Quotes & Sayings About How We Spend Our Time

How we seek to spend our time may depend on how much time we perceive ourselves to have. — Atul Gawande

To spend more money, you have to have more money, but time is fixed and we all have the same amount to spare. How we choose to spend it can make a significant difference on the impact we have in our careers or in the world. — Simon Sinek

Mate after mate we find ourselves trying to adapt to who they want us to be till eventually we lose our true identity. We spend countless years learning each mate but never take the time to learn ourselves. In the end we know our mates better than we know ourselves. If and when the mate walks away we are stuck living with a stranger, ourselves. If u can't find comfort in urself how can anyone else find comfort in u? — Al-Saadiq Banks

Time is the coin of our live. We must take care how we spend it. — Carl Sandburg

The reason we don't know what happens for sure when we die is that if you knew, you would essentially have nothing to live for. Your life would be nothing more than a transitional period, which it is, but because of the fact that we don't know when, how and why death exists, we can spend less time worrying about death itself and rather focus on our borrowed time on earth. — Juri Hansen

If we accept and internalize the fact of our own mortality, then, by definition, we have to deal with the essential questions of how we live and spend our allotted time. We have to stop procrastinating, pretending that we have forever to do what we want to do and be what we long to be. — Surya Das

I took in all of the stuff I could absorb about how to be a better husband, how to be a better father. As I did, I was struck by something. As men, we will study how to be the best architect, the best football player, the best actor. We'll spend all the time we can find on our careers. But we need to be spending more time studying how to be a great husband, how to be a great father, how to be a great man. — Terry Crews

Why we ask questions: Questions are the basis of human freedom. Our mind, as a part of our self experience, is curious and always challenging that part of us that can think about the essence of things. We interpret our lives all the time - with unconscious deep conceptualization - and these conceptualization raise questions.
Why did I feel the way I felt yesterday when I spoke with X? What is the meaning of my answer? Why I chose to spend time in X's company and not Y's? And how it changed my attitude toward Y?
(Interesting paragraph I translated from the Hebrew edition) — Christopher Bollas

We aren't designed by God to seek the image of others; we are designed to seek him. When we spend time on social media focusing on how well others present their lives, we are, to use one of my father's baseball analogies, taking our eye off the ball. — Craig Groeschel

How we feel about our own self, how well or little we know our own self, whether we feel alive inside, largely determine the quality of the time we spend alone, as well as the quality of the relationships we have with other people. — Stephanie Dowrick

We spend vast amounts of our time an emotional energy in learning how not to be natural and in eluding the trap of our own nature and it therefore becomes very difficult to know exactly what is meant when we speak of the unnatural. It is not possible to have it both ways, to use nature at one time as the final arbiter of human conduct and at another to oppose her as angrily as we do. — James Baldwin

Our legacy is how we spend our time and who we spend it with. — Jim Stengel

We are very hip on the fact that America's always No. 1. On this we are not, in terms of the number of women in our legislative branches and obviously as head of state. We need to push on that. I hate to say this: It isn't all men's fault. I think some of it is our own attitude and approach. Some of it very healthy, that women want to make choices about their lives and how they want to spend their time, and what they value. — Madeleine Albright

There is always an incredible amount of things vying for our attention at home. I'm not saying you should never do the laundry, or pay attention to the kids, but for most of us, we're not present to how much time we spend on those. Anything that wastes your time is a waste of money. — Rory Vaden

It's not the time we spend but how we spend the time that truly tells our story. — Tonya Hurley

One of the most astonishing things about Jesus is that as God he actually chose to come into our fallen, sick, twisted, unjust, evil, cruel, painful world and be with us to suffer like us and for us. Meanwhile, we spend most of our time trying to figure out how to avoid the pain and evil of this world while reading dumb books about the rapture just hoping to get out. — Mark Driscoll

Juggling is about throwing, not catching That's why it's so difficult to learn how to juggle. We're conditioned to make the catch, to hurdle whatever is in our way to save the day, to - no matter what - not drop the ball. If you spend your time and energy and focus on catching, it's inevitable that your throws will suffer. You'll get plenty of positive feedback for the catches you make, but you'll always be behind, because the throws you manage to make will be ever less useful. Paradoxically, if you get better at throwing, the catches take care of themselves. The only way to get better at throwing, though, is to throw. Throw poorly, throw again. Throw well, throw again. Get good at throwing first. — Seth Godin

When you're alive, you don't dwell on how you're going to spend your time once you're dead. You just figure you're gone, and the rest will pretty much take care of itself. Or you think you're not really going to die. You're going to be the first person in the history of the world who doesn't have to. Maybe that's some kind of lie our brains tell us to keep us from going crazy while we're alive. — Margaret Stohl

It is astonishing, how many difficulties clear up without any effort when the inner life gets straightened out. If half the time we spend trying to fix up outward things were spent in getting our hearts right, we would be delighted with the result. Strange as it may seem, harmony within our hearts depends mostly upon our getting into harmony with God. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Most of us spend our time seeking happiness and security without acknowledging the underlying purpose of our search. Each of us is looking for a path back to the present: We are trying to find good enough reasons to be satisfied now. Acknowledging that this is the structure of the game we are playing allows us to play it differently. How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives. Mystics and contemplatives have made this claim for ages - but a growing body of scientific research now bears it out. — Sam Harris

I'm new to money. I spent most of my existence without it. I know how to live frugally. If we were to lose it all tomorrow, we'd change our hours, move out of the city, and make other adjustments, just like my parents did. Money removes many stressors, but it has not changed my level of happiness, nor who I am. It changes how I spend my time. — Megyn Kelly

It's a funny thing, how much time we spend planning our lives. We so convince ourselves of what we want to do, that sometimes we don't see what we're meant to do. — Susan Gregg Gilmore

We dare not trim stones to make God an altar, for if we do we ruin everything. We would spend time bringing people to the altar and saying, "Look at those beautiful stones we trimmed!" We merely need to accept the work that God has done for us in Christ. The object of His restrictions is to help us see how wonderful He is and to spend the rest of our lives rendering true worship to Him. — Max Anders

How do I know what I love the most? By looking at my life outside of Sunday morning. What do I enjoy the most? What do I spend the most time doing? Where does my mind drift to when I don't have anything to do? What am I passionate about? What do I spend my money on? What makes me angry when I don't get it? What do I feel depressed without? What do I fear losing the most? Our answers to those questions will lead us straight to the God or gods we love and worship. — Bob Kauflin

Resist nothing. Like the Tibetan monk who once told me that he found peace by saying yes to all that happened. I met him again years later and reminded him of what he'd said. He laughed. "Perhaps," he said. "It does fit with my life philosophy." He had a lightness to him that is rare. His laugh, genuine. I almost expected him to levitate. If you think about it, how much time do we spend in our heads wishing things were another way, beating ourselves up, beating others up, crafting a different past, wishing for a different future? All of that is resistance. All of that is pain. Peace is letting it be. Letting life flow, letting emotions flow through you. If you don't fight them, they pass through quickly and you feel better. — Kamal Ravikant

Be ruthless in one important area: Yourself. Be ruthless about your commitment to Christ. Be ruthless about your intellectual growth. Be ruthless about finishing well. One of the biggest areas we should be ruthless about is our time. How much time do you spend complaining about your problems to people who can't help you solve them? How much time do you talk when you should be doing? When it comes to others, be gracious. But when it comes to you and your time, be ruthless. — Phil Cooke

judgments in choosing our friends, in choosing how we will spend our time and our money, and, of course, in choosing an eternal companion. Some of these intermediate judgments are surely among those the Savior referenced when he taught that "the weightier matters of the law" include judgment (Matthew 23:23). — Dallin H. Oaks

Of course we will send postcards to Nutsawoo. And we shall bring him back a present as well. In fact,' she went on, with the instinctive knack every good governess has for turning something enjoyable into a lesson, and vice versa, 'I will expect all three of you to practice your writing by keeping a journal of our trip so that Nutsawoo may know how we spend our days. Why, by the time we return, he will think he has been to London himself! He will be the envy of all his little squirrel friends,' she declared.
Penelope had no way of knowing if this last statement was true. Could squirrels feel envy? Would they give two figs about London? Did Nutsawoo even have friends? — Maryrose Wood

The decisions we make dictate the schedules we keep. The schedules we keep determine the lives we live. The lives we live determine how we spend our souls. So, this isn't just about finding time. This is about honoring God with the time we have. — Lysa TerKeurst

Our eulogies are always about the other stuff: what we gave, how we connected, how much we meant to our family and friends, small kindnesses, lifelong passions, and the things that made us laugh. So why do we spend so much of our limited time on this earth focusing on all the things our eulogy will never cover? — Arianna Huffington

Evening is the time which the higher classes choose for dancing, card playing, and the like; and consequently never get to bed till late at night. If we love our souls, and would not become worldly, let us mind how we spend our evenings. Tell me how a man spends his evenings, and I can generally tell what his character is. — J.C. Ryle

Most of our difficulties, our hopes, and our worries are empty fantasies. Nothing has ever existed except this moment. That's all there is. That's all we are. Yet most human beings spend 50 to 90 percent or more of their time in their imagination, living in fantasy. We think about what has happened to us, what might have happened, how we feel about it, how we should be different, how others should be different, how it's all a shame, and on and on; it's all fantasy, all imagination. Memory is imagination. Every memory that we stick to devastates our life. — Charlotte Joko Beck

So our customary practice of prayer was brought to mind: how through our ignorance and inexperience in the ways of love we spend so much time on petition. I saw that it is indeed more worthy of God and more truly pleasing to him that through his goodness we should pray with full confidence, and by his grace cling to him with real understanding and unshakeable love, than that we should go on making as many petitions as our souls are capable of. — Julian Of Norwich

We spend a lot of time training and retraining. It's heartbreaking because our education system has failed all of us. And again you go to China, even Mexico, Brazil the education systems are valued - ours are not in this country at K-12 level. It's amazing how that change has transpired in my lifetime. — Douglas R. Oberhelman

People who spend a great deal of time in their gardens attest to the natural mindfulness that gardening requires. What could be more naturally mindful than weeding? It requires a great deal of sustained attention. Weeds need to be taken up with care: Pull too hard, and the weed breaks in your fingers, leaving the root to grow and spread. Different weeds need different techniques and, sometimes, tools. When we weed our gardens, we have to pay attention to where and how we walk and bend. Move too far in one direction or another, and we'll squash growing things. — Surya Das

We like our current shareholders and don't want to entice anyone to become one. It would help current shareholders to hear our CEOs [of the Berkshireoperating subsidiaries], but we promised them they could spend 100% of their time on their business. We place no impediments on them running their businesses. Many have expressed to me how happy they are that they don't have to spend 25% of time on activities they didn't like. — Charlie Munger

And other people hurt you. And you were both angry, and maybe you were both scared, but no matter what dark thoughts you have you didn't hurt her. Someone else hurt her. Don't waste time blaming yourself when you can spend time planning how to destroy our enemies."
"Can we get that last thing embroidered on a cushion, Aunt Lillian?" Jared asked. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Because, what does it mean, to say that things aren't going well? Compared to what? You can say: compared to how things were going a couple of hours ago, or a couple of years ago. But that's not the point. If two cars are speeding towards a brick wall with no brakes, and one car hits the wall moments before the other, you can't spend those moments saying that the second car is much better off than the first.
Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference.
So unless we're going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes. Us, or anyone else. Because we're not comparing it with anything. — Hugh Laurie

If we lose our money while traveling, think how frantically we search for it! In the same way, if we are unable to do japa even for a brief moment, we should grieve: 'Alas, Lord, I have lost so much time!' If there is such anguish, even the time we spend sleeping will not be wasted. — Mata Amritanandamayi

LORD, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered - how fleeting my life is. 5 You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand. My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath. Interlude 6 We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing. We heap up wealth, not knowing who will spend it. 7 And so, Lord, where do I put my hope? My only hope is in you. — Anonymous

I know it doesn't feel this way all the time, but we get to choose what we care about and what we spend our resources on. We choose what - or ideally whom - to lust after. We choose what to watch, what to like, what to build, how to spend the breaths that we've been alive. And the fact that many of our choices are unconscious - get that handbag, get that Starbucks, look at that Snooki - does not in any way make us less responsible for those choices. I'm happiest when I feel like I'm part of a community that helps me choose more intelligently and with greater empathy. And I, for one, like the choices we made this weekend. — John Green

But I've learned that sometimes, somehow, no matter how much time we spend apart from the ones we care most about, our love for them never fades, for time apart only makes our love grow stronger. — Rebecah McManus

You don't have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal illness to see how often medicine fails the people it is supposed to help. The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver's chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions - nursing homes and intensive care units - where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life. Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need. — Atul Gawande

Where do we go from here now that all of the children have grown up?
And how do we spend our time knowin' nobody gives us a damn. — Alan Parsons Project

What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true; we walk, we go downstairs, we sit at a table in order to eat, we lie down on a bed on order to sleep. How? Where? When? Why?
Describe your street. Describe another. Compare. — Georges Perec

We start with our consumers and spend an exorbitant amount of time talking with them, trying to figure out what's driving them, finding out where they are and how they're changing things. — Cathy O'Brien

Smartass Disciple: Master, we should not spend our time to low life like them.
Master of Stupidity: If I don't, then how should I lead men like you to be wiser? — Toba Beta

But it's surely no coincidence that the English verb "to spend" can only be applied to the using up of two resources. Money and time. And we can choose how to spend both of these, can't we? My concern, if I'm honest, is that we could find ourselves in pursuit of money to spend while finding that time is diminishing at an equal rate. We'll all be working so hard that we won't any longer have time to do anything else. We'll have to spend it all on the acquisition of money. And as we know that money can buy you pretty much anything but time, is that what we want for our nation? — Seni Glaister

[T]he people who are close to Allah worry so much about wasting time that they call themselves to account for every breath they spend - how many of us wonder about how we spend our day, let alone each breath? — Ethar El-Katatney

Too often we become so consumed with how we spend our days that we lose track of how we are spending our lives. — Sally Warner

When we haven't the time to listen to each other's stories we seek out experts to tell us how to live. The less time we spend together at the kitchen table, the more how-to books appear in the stores and on our bookshelves. But reading such books is a very different thing than listening to someone' s lived experience. Because we have stopped listening to each other we may even have forgotten how to listen, stopped learning how to recognize meaning and fill ourselves from the ordinary events of our lives. We have become solitary; readers and watchers rather than sharers and participants. — Rachel Naomi Remen

How our governments need standards of integrity! How our communities need yardsticks to measure decency! How our neighborhoods need models of beauty and cleanliness! How our schools need continued encouragement and assistance to maintain high educational standards! Rather than spend time complaining about the direction in which these institutions are going, we need to exert our influence in shaping the right direction. A small effort by a few can result in so much good for all of mankind. — L. Tom Perry

Humans are kind of story-propagating creatures. If you think of how we spend our days, think of all the time you spend on entertainment. How much of your entertainment centers around stories? Most pieces of music tell stories. Even hanging out with your friends, you talk, you tell stories to each other. They're all stories. We live in stories. — Patrick Rothfuss

We can't control whether we are rewarded for our endeavours, with cash or recognition. It is not up to us how much cash or time we get on Earth, but it is down to us how we spend it. — Julian Baggini

Research shows that our social networks narrow across adulthood, as careers and families become busier and more defined. So - even and especially as we job-hop and move cross-country and change roommates and spend our weekends about town - this is the time to be connecting, not just with the same people having the same conversations about how work is lame or how there are no good men out there, but with those who might see things a little differently. Weak ties are the people who will better your life right now - and again and again in the years to come - if you have the courage to know what you want. — Meg Jay

Little white lies are told by humans all the time. Indeed, lying is often how we get through each day in a happy little bubble. We spend time and energy rationalizing our own behaviors, beliefs and decision-making processes. — Barry Ritholtz

Sadness, joy, wonder - all feelings come from a place of grounded strength that comes from trust in yourself. We spend so much time trying to control our feelings out of fear that something may happen, that somebody may not love us, or walk away or die. It's only when you stop living in that fear of what other people might do to you or how they will react, only then are you free to be alive. — Elisabeth Shue

Please do not look only at the dark side
All the newspapers in the free world explain why you return their readers understand how you feel
You have the sympathy of millions
As a tribute to your sorrow we resolve to spend more money on nuclear weapons there is always a bright side
If this were only a movie a boat would be available have you ever seen our movies they end happily
You would lean at the rail with 'him' the sun would set on China kiss and fade
You would marry one of the kind authorities
In our movies there is no law higher than love in real life duty is higher
You would not want the authorities to neglect duty
How do you like the image of the free world sorry you cannot stay
This is the first and last time we will see you in our papers
When you are back home remember us we will be having a good time. — Thomas Merton

Let's begin with a quotation from mindfulness expert and teacher Bhante Henepola Gunaratana. It beautifully encapsulates what deceptive brain messages are, what they do to you, and how they keep you from following the path of your true self: We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those [thoughts] for reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal pursuit of pleasure and gratification and eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend all our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears, endlessly seeking security.16 To phrase it another way: We spend a considerable amount of our time engrossed in following deceptive brain messages until we begin to see them for what they are and value our true emotions and needs. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

How paltry are the traces left behind by a life, even one concentrated around those supposed things of permanence called words. We spend our time upon the earth and then disappear, and only one one-thousandth of what we were lasts. We send all those bottles out into the ocean and so few wash up on shore. — John Darnton

We don't have the luxury of time. We spend more because of how we live, but it's important to be with our family and friends. — Sara Blakely

For many Christ-followers, the Bible is a book of principles to show us how to live. No wonder we struggle to spend time in the Word - how excited are you about spending time reading a to-do list that's 1,500 pages long? When we view the Bible primarily as a book of principles for living, we miss the point. The point of the Bible is not principles but a Person. Jesus said in John 5:39, "These are the Scriptures that testify about me." He is the point. If our interaction with the Word isn't resulting in a deepening intimacy with Jesus, a deepening experience of His love and grace, we are missing something huge. — Alan Kraft

Philanthropic dollars are precious resources, so it's our responsibility to consider how we use them carefully. Yet few of us spend enough time doing so. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

Many concerns now make part or the whole of their dividends from by-products that formerly went to waste. How do we, as individuals, utilize our principal by-product? Our principal by-product is, of course, our leisure time. Many years of observation forces the conclusion that a man's success or failure in life is determined as much by how he acts during his leisure as by how he acts during his work hours. Tell me how a young man spends his evenings and I will tell you how he is likely to spend the latter part of his life. — B.C. Forbes

Unfortunately, we spend more time teaching our daughters how to avoid becoming rape victims than teaching our sons not to become rapists. — Amir Clayton Powell

It's certainly not easy having to spend a lot of time apart, and having a five-year-old child who's got to be at school. So we need to learn how to organize our time really well because for months we will be in two different countries. — David Thewlis

How we spend our money reflects our true values at that moment in time. — Erik Wecks

The truth is, we never know what life will bring us and we don't have as much control as we might think we have. But we CAN choose how we walk through life and how we spend our time. — Elizabeth Berrien

We are in charge of our own lives and how we spend our time. You should never do something you don't want to do. Lives are incredibly short. If it doesn't feel right to do something then you have permission to not do it. Who cares what other people will think? — Shannon Kaiser

Once you know a habit exists, you have the responsibility to change it ... others have done so ... That, in some ways, is the point of this book. Perhaps a sleep-walking murderer can plausibly argue that he wasn't aware of his habit, and so he doesn't bear responsibility for his crime, but almost all of the other patterns that exist in most people's lives - how we eat and sleep and talk to our kids, how we unthinkingly spend our time, attention and money - those are habits that we know exist. And once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them. Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power of habit becomes easier to grasp and the only option left is to get to work. — Charles Duhigg

We all get stuck. We all lose ourselves a little bit in a fantasy or in our jobs and forget how we feel about other things. It's really important to check yourself, to spend some time alone. — Amanda Seyfried

If Hollywood and Bollywood were how we all lived our lives, that would surprise me. And yet it's often the way our cultures are conveyed, isn't it? People watching a Bollywood movie in some other part of Asia think everybody in India is beautiful and they have dramatic lives and happy endings. And if you were to watch American TV and our movies you'd think that we don't wear clothes and we spend all our time fighting with each other. — Hillary Clinton

One study says that 90 percent of our everyday behavior is based on our habits ... That means how we treat people, how we spend our money, what we watch, what we listen to - 90 percent of the time, we're on autopilot. We do what we've always done. — Joel Osteen

In education, we need to begin paying attention to matters routinely ignored. We spend long hours trying to teach a variety of courses on, say, the structure of government or the structure of the amoeba. But how much effort goes into studying the structure of everyday life - the way time is allocated, the personal uses of money, the places to go for help in a society exploding with complexity? We take for granted that young people already know their way around our social structure. In fact, most have only the dimmest image of the way the world of work or business is organized. Most students have no conception of the architecture of their own city's economy, or the way the local bureaucracy operates, or the place to go to lodge a complaint against a merchant. Most do not even understand how their own schools - even universities - are structured, let alone how much structures are changing under the impact of the Third Wave. — Alvin Toffler

Oxytocin, a hormone and neuropeptide ... plays a major role in attachment processes and serves several purposes: It causes women to go into labor, strengthens attachment, and ... [increases] trust and cooperation. We get a boost of oxytocin in our brain during orgasm and even when we cuddle -- which is why it's been tagged the "cuddle hormone." How is oxytocin related to conflict reduction? Sometimes we spend less quality time with our partner -- especially when other demands on us are pressing. However, neuroscience findings suggest that we should change our priorities. By forgoing closeness with our partners, we are also missing our oxytocin boost -- making us less agreeable to the world around us and more vulnerable to conflict. — Amir Levine

I was by myself for a pretty long time. I needed to do that. I think everyone that I know has wanted to do that or needed to do that at some point. I think when you spend enough time when it's quiet around you and you don't open your mouth for three or four days, there's parts of your brain that can kind of rest. I think when we're out in the world and we have to talk to people, we edit ourselves. You know, we have to like, act a little bit. As honest as we may be as humans, when we're out here, we're all kind of wearing mirrors on our faces. You know, constantly reacting to how to react to the people around you. And I think when you're alone for a long enough time, you can feel a lot more peace. — Justin Vernon

How we spend our time verifies what we value most: TV, the Internet, or God's Word? — Randy Alcorn

Generative testing is an approach to testing software that was made popular by the QuickCheck library. Originally written in Haskell and since ported to several other programming languages (Ruby, Python, C, C++, Objective-C, Smalltalk, Java, JavaScript, Erlang, Scala, Clojure...), the QuickCheck library allows the developer to separate test logic from the generation of test cases. This means that, as developers, we can spend less time instructing the compiler how to test our code, and focus instead on what properties we expect our code to have. — Anonymous

Some people say that, as summer approaches, we start to have weird ideas; we feel smaller because we spend more time out in the open air, and that makes us aware of how large the world is. The horizon seems farther away, beyond the clouds and the walls of our house. — Paulo Coelho

I believe that our ability to worship God, to reaffirm our covenants and receive the healing power of the Holy Ghost, to receive the instruction we need in order to make personal progress - all of these things are greatly affected by how secure and safe we feel in our Church environment during the three-hour block of time on Sundays. If we have to spend our energy dealing with feelings that we are not accepted, being concerned about our appearance, or worrying that what we do or say will be judged harshly, in other words that the fellowship of our ward members is anything but "fixed, immovable, and unchangeable", we certainly won't be able to make the kind of progress we could make otherwise. — Virginia H. Pearce

You know? Ain't it ironic how we live our entire lives without the luxury of time, only to spend an eternity in death. — Jason Medina

Our current use of time is not rational. There is therefore no point in seeking marginal improvements in how we spend our time. We need to go back to the drawing board and overturn all our assumptions about time. — Richard Koch

My kind do not spend their days at craft or art. Our deepest desire is not for the making of a thing, nor for the thing itself. Rather, we thrive on the skills of those who make. We steal that time and that power, and we turn it to our own souls, and that is how we grow. — E.K. Johnston

How should anything be sacred to an advertiser?" demanded Ingleby, helping himself to four lumps of sugar. "We spend our whole time asking intimate questions of perfect strangers and it naturally blunts our finer feelings. 'Mother! Has your Child Learnt Regular Habits?' 'Are you Troubled with Fullness after Eating?' 'Are you satisfied about your Drains?' 'Are you Sure that your Toilet-Paper is Germ-free?' 'Your most Intimate Friends dare not Ask you this question.' 'Do you Suffer from Superfluous Hair?' 'Do you Like them to Look at your Hands?' 'Do you ever ask yourself about Body-Odour?' 'If anything Happened to You, would your Loved Ones be Safe?' 'Why Spend so much Time in the Kitchen?' 'You think that Carpet is Clean - but is it?' 'Are you a Martyr to Dandruff?' Upon my soul, I sometimes wonder why the long-suffering public doesn't rise up and slay us. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Not for the first time, Peter thought about how much of our lives we spend sequestered inside small patches of electric brightness, blind to everything beyond the reach of those fragile bulbs. — Michel Faber

Oh, we women know things you don't know, you teachers, you readers and writers of books, we are the ones who wait around libraries when it's time to leave, or sit drinking coffee alone in the kitchen; we make crazy plans for marriage but have no man, we dream of stealing men, we are the ones who look slowly around when we get off a bus and can't even find what we are looking for, can't quite remember how we got there, we are always wondering what will come next, what terrible thing will come next. We are the ones who leaf through magazines with colored pictures and spend long heavy hours sunk in our bodies, thinking, remembering, dreaming, waiting for something to come to us and give a shape to so much pain. — Joyce Carol Oates

For years I didn't realize this because so many others had more. We were surrounded by extreme affluence, which tricks you into thinking you're in the middle of the pack. I mean, sure, we have twenty-four hundred square feet for only five humans to live in, but our kids have never been on an airplane, so how rich could we be? We haven't traveled to Italy, my kids are in public schools, and we don't even own a time-share. (Roll eyes here.) But it gets fuzzy once you spend time with people below your rung. I started seeing my stuff with fresh eyes, realizing we had everything. I mean everything. We've never missed a meal or even skimped on one. We have a beautiful home in a great neighborhood. Our kids are in a Texas exemplary school. We drive two cars under warranty. We've never gone a day without health insurance. Our closets are overflowing. We throw away food we didn't eat, clothes we barely wore, trash that will never disintegrate, stuff that fell out of fashion. — Jen Hatmaker

We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known. They have known for thousands of years that to lock a sick person into solitary confinement makes him worse. They have known for thousands of years that a poor man who is frightened of his landlord and of the police is a slave. They have known it. We know it. But do the great enlightened mass of the British people know it? No. It is our task, Ella, yours and mine, to tell them. Because the great men are too great to be bothered. They are already discovering how to colonise Venus and to irrigate the moon. That is what is important for our time. You and I are the boulder-pushers. All our lives, you and I, we'll put all our energies, all our talents into pushing a great boulder up a mountain. The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind. — Doris Lessing

Relaxing is one of the little joys of life. We can learn to take time from our busy day to chat with a friend, take a hot bath, or spend a few moments sitting alone under a tree. The busier we are, the more we need to take time to relax. When we rest, we stop fussing about the outside world. We find out how we're doing inside. While relaxing, we can best listen to our Higher Power. Our minds calm down. We put busy thoughts aside. Sometimes, we can almost hear our Higher Power say, Stay quiet and listen! I have something to tell you! — Anonymous

We don't know how much time one spirit will spend in our lives, but love is too precious to hide from it. A chance at real love is worth the risk. — Lisa Kessler

When we really want to hear, and be heard by, someone we love, we do not go rushing into noisy crowds. Silence is a form of intimacy. That's how we experience it with our friends and lovers. As relationships grow deeper and more intimate, we spend more and more quiet time alone with our lover. We talk in low tones about the things that matter ... That is why Christ comes to us when our hearts and minds are still and silent. — J. Brent Bill

As much as the world tries to tell us otherwise, our free time is ours to spend how we wish. This can be a tricky concept for introverts to fully embrace. We've been chastised so much for our personal preferences that we feel obliged to ignore them. — Michaela Chung

I'm learning how much I have to learn, how little I know, how fragile my understanding is. I'm learning to be thankful and patient; today is all that we will ever have in this life. If we spend our time obsessing with the future or regretting the past then we will never live. Tomorrow will always be tomorrow and yesterday cannot be changed. The wise man seeks God in the now and brings both his regrets and fears before Him. The freedom that we are offered is truly amazing: to live, today, free from even our own fallen desires. This is where I want to be. — Jon Foreman

We all have the same amount of time allotted to us each week: 10,080 minutes. No more, no less. We have the responsibility to choose how we spend those minutes. In reality, every passing minute is a moment we'll never get back. Without question, time is our most precious and elusive commodity. — Rodney Gage