Not here for a long time but a good time meme

In their battle to come to terms with the arrow of time, people have discovered different means to tame their enemy. They invented the clock, the calendar, and spent countless hours trying to figure out the concept of time. 

One thing after another, they put their fears into words, and we are left with a good deal of wise sayings.

So nowadays, whenever we struggle with scheduling our time, prioritizing, or being late, we can turn to Shakespeare or Leonardo da Vinci and see that similar issues troubled them too.

Luckily, you don’t have to spend hours combing through dusty books or hidden corners of the Internet to hear what the world’s best thinkers had to say. We already did that for you, so we present you with 200+ best time quotes.

Table of Contents

• 10 best time quotes
  • 1. “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” – Marthe Troly-Curtin
  • 2. “We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.” – John F. Kennedy
  • 3. “Time is what we want most but what we use worst.” – William Penn
  • 4. “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” – Robert H. Schuller
  • 5. “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.”  – Timothy Ferriss
  • 6. “Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.” – Bil Keane
  • 7. “Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” – William Shakespeare
  • 8. “The past always looks better than it was. It’s only pleasant because it isn’t here.” – Finley Peter Dunne
  • 9. “The time for action is now. It’s never too late to do something.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  • 10. “Time will not slow down when something unpleasant lies ahead.” – Harry Potter
• Time quotes on waiting for the perfect moment 
• Time and work quotes
• Time and life quotes 
• Time management quotes
• Multitasking quotes 
• Procrastination quotes
• Prioritizing your time quotes
• Using your time wisely quotes
• Scheduling your time quotes
• Taking your time quotes 
• Wasting time quotes
• Time is valuable quotes 
• Time is passing quotes 
• Funny quotes about time
• In the end: Find the time quote that speaks to you 

10 best time quotes

Whether the FOMO makes your anxiety go through the roof, or you just struggle with keeping up with your daily to-do list, the world’s greatest minds have already been there. 

We’ve selected 10 all-time best quotes to help you change your perspective on time and make the most out of your days. 

Let’s hear what the wise had to say.

1. “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” – Marthe Troly-Curtin

This famous line holds a very true sentiment. Within “the grind” culture today, we tend to think that whatever doesn’t make us money or is an investment in the future is a waste of time. Instead, we should realize that so long as we enjoy an activity, the amount of time spent on it doesn’t matter.

Enjoy your Netflix binge if it will ease the stress of the day; go window shopping for hours; nap out your afternoon. Enjoy your downtime guilt-free.

2. “We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.” – John F. Kennedy

Once we start understanding how time can be used as a tool to reach a goal, rather than something we passively rely on, life gets much easier.

3. “Time is what we want most but what we use worst.” – William Penn

Learning how to manage our time is a skill that requires constant work. We tend to lose a lot of time on unnecessary things – a minute here, ten minutes there, only to end up with an entire wasted day on meaningless tasks.

If we want to use our time in the best way possible, it’s important to practice prioritizing.

4. “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” – Robert H. Schuller

We more commonly hear “This too shall pass”, as a way of comforting ourselves during difficult times. But, what we often forget is that those moments are when we truly grow, harden, and evolve.

Simply waiting for a rough period to pass, we lose out on the opportunity to learn from the experience and become stronger. See what lessons you can learn from such a time.

5. “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.”  – Timothy Ferriss

Too many times we’ve heard stories of people regretting not taking a chance on their dreams because they weren’t good enough yet, or weren’t confident enough, or lacked the resources or support. When we keep promising ourselves that “someday” we’ll realize our passion, we effectively lose time.

It is better to take a risk and put in the effort to realize a dream because then we get the chance to learn and improve. Otherwise, we’re left with a perpetual “what if…”.

6. “Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.” – Bil Keane

Simple, but effective. It’s a good reminder that we should appreciate the time we have now because not everyone is lucky enough to have it.

Being appreciative of the moment you have right now does wonders for motivation and overcoming difficulties.

7. “Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” – William Shakespeare

In this quote from “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, Shakespeare alluded to the benefits of doing something earlier rather than missing an opportunity. It is so easy to put off things like writing up an email, checking a job listing, getting a medical check-up, and so on. We get lost in other things until it becomes too late.

Combat your procrastination, even if it means doing something way before the deadline.

8. “The past always looks better than it was. It’s only pleasant because it isn’t here.” – Finley Peter Dunne

Have you noticed how each generation tends to reminisce about their past, claiming it was much better in their day? As it turns out, it is a very human thing to do — our brains tend to embellish the good memories. The times haven’t changed, only our perception of them.

Take your past with a grain of salt, and at the same time remember to take some pressure off the time we live in.

9. “The time for action is now. It’s never too late to do something.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

It’s a very common saying that there are no age limits to anything in life. Morgan Freeman landed his first big role at 52, and Winston Churchill became Prime Minister at 66!

Let go of any fears or embarrassment that you are too young or too old to take up a career endeavor. The only mistake you can make is waiting so long, you give up in the end.

10. “Time will not slow down when something unpleasant lies ahead.” – Harry Potter

This is a thought from a fictional character, but an important one nonetheless. As he was about to leave his newfound family to rejoin the one that didn’t want him, Harry wanted to make the last good moments last as long as possible. With this thought, J.K. Rowling pointed out that, no matter how much we wish to stop time when hardship is on the horizon, we can’t go against it.

The biggest favor we can do ourselves is to accept the passage of time, both when good and bad things happen. The sooner we face our troubles, the sooner they’ll be over.

💡 Clockify Pro Tip

Still unsure why using time wisely is important, and how proper time management ties into it? Check out the answers in our guide: 

• The importance of time management

Time quotes on waiting for the perfect moment 

A lot of us struggle with making the right decision, and we tend to wait for a better moment to start something. How many times can we tell ourselves “the time is not right yet” or “I’m not ready yet” before it is too late to grab an opportunity?

Let’s see what some great minds had to say about that “perfect timing”.

1. “Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”

– George Herbert

2. “Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time,’ is to say, ‘I don’t want to.”

– Lao Tzu

3. “You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”

– Johnny Cash

4. “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

– John Wooden

5. “Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.”

– Eckhart Tolle

6. “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

7. “There are two types of patience. One is exercised in hard work and the other in idleness. Patience with hard work is the one that moves mountains. Patience in idleness moves nothing, not even cobwebs.”

— Israelmore Ayivor

8. “Your success will be in direct proportion to how you spend your ‘free’ time.”

— Mike Dunlap

9. “You ought to spend a little more time trying to make something of yourself and a little less time trying to impress people.”

— John Hughes, The Breakfast Club

10. “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”

— Bruce Lee

11. “You may delay, but time will not.”

— Benjamin Franklin

12. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

– Steve Jobs

13. “You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it.”

– Charles Buxton

14. “The way we spend our time defines who we are.”

— Jonathan Estrin

15. “Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.”

— Dale Carnegie

16. “This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

17. “In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking.”

— Sir John Lubbock

18. “They were at the wrong place at the wrong time naturally they became heroes.”

― George Lucas, Star Wars: A New Hope

19. “Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.”

― Earl Nightingale

20. “If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed, races won, or lasting happiness achieved.”

― Maurice Chevalier

Time and work quotes

We worry a lot about time in relation to our work, as well. Sometimes, our work days seem to stretch into eternity, and other times, they fly by leaving us with little time to finish up our tasks.

Perhaps a proper habit tracking app is the solution? 

Or maybe a motivating quote can help you learn the importance of tracking your time?

The following quotes are meant to give you another view of how you use your time at work — where you may be wasting it, investing it poorly, or how to prioritize your tasks better.

21. “Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.”

– Coco Chanel

22. “He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.”

― Victor Hugo

23. “One must work with time and not against it.“

– Ursula K. Le Guin

24. “The shorter way to do many things is to only do one thing at a time.”

— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

25. “You’ve got to know what you want. This is central to acting on your intentions. When you know what you want, you realize that all there is left then is time management. You’ll manage your time to achieve your goals because you clearly know what you’re trying to achieve in your life.”

– Patch Adams

26. “People are often so busy living that they never stopped to wonder why.”

– Terry Pratchett

27. “It’s not about the paycheck, it’s about respect, it’s about looking in the mirror and knowing that you’ve done something valuable with your day.”

– Dave Kovic

28. “Don’t be stomping on ants when you have elephants to feed.” 

– Peter Turla

29. “Be like a postage stamp — stick to one thing until you get there.”

— Josh Billings

30. “The great dividing line between success and failure can be expressed in five words: ‘I did not have time.’”

– Franklin Field

31. “A plan is what, a schedule is when. It takes both a plan and a schedule to get things done.”

— Peter Turla

32. “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.”

— Sam Levenson

33. “When I’m doing a movie, I’m not doing anything else. It’s all about the movie. I don’t have a wife. I don’t have a kid. Nothing can get in my way… I’ve made a choice, so far, to go on this road alone. Because this is my time. This is my time to make movies.”

– Quentin Tarantino

34. “Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.”

– Jean-Paul Sartre

35. “A person who has not done one half his day’s work by ten o’clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.”

― Emily Bronte

36. “My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.”

— Francine Jay

37. “I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now”

― Edna Mode, The Incredibles

38. “If you trust in yourself… and believe in your dreams… and follow your star… you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”

– Terry Pratchett

39. “We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.” 

– Alan Turing

40. “By faithfully working eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.”

― Robert Frost

41. “It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?”

― Henry David Thoreau

Time and life quotes 

Achieving a work-life balance in this day and age can be a struggle. Some are not sold on the “grind culture”, and highly value their private time, while others believe that 120 hours a week will allow them to reap rewards later.

So, whenever you start wondering how to achieve this balance, maybe one of these thoughts can be a reminder of how precious this time is.

42. “Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.” 

– Louisa May Alcott

43. “Life isn’t a matter of milestones, but of moments.”

– Rose Kennedy

44. “No such thing as spare time, no such thing as free time, no such thing as downtime. All you got is lifetime. Go.”

— Henry Rollins

45. “In life, when presented with any situation, breathe, take your time, focus and then decide what to do.”

— Rickson Gracie

46. “I always live in the present. The future I can’t know. The past I no longer have.”

—  Fernando Pessoa

47. “With technology and over-scheduling, we are forgetting to invest time in simple connective moments with others.”

— Michelle Gielan

48. “For disappearing acts, it’s hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.” 

– Doug Larson

49. “In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.”

– Paul Harvey

50. “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” 

– Andy Warhol

51. “At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.”

– Barbara Bush

52. “Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.”

– Robin S. Sharma

53. “Time sometimes flies like a bird, sometimes crawls like a snail; but a man is happiest when he does not even notice whether it passes swiftly or slowly.”

– Ivan Turgenev

54. “Stop and take your time to notice things and make those things you notice matter.”

— Cecelia Ahern

55. “One can find time for everything if one is never in a hurry.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

56. “Half our time is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.”

— Will Rogers

57. “People hurry so they can get to places faster, where they’d rather not be, so they can have more time to do things they’d rather not be doing.”

– Peter Turla

58. “Free time is a terrible thing to waste. Read a book.”

— E.A. Bucchianeri

59. “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

– J.R.R. Tolkien

60. “It’s surprising how much free time and productivity you gain when you lose the busyness in your mind.”

— Brittany Burgunder

61. “Time can’t be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different.”

— Jorge Luis Borges

62. “You can have it all. Just not all at once.”

– Oprah Winfrey

63. “Free time was the most precious time when you should be doing what you loved, or at least slowing down enough to remember what made your life worthwhile and happy.”

— Amy Tan

64. “There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.”

– Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

65. “You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.”

— Charles F. Kettering

66. “There’s only one thing more precious than our time and that’s who we spend it on.”

– Leo Christopher

67. “Too often man handles life as he does the bad weather. He whiles away the time as he waits for it to stop.”

– Alfred Polgar

Time management quotes

Time management is an invaluable skill every adult strives to perfect. We want to be better at using the time we are given, but it’s a lifelong learning process. 

There are no shortcuts, but with a little motivational boost and learning from our mistakes, we can solve our poor time management problems quicker. So long as we don’t waste time waiting to start, or fretting over the process.

68. “Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have.”

– John C. Maxwell

69. “Don’t make the same decision twice. Spend time and thought to make a solid decision the first time so that you don’t revisit the issue unnecessarily.”

— Bill Gates

70. “Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year – and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!”

— Anthony Robbins

71. “Rearranging your day around when you have the most energy is one simple way to work smarter instead of just harder.”

— Chris Bailey

72. “There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.”

— Brian Tracy

73. “What comes first, the compass or the clock? Before one can truly manage time (the clock), it is important to know where you are going, what your priorities and goals are, in which direction you are headed (the compass).”

— Unknown

74. “Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.”  

— Peter F. Drucker

75. “Time management requires self-discipline, self-mastery, and self-control more than anything else.”

— Brian Tracy

76. “The butterfly counts not months but moments and has time enough.”

— Rabindranath Tagore

💡 Clockify Pro Tip

Perfecting your time management skills doesn’t have to be a long, difficult journey. With time management apps, you can speed up the process and make it infinitely easier. Find out how Clockify can help you organize your time better and become more productive: 

• Time Management App

Multitasking quotes 

Only in recent years did we begin to abandon multitasking as a skill that provides positive results for one’s workflow. 

While we can undeniably divide our attention between several tasks, the truth remains they will more than likely both be done well enough. But, to really achieve great results means to concentrate on a single task at a time, and the following quotes only confirm this.

77. “Multitasking is overrated – I’d rather do one thing well than many things badly. Quality supersedes quantity every time.”

— Stewart Stafford

78. “The irony of multitasking is that it’s exhausting: when you’re doing two or three things simultaneously, you use more energy than the sum of energy required to do each task independently. You’re also cheating yourself because you’re not doing anything excellently.”

— Twyla Tharp

79. “To do two things at once is to do neither.”

— Publius Syrus

80. “Multitasking is like constantly pulling up a plant. This kind of constant shifting of your attention means that new ideas and concepts have no chance to take root and flourish.”

— Barbara Oakley

81. “Multitasking divides your attention and leads to confusion and weakened focus.”

— Deepak Chopra

82. “Multi-tasking arises out of distraction itself.”

— Marilyn vos Savant

83. “You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once.”

— Gary Keller

84. “One cannot manage too many affairs: like pumpkins in the water, one pops up while you try to hold down the other.”

— Chinese Proverb

85. “The secret to multitasking is that it isn’t actually multitasking. It’s just extreme focus and organization.”

— Joss Whedon

86. “The art of multitasking must become a habit to be enjoyed and nothing else.”

— Nirmal Jain

87. “Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle. That’s the intellectual environment of the Internet.”

— Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows

88. “I’m a multitasking procrastinator. I can put off all kinds of things all at once.”

— Tony Andrukaitis

89. “Multitasking, when it comes to paying attention, is a myth.”

— John Medina

90. “Eating toast in the shower is the ultimate multitask.”

— Harry Styles

91. “There’s no multitasking with the moment.”

— A.D. Aliwat

92. “We are the generation capable of doing many things at once, without enjoying any of them.”

— Dinesh Kumar Biran

93. “Doing one thing at a time is a recipe for a life that won’t keep up with your dreams.”

— Monroe Mann

Procrastination quotes

Procrastination, sadly, never went out of style. If you were used to putting things off at college, chances are, you are still doing it even after graduation, at least for one hour a day. 

We all know how difficult it is to leave the pesky little habit of procrastinating behind, so we’ve collected some of the best sayings on procrastination to inspire you to wave it goodbye.

94. “A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.”

— Baltasar Gracian

95. “Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday and avoiding today.”

— Wayne Dyer

96. “We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.”

— Seneca

97. “Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.”

— M. Scott Peck

98. “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”

— Alexander Graham Bell

99. “Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand, and melting like a snowflake.”

— Sir Francis Bacon

100. “Dare to be wise; begin! He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.”

— Horace

101. “If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.”

— Rita Mae Brown

102. “Delay always breeds danger, and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.”

— Miguel De Cervantes

103. “Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.”

— William James

Prioritizing your time quotes

The core of time management is learning how to prioritize. When you decide what is important to you and your career, scheduling suddenly becomes easier. You know what needs to be set aside, completely forgotten, or pushed to the forefront. And, it’s no new science, either. 

Take a look at the following section.

104. “If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.”

— Lee Iacocca

105. “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

106. “There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.”

— Brian Tracy

107. “The most important thing in life is knowing the most important things in life.”

— David F. Jakielo

108. “We don’t drift in good directions. We discipline and prioritize ourselves there.”

— Andy Stanley

109. “Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.”

— Peter Drucker

110. “You gotta make it a priority to make your priorities a priority.”

— Richie Norton

111. “I don’t have time is just saying it’s not a priority.”

— Naval Ravikant

Using your time wisely quotes

Aside from mastering your time management, it’s important to learn how to use time wisely. Making wise moves means understanding which priorities are important, and which ones have far-reaching consequences that will improve your life greatly. 

Here are some quotes that might help you make better choices.

112. “Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”

— H. Jackson Brown Junior

113. “It’s important to set your own goals and work hard to achieve them.”

— Yuichiro Miura

114. “It is not enough to take steps which may someday lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

115. “Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.”

— Charles Richards

116. “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

117. “Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it.”

— Anonymous

118. “Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.”

— Lord Chesterfield

119. “Where your attention goes, your time goes.”

— Idowu Koyenikan

120. “The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you can’t save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly.”

— Benjamin Hoff

121. “One can only forget about time by making use of it.”

— Charles Baudelaire

122. “The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

— Jack London

123. “As we speak, cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.”

— Horace

Scheduling your time quotes

The only way to really master our time management is to become really good at scheduling and planning our tasks. Since we are all different, and each one of us will have a different approach, there’s a little nugget of wisdom for everyone in the following section.

124. “Begin with the end in mind.”

— Stephen Covey

125. “No matter where I am in the world or what’s on my schedule, I begin each day by reading an inspirational book and then meditating and praying. I adopted this healthy habit many years ago to ensure that my first thoughts of the day were positive.”

— Doreen Virtue

126. “Starting every year, before I booked anything, agreed to any meetings or conferences, we’d sit down with my assistant and we looked at our lives first. We planned that out first, and then what was left would be left for work.”

— Michelle Obama

127. “I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.”

— Golda Meir

128. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

— Abraham Lincoln

129. “Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”

— Alan Lakein

130. “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four-hour days.”

— Zig Ziglar

131. “The best time to start was last year. Failing that, today will do”

― Chris Guillebeau

💡 Clockify Pro Tip

Scheduling is crucial for practicing smart time management. Luckily, today we have smartphones and web-based apps like Clockify that help us in that pursuit. Learn how Clockify can help you automate the scheduling process and save time you would otherwise waste on minor details.

• The most popular free timesheet app for employees
• Employee & Project Scheduling Software

Taking your time quotes 

We’ve had quotes about not waiting forever to make the right move, whether in your career or your life. 

However, not everything has to be done as soon as possible. Some things just require time. Moreover, being patient is sometimes much better than rushing into an opportunity.

132. “There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

133. “The important thing is to take your time and not get stressed.”

— Diane von Furstenberg

134. “Take your time. There’s no rush to be good or renowned.”

— Kathryn Budig

135. “If you’re really looking for something in particular, it helps to take your time.”

— Billy Gibbons

136. “When you take the small roads you see the life that goes on there, and this makes your own life larger.”

― Elizabeth Berg

137. “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

138. “Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.”

— Wyatt Earp

139. “The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”

— Abraham Lincoln

140. “Haste in every business brings failures.”

— Herodotus

141. “People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.”

— Seneca

142. “Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.”

― Voltaire

Wasting time quotes

When you’re trying to make the most out of your time, the biggest fear is that you’re wasting precious time. 

But, how do you know what counts as wasted time, and how do you stop dwelling on it? Here are a few quotes that could help.

143. “Regret for wasted time is more wasted time.”

— Mason Cooley

144. “Time = life; therefore, waste your time and waste your life, or master your time and master your life.”

— Alan Lakein

145. “We say we waste time, but that is impossible. We waste ourselves.”

— Alice Boch

146. “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

147. “Make use of time, let not advantage slip.”

— William Shakespeare

148. “Realize that if you have time to whine and complain about something, then you have the time to do something about it.”

— Anthony J. D’Angelo

149. “You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.”

— Charles F. Kettering

150. “Life is flying by. You don’t have time to waste another minute being negative, offended or bitter. If someone did you wrong, get over it and move forward.”

— Joel Osteen

151. “The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”

— Michael Altshuler

152. “Time stays long enough for those who use it.”

— Leonardo Da Vinci

153. “Waste your money and you’re only out of money, but waste your time and you’ve lost a part of your life.”

— Michael LeBoeuf

154. “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”

— Charles Darwin

155. “It’s not that we have a little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it.”

— Seneca

156. “He who knows most grieves most for wasted time.”

— Dante Alighieri

157. “Time is the one thing that can never be retrieved. One may lose and regain a friend; one may lose and regain money; opportunity once spurned may come again; but the hours that are lost in idleness can never be brought back to be used in gainful pursuits”

— C.R. Lawton

158. “Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.”

— Jean de la Bruyère

159. “Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.”

— William Shakespeare

160. “Four things come not back, the spoken word, the sped arrow, time past, and the neglected opportunity.”

— Arabian Proverb

Time is valuable quotes 

Did you know that an average internet user spends up to 145 minutes a day just scrolling through social media? 

Is an average internet user aware of the value of their time? Probably yes, but most of us still tend to waste our time aimlessly scrolling through our feeds. 

Instead of being an average internet user, try being better than that. The following sayings could help you reconsider the worth of your time.

161. “Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.”

— Thomas Edison

162. “Every second is of infinite value.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

163. “An inch of time is an inch of gold but you can’t buy that inch of time with an inch of gold.”

— Chinese Proverb

164. “Time is a gift that most of us take for granted. We get so caught up in the busyness of our daily lives that we rarely stop and take a serious look at how we’re spending this gift.” 

— Cheryl Richardson

165. “One realizes the full importance of time only when there is little of it left. Every man’s greatest capital asset is his unexpired years of productive life.”

— P. W. Litchfield

166. “My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.”

— Steve Jobs

167. “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

— Leo Tolstoy

168. “Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.”

— Theophrastus

169. “Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.”

— Harvey MacKay

Time is passing quotes 

We are all aware that time flies when we’re having fun, and it moves at snail’s pace whenever we are bored to tears. 

Although we would all happily fast forward the minutes we spent standing in a bank queue, sometimes, we would prefer to hit the pause button and savor every moment we can. Yet, the clock still goes on. 

However, there’s no need to despair over this fact. When we are aware of time passing, we can make the most out of our days and appreciate every minute. 

Take a look at our selection of quotes in case you need a reminder.

170. “The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.”

– Schopenhauer

171. “Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.”

— Alice Walker

172. “All our sweetest hours fly fastest.”

— Virgil

173. “The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”

— C.S. Lewis

174. “Time goes faster the more hollow it is.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

175. “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough”

— Albert Einstein

176. “Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

177. “Time goes, you say, Ah no! Alas, Time stays, we go.”

— Henry Austin Dobson

178. “The long unmeasured pulse of time moves everything. There is nothing hidden that it cannot bring to light, nothing once known that may not become unknown.”

— Sophocles

179. “Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

180. “Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.”

— Jorge Luis Borges

181. “Time flies. It’s up to you to be the navigator.”

— Robert Orben

Funny quotes about time

Last, but not least, here are some witty and humorous quotes about time. 

Not all sayings and thoughts have to be profound or move you into changing your life from the ground up. Some, like the ones on our next list, are there to entertain. So, enjoy!

182. “Time and tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of 30.”

— Robert Frost

183. “Never waste any time you can spend sleeping.”

— Frank H. Knight

184. “Time is a great healer, but a poor beautician.”

— Lucille S. Harper

185. “I’m going to stop putting things off, starting tomorrow!”

— Sam Levenson

186. “Time is money, especially when you’re talking to a lawyer, or buying a commercial.”

— Frank Dane

187. “With enough time, you can get used to almost anything.”

— Katherine Applegate

188. “So little time and so little to do.”

— Oscar Levant

189. “The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.”

— G.K. Chesterton

190. “Free time is death to the anxious, and thank goodness I don’t have any of it right now.”

— Jon Stewart

191. “Enjoy life. There’s plenty of time to be dead.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

192. “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.”

— Leonard Bernstein

193. “I am definitely going to take a course on time management — just as soon as I can work it into my schedule.”

— Louis Boone

194. “No man goes before his time unless the boss leaves early.”

— Groucho Marx

195. “Punctuality is the thief of time”

— Oscar Wilde

196. “Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately, it kills all its pupils.”

— Hector Berlioz

197. “Time will explain it all. He is a talker, and needs no questioning before he speaks.”

— Euripides

198. “They say I’m old-fashioned and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!”

— Dr. Seuss

💡 Clockify Pro Tip

If you’d like to laugh a bit more, check out our selection of the best timesheet and payroll memes:

• 140+ Best timesheet and payroll memes

In the end: Find the time quote that speaks to you 

No matter how many inspirational time quotes we read, they’re all just clever lines unless we take them to heart.

However, every now and then we might stumble upon at least one quote that speaks to us more than others. This is when a wise saying serves its best purpose — it brings about change.

If you have found at least one quote that led you to carefully think about how you spend your time, consider yourself lucky and seize your day! 

✉️ Do you find quotes about time inspiring enough to redo your everyday routine? Are there more wise thoughts on time worth mentioning? Send us your favorite quote at [email protected] for a chance to be featured in this one or one of our future articles.