way) (1913)

Memory is creative, not archival. Proust's entire project rests on this insight — what we remember is shaped by who we've become since the event.

“We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”

— In Search of Lost Time (The Fugitive) (1925)

Proust's anti-avoidance principle. Grief, jealousy, and loss cannot be shortcut — they must be lived through completely before they release their hold.

“The only true paradise is a paradise we have lost.”

— In Search of Lost Time (Time Regained) (1927)

The definitive Proustian statement on nostalgia. Happiness is only recognized in retrospect — the present is always too close to be seen clearly.

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

— Dubliners ("The Dead") (1914)

The closing lines of "The Dead," often called the greatest short story in English. Snow as equalizer — covering everything, erasing distinctions between living and dead.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

— The Great Gatsby (1925)

The novel's final line — one of the most famous in American literature. The metaphor of rowing against the current captures the impossibility of escaping history and memory.

“It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

Alice on the impossibility of return. Carroll anticipates process philosophy — the self is not a fixed entity but a moving stream. Yesterday's Alice is gone.