Quotes & Sayings About Having Little Time Left

I will not make a sonnet from
Each little private martyrdom;
Nor out of love left dead with time
Construe a stanza or a rime.

We do not suffer to afford
The searched for and the subtle word:
There is too much that may not be
At the caprice of prosody. — Joseph Auslander

At the end of a criminal's life, it's always the small mistake, the coincidence, the lark. The time we got too comfortable, the time we slipped up, the time someone aimed a little to the left.
I've heard Grandad's war stories a thousand times. How they finally got Mo. How Mandy almost got away. How Charlie fell.
Birth to grave, we know it'll be us one day. Our tragedy is that we forget it might be someone else first. — Holly Black

His heart was leaping against his ribs like a frantic bird. Perhaps it knew it had little time left, perhaps it was determined to fulfill a lifetime's beats before the end. — J.K. Rowling

3 May. Bistritz. - Left Munich at 8:35 P. M, on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. — Bram Stoker

I believe we accept too indifferently the fact of infantile amnesia - that is, the failure of memory for the first years of our lives - and fail to find in it a strange riddle. We forget of what great intellectual accomplishments and of what complicated emotions a child of four years is capable. We really ought to wonder why the memory of later years has, as a rule, retained so little of these psychic processes, especially as we have every reason for assuming that these same forgotten childhood activities have not glided off without leaving a trace in the development of the person, but that they have left a definite influence for all future time. — Sigmund Freud

Time was with most of us, when Christmas Day, encircling all our limited world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped everything and everyone round the Christmas fire, and make the little picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete. — Charles Dickens

When Mr. Jackson had to leave the kids behind at the house for a business meeting, they would always come to the door as a group to see him off. They'd follow him right to the car and they'd each say, "I love you, Daddy." And he'd say, "I love you more." That was their little ritual every time he left the house. And when he got home, didn't matter if he was gone for two hours or twenty minutes, they'd run to meet him, screaming, "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! — Bill Whitfield

I am so very proud of you - your openness, your ambition, your aggression, your intelligence. My job, in the little time we have left together, is to match that intelligence with wisdom. Part of that wisdom is understanding what you were given - a city where gay bars are unremarkable, a soccer team on which half the players speak some other language. What I am saying is that it does not all belong to you, that the beauty in you is not strictly yours and is largely the result of enjoying an abnormal amount of security in your black body. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Gentle Gardener
I'd like to leave but daffodils to mark my little way,
To leave but tulips red and white behind me as I stray;
I'd like to pass away from earth and feel I'd left behind
But roses and forget-me-nots for all who come to find.
I'd like to sow the barren spots with all the flowers of earth,
To leave a path where those who come should find but gentle mirth;
And when at last I'm called upon to join the heavenly throng
I'd like to feel along my way I'd left no sign of wrong.
And yet the cares are many and the hours of toil are few;
There is not time enough on earth for all I'd like to do;
But, having lived and having toiled, I'd like the world to find
Some little touch of beauty that my soul had left behind. — Edgar A. Guest

It's the luxury of time that lets me in some ways now spoil myself. I get my workout in every day. I get a good, long sleep every day. I won't say they're guilty pleasures. When I first left Microsoft, I would say I spent the better part of a year saying, "OK, how do I get as busy and crazy and manic as I was at Microsoft?" Since then I said, "No, I'll make a bigger contribution in this phase of my life by being able to pick and choose, not being so manic, having time to step back, a little more time for what I'll call discernment rather than just activity." — Steve Ballmer

By now the night tastes of nothing but ash. But nicotine substitutes for food, nicotine substitutes for sleep, and there is so little time left for the future, once all the demands of the present are taken care of. — Francis Spufford

Wake up! If you knew for certain you had a terminal illness
if you had little time left to live
you would waste precious little of it! Well, I'm telling you ... you do have a terminal illness: It's called birth. You don't have more than a few years left. No one does! So be happy now, without reason
or you will never be at all. — Dan Millman

I am the father that killed his son, the fine green branch; there is no hand or shelter to help me.
I am a raven that has no home; I am a boat going from wave to wave; I am a ship that has lost its rudder; I am the apple left on the tree; it is little I thought of falling from it; grief and sorrow will be with me from this time. — Richard Barber

Gus flipped open the egg carton and handed Isaac an egg. Isaac tossed it, missing the car by a solid forty feet.
"A little to the left," Gus said.
"My throw was a little to the left or I need to aim a little to the left?"
"Aim left." Isaac swiveled his shoulders.
"Lefter," Gus said. Isaac swiveled again.
"Yes. Excellent. And throw hard."
Gus handed him another egg, and Isaac hurled it, the egg arcing over the car and smashing against the slow-sloping roof of the house. "Bull's-eye!" Gus said.
"Really?" Isaac asked excitedly.
"No, you threw it like twenty feet over the car. Just, throw hard, but keep it low. And a little right of where you were last time."
Isaac reached over and found an egg himself from the carton Gus cradled. He tossed it, hitting a tailing.
"Yes!" Gus said. "Yes! TAILLIGHT! — John Green

He'd solved the problem you see - and that's the way some people are. They are ceaselessly finding ways of getting to grips with the world, of surmounting certain antipathies so as to apply themselves to it that little bit more. It's quite admirable really, how they refuse to let anything come between them and the rest of it - Oh, the rest of it! Sort of there, sort of hovering there all the time. Different ideas come to me now and again - strategies I suppose that might inculcate a little more compatibility. I just don't know if I'll ever get the hang of it if you want to know - as a matter of fact I think I've left it a little too late to cultivate the necessary outlook. — Claire-Louise Bennett

The human race is a monotonous thing. Most people work most of the time in order to live, and the little freedom they have left over frightens them so, that they will do anything to get rid of it. Oh, the regimentation of mankind! — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

O ye, who see perplexities over your heads, beneath your feet, and to the right and left of you; you will be an eternal enigma unto yourselves until ye become humble and joyful as children. Then will ye find Me, and having found Me in yourselves, you will rule over worlds, and looking out from the great world within to the little world without, you will bless everything that is, and find all is well with time and with you. KRISHNA. — Leo Tolstoy

In my opinion, kids need their parents more in their teens than when they were younger, and that's exactly the time parents think their jobs are done and stop paying close attention. A ten-year-old has more common sense than four sixteen-year-olds put together. Hormones begin shooting every which way, and teenaged nervous systems malfunction, causing them to lose their reasoning abilities. "Oh, I don't know," she said, hesitantly. "I'd rather not. I'm a little busy." I bet. I decided to play my hunch. "If you don't answer my questions, I'll have to find your parents and tell them." I managed a clear tone of implied threat and leaned to the left so I could stare behind her. "You wouldn't like that, would you? — Deb Baker

He lifted a hand and turned and went on. He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him. Walking down the little street for the last time he felt everything fall away from him. Until there was nothing left of him to shed. It was all gone. No trail, no track. The spoor petered out down there on Front Street where things he'd been lay like paper shadows, a few here, they thin out. After that nothing. A few rumors. Idle word on the wind. Old news years in traveling that you could not put stock in. — Cormac McCarthy

I started teaching yoga in 1974 in Colorado, I was living in Winter Park, and I started teaching skiers. At that point I was teaching more of the Sivananda system and just pushing it up a little bit to make it a little more rajasic a little more active, a little more physical. People would come, and feel great, and by the time I left Colorado in 1980 I'd taught pretty much everyone in town - the ski patrol, ski instructors, the bar owners. — Beryl Bender Birch

And then there was Tick. Brave little Tick, who had flown into the faces of an army of rats to save his baby sister. Tick - who never spoke much. Tick - who shared her food. Tick - who was after all just a roach. Just a roach who had given all the time she had left so that Boots could have more.
Gregor pressed Boots's fingers against his lips and felt scalding tears begin to slide down his cheeks. He hadn't cried, not the whole time he'd been down here, and there had been plenty of bad stuff. But somehow Tick's sacrifice had crushed whatever thin shell remained between him and sorrow. — Suzanne Collins

Perhaps it was the demands of having to take on me and the farm that left so little time for the gentler things. Such small things: a kiss goodnight, a word of affection ... a child can starve with a full plate. — Nora Roberts

Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done. — W. H. Auden

Closing my eyes, I lowered the wall around my Mori.
'Are you okay? Did I hurt you?'
'Solmi hurt', it replied, still a little upset.
I almost rolled my eyes. One-track mind. 'Solmi is okay', I assured it. 'Did the glow burn you?'
'No burn'. The demon moved forward a little. 'Again?' It asked eagerly.
'Not yet. Soon.'
I opened my eyes and stared at the pretty little lake as I tried to make sense of it all. For the first time, I left the wall down, and my Mori and I sat quietly together, not joined, but as companions. I sighed in contentment. 'This is nice, demon. I could get used to this.'
It curled up like a happy cat. 'Me too. — Karen Lynch

Oh, my little sister. What have you done?" "What?" I asked innocently. "It seems that something of great value to the Scholar has disappeared. At exactly the same time you did. He and the Chancellor have turned the citadelle upside down looking for it. All surreptitiously of course, because whatever was taken apparently isn't a catalogued piece of the royal collection. At least that's the rumor among the servants." I pressed my hands together and grinned. I couldn't hide my glee. Oh, how I wish I had seen the Scholar's face when he opened what he thought was his secret drawer and found it empty. Almost empty, that is. I'd left a little something for him. — Mary E. Pearson

You have little time left, and none of it for crap. A fine state. I would say that the best of us always comes out when we are against the wall, when we feel the sword dangling overhead. Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way. — Carlos Castaneda

She was parting from these Wilcoxes for the second time. Paul and his mother, ripple and great wave, had flowed into her life and ebbed out of it forever. The ripple had left no traces behind: the wave had strewn at her feet fragments torn from the unknown. A curious seeker, she stood for a while at the verge of the sea that tells so little, but tells a little, and watched the outgoing of this last tremendous tide. — E. M. Forster

The mullein had finished blooming, and stood up out of the pastures like dusty candelabra. The flowers of Queen Anne's lace had curled up into birds' nests, and the bee balm was covered with little crown-shaped pods. In another month
no, two, maybe
would come the season of the skeletons, when all that was left of the weeds was their brittle architecture. But the time was not yet. The air was warm and bright, the grass was green, and the leaves, and the lazy monarch butterflies were everywhere. — Elizabeth Enright

Make no mistake, our military readiness is already suffering, ... According to a recent RAND study, the Army has been stretched so thin that active-duty soldiers are now spending one of every two years abroad, leaving little of the Army left in any appropriate condition to respond to crises that may emerge elsewhere in the world. In an era in which we confront a globally networked enemy, and at a time when nuclear weapons proliferation is an urgent threat, continuing on our present course is irresponsible at best. — Russ Feingold

Why am I the expert all of a sudden?"
"Of the two of us, you have more stalking experience."
He leaned back. "Really?"
"Yes. When you let yourself into my apartment before we were dating, did you fidget while you watched me?"
"Will you let it go?" he growled.
"No."
"I didn't fidget. I checked on you to make sure you hadn't gotten yourself killed. I wanted to know that you weren't dying slowly of your wounds, because you have no sense and half of the time you couldn't afford a medmage. I didn't stand there and watch you. I came in, made sure you were okay, and left. It wasn't creepy."
"It was a little creepy."
"It worked, didn't it?"
"Worked how?"
"You're still alive."
"Yes, of course, take all the credit. — Ilona Andrews

He stood up. His heart was leaping against his ribs like a frantic bird. Perhaps it knew it had little time left, perhaps it was determined to fulfill a lifetime's beats before the end. He did not look back as he closed the office door. — J.K. Rowling

A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

At school I was called Fred, which is my middle name. At that time, Fred was considered to be a bit of a horrible name, so that's why. Otherwise, I was called Titchy because I was little. I was still only about 4ft something when I left school. I grew a foot under glass in my first year as a gardener. It's really quite amazing what sun and manure can do. — Alan Titchmarsh

Keep your mouth shut around me," he says, his voice low, "or I will do this again, only next time, I'll shove it right through your esophagus."
"That's enough," Evelyn says. Edward drops the fork and releases Peter. Then he walks across the room and sits next to the person who called him "Eddie" a moment before.
"I don't know if you know this," Tobias says, "but Edward is a little unstable."
"I'm getting that," I say.
"That Drew guy, who helped Peter perform that butter-knife maneuver," Tobias says. "Apparently when he got kicked out of Dauntless, he tried to join the same group of factionless Edward was a part of. Notice that you haven't seen Drew anywhere."
"Did Edward kill him?" I say.
"Nearly," Tobias says. "Evidently that's why that other transfer--Myra, I think her name was?--left Edward. Too gentle to bear it. — Veronica Roth

Each time a man leaves a woman, he takes a piece of her heart with him when he goes. The next man comes along, and takes another piece, this time a big one. And then, she meets another. And he takes a piece. One day we look up and we've got this shriveled little sliver of a heart left, and that's all we've got to offer. After that, the men we meet call us bitches and cunts, and man haters. They think we're hardened, but we're not. It's just that we're heartless. And we're heartless because of you. — Scott Hildreth

I had given myself a sort of early retirement when I left the scene in 1985. All of the people in my family worked until they dropped, including my father. I decided to take a little time to enjoy life. I traveled, built my dream house, rescued a few dogs. My return to music, and acting, was deliberate, part of my musical arc. — J. D. Souther

A ship doesn't look quite the same from inside, does it? A wise sailor,' Robert said, fanning his arms, 'will one time stand upon the shore and watch his ship sail by, that he shall from then on appreciate not being left behind.' He grinned and added, 'Eh?'

George gave him a little grimace. 'Who's that? Melville? Or C.S. Forrester?'

It's me!' Robert complained. "Can't I be profound now and again?'

Hell, no.'

Why not?'

Because you're still alive. Gotta be dead to be profound.'

You're unchivalrous, George. — Diane Carey

Would you want to rule the world?" Eve asked Roarke. "Or even the country?"

"Good God, no. Too much work for too little remuneration, and very little time left over to enjoy your kingdom." He glanced over. "I much prefer owning as much of the world as humanly possible. But running it? No thanks. — J.D. Robb