When Time Flies Quotes & Sayings

In a surreal gift from the universe, time both stands still and flies past you in that singular moment when you find out someone you once loved is gone. — Rachel Thompson

We spend too much time cursing time - time waits for no man, time will tell, oh, the ravages of time, time flies! We don't think about the gift of time. Time gives us the chance to make mistakes and correct them, to regenerate, to grow. Time gives us the chance to forgive, to restore, to do better than we have ever done in the past. Time gives us the chance to be sorry when we fail and the chance to try to discover in ourselves a new heart. — Anne Rice

On who the flies landed without being chased away by that person, was on her way to death - this was one of the unmistakeable signs. From that time on, I think, dates my obsession with flies. In times of peace, when we all lied still, I made sure to sneak close up to my mother, watching very carefully that no fly would land on her, - I waved my hat over her body, flies don't like wind and movement ... — Jeroen Brouwers

The first of America's 79 million baby boomers turned 60 this month. Time flies when you're growing old. — Craig Wilson

Butterflies prove that God gives second chances. Because a butterfly spends most of its life as a caterpillar, scooting along on the ground, barely getting by. When a caterpillar sees a butterfly he thinks how wonderful it would be to fly. And then one day he gets tired. Very tired. He builds a little room, curls up inside, and takes a nap. Deep in his heart he wonders if maybe that's all. Maybe life is over. But one day the caterpillar wakes up, and God has done an amazing thing. The caterpillar hakes off the little room and feels something on his back. This time when he goes a bit down the tree branch he doesn't scoot like before. He flies! — Karen Kingsbury

If time flies when you're having fun, it hits the afterburners when you don't think you're having enough. — Jef Mallett

Try stuff. I also used to believe that it's better to be smart than lucky because if you're smart you can out-think the competition. I don't believe that anymore-this is not to say that you should strive for a high level of stupidity. My point is that luck is a big part of many successes, so (a) don't get too bummed out when you see a bozo succeed; and (b) luck favors the people who try stuff, not simply think and analyze. As the Chinese say, "One must wait for a long time with your mouth open before a Peking duck flies in your mouth." — Guy Kawasaki

But nobody yet had been able to dig down to what was most captivating about her: this was the mysterious ability of her soul to apprehend in life only that which had once attracted and tormented her in childhood, the time when the soul's instinct is infallible; to seek out the amusing and the touching: to feel constantly an intolerable, tender pity for the creature whose life is helpless and unhappy; to feel across hundreds of miles that somewhere in Sicily a thin-legged little donkey with a shaggy belly is being brutally beaten. Whenever she did come across a creature that was being hurt, she experienced a kind of legendary eclipse - when inexplicable night comes down and ash flies and blood appears on the walls - and it seemed that if at once, at once, she did not help, did not cut short another's torture (the existence of which it was absolutely impossible to explain in a world so conducive to happiness), her heart would not stand it, and she would die. — Vladimir Nabokov

Time, as is well known, sometimes flies like a bird and sometimes crawls like a worm, but human beings are generally particularly happy when they don't notice whether it's passing quickly or slowly. — Ivan Turgenev

Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will-
The right thing happens to the happy man.
The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
Let others delve that mystery if they can.
God bless the roots! -Body and soul are one
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun,
His being single, and that being all:
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Or he sits still, a solid figure when
The self-destructive shake the common wall;
Takes to himself what mystery he can,
And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
Wills what he would, surrendering his will
Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
The right thing happens to the happy man. — Theodore Roethke

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

Inside a dream I yearned anew
You appeared, like morning dew
My heart leaped up, no longer blue
But only here in Slumberland...

The moon sank low in the morning sky
Why, oh why, must we say good-bye?
I'll see you again, sweet by and by
But only here in Slumberland.

They say that dreams come true, dear,
If you believe their charms
But if my dreams came true, dear,
I'd hold you in my arms.

Sandman come and dust my eyes
Blue moon, won't you start your rise?
Every night, oh, how time flies
When I'm with you in Slumberland...
I'll stay with you in Slumberland. — Libba Bray

That's what happens when you're really concentrating. Time stands still. Time flies! — Kevin Crossley-Holland

This notion of rest, it's attractive to her, but I don't think she would like it. They are all like that, these women. Waiting for the ease, the space that need not be filled with anything other than the drift of their own thoughts. But they wouldn't like it. They are busy and thinking of ways to be busier because such a space of nothing pressing to do would knock them down. No fields of cowslips will rush into that opening, nor mornings free of flies and heat when the light is shy. No. Not at all. They fill their mind and hands with soap and repair and dicey confrontations because what is waiting for them, in a suddenly idle moment, is the seep of rage. Molten. Thick and slow-moving. Mindful and particular about what in its path it chooses to bury. Or else, into a beat of time, and sideways under their breasts, slips a sorrow they don't know where from. — Toni Morrison

It's too late. It was too late by the time I arrived in London to turn your notebook into a dove; there were too many people already involved. Anything either of us does has an effect on everyone here, on every patron who walks through those gates. Hundreds if not thousands of people. All flies in a spiderweb that was spun when I was six years old and now I can barely move for fear of losing someone else. — Erin Morgenstern

To become a magician you must do something very different," the man said. This was clearly his set piece. "You cannot study magic. You cannot learn it. You must ingest it. Digest it. You must merge with it. And it with you. "When a magician casts a spell, he does not first mentally review the Major, Minor, Tertiary, and Quaternary Circumstances. He does not search his soul to determine the phase of the moon, and the nearest body of water, and the last time he wiped his ass. When he wishes to cast a spell he simply casts it. When he wishes to fly, he simply flies. When he wants the dishes done, they simply are. — Lev Grossman

How time flies when one has fun! — Samuel Beckett

Time flies so quick. I remember my second year in business when Bullocks Wilshire did a whole window of my white dresses. I was so excited, I went there at night and took pictures. — Tadashi Shoji

Any Day

Wiped clean by times stumbling gate
Reflecting toward my inner hate
I see sweet life spring anew
I touch a birth with what I do

As the dawn's warming rays
Melt morning's beguiling haze
I realize the truth of lies
A new year's hope with spirit flies

I wake the same as every day
I speak the words I always say
I see the sky the same again
And now know change comes only when

A choice is made in spite of time
A goal is set without a chime
Choice renders void the voice
To hearken in a New Year's choice — Roberto Vecchi

Once upon a time there was a poor child with no father and no mother everything was dead
and no one was left in the whole world.
Everything was dead
and it went and searched day and night And since nobody was left on the earth it wanted to go up to the heavens and the moon was looking at it so friendly and when it finally got to the moon the moon was a piece of rotten wood and then it went to the sun and when it got there the sun was a wilted sunflower and when it got to the stars they were little golden flies stuck up there
like the shrike sticks 'em on the blackthorn and when it wanted to go back down to earth the earth was an overturned piss pot! and was all alone. — Georg Buchner

How time flies when you're doin all the talking. — Harvey Fierstein

When in doubt, poke the beehive with a stick to see if anything interesting flies out.
I clapped my hands. 'I had no idea Pit teams had such pretty cheerleaders. Can you do it again, but with more spirit this time? — Ilona Andrews

Time wears all his locks before,Take thy hold upon his forehead;When he flies he turns no more,And behind his scalp is naked.Works adjourn'd have many stays,Long demurs breed new delays. — Robert Southwell

November 30th marks Luna Hale's eighteenth birthday. Time fucking flies - I remember when she was just a baby and we'd tap each other's noses and say beep beep. — Krista Ritchie

Time never bears such moments on his wing as when he flies too swiftly to be marked. — Joanna Baillie

Time flies when you grow fangs and fur. — Dianna Hardy

Always keep mint on your windowsill in August, to ensure that buzzing flies will stay outside, where they belong. Don't think the summer is over, even when roses droop and turn brown and the stars shift position in the sky. Never presume August is a safe or reliable time of the year. — Alice Hoffman

Apparently, now and again adults take the time to sit down and contemplate what a disaster their life is. They complain without understanding and, like flies constantly banging against the same old windowpane, they buzz around, suffer, waste away, get depressed then wonder how they got caught up in this spiral that is taking them where they don't want to go.
The most intelligent among them turn their malaise into a religion: oh, the despicable vacuousness of bourgeois existence! Cynics of this kind frequently dine at Papa's table: "What has become of the dreams of our youth?" they ask, with a smug, disillusioned air. "Those years are long gone, and life's a bitch."
I despise this false lucidity that comes with age. The truth is that they are just like everyone else: nothing more than kids without a clue about what has happened to them, acting big and tough when in fact all they want is to burst into tears. — Muriel Barbery

I had a great time investigating the pigments of different mutant fruit flies by following experimental protocols published in Scientific American, and I also remember making my own beetle collection when it was still acceptable to make such collections. — Paul Nurse

In truth she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong earnestness would have moved her to great compassion. But so long accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts up the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless, she had subdued even her wonder until now. — Charles Dickens

Time flies when you're being stupid. — David Henry Hwang

She wanted to believe that information brought clarity. Not for the first time in her life, however, she had the disconcerting notion that it was often the opposite. Information was a jar of flies, and when you unscrewed the lid, they went everywhere and good luck to you trying to round them all up again. — Joe Hill

I think the worst sort of time travel is how the clock speeds up when I'm on my break. — Joyce Rachelle

and when love came to us twice
and lied to us twice
we decided to never love again
that was fair
fair to us
and fair to love itself.

we ask for no mercy or no
miracles;
we are strong enough to live
and to die and to
kill flies,

attend the boxing matches, go to the racetrack,
live on luck and skill,
get alone, get alone often,
and if you can't sleep alone
be careful of the words you speak in your sleep;
and
ask for no mercy
no miracles;

and don't forget:
time is meant to be wasted,
love fails
and death is useless. — Charles Bukowski

When you get a groove going, time flies. — Donald Fagen

I remember realizing, when I did Little Women [1994], that that was the only time girls that age were being written about. It was always boys - from David Copperfield to Lord of the Flies to Holden Caulfield. There were never young women going through adolescence or teen years; there were only little girls. — Winona Ryder

Time can move quickly when it loses its memory, or when there are no new memories to create. Reality's vulture flies down and picks at the bones of our dreams. — John Dolan

Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day. — Alfred Tennyson

Time flies when you're a dolt. — Haruki Murakami

A plane flies overhead and inside it is a writer who has spent most of his life as a law clerk, even though he's always known deep down that he's a writer. For the first time, he's worked out what he wants to write, what the truth really is. He begs a napkin and a pen off the air hostess and he writes down the most beautiful sentence ever written, as the engine catches fire outside and the plane starts its plummet to the ground. It doesn't matter to him. It's the only sentence he's ever written and it is the last and no part of him cares. The sentence falls through the air with singed, black edges and comes to rest in a tree, in a park, miles away. One day, around ten years from now, an old widow of an astronaut will find it when a strong breeze finally blows it from its hiding place. She will read it and she will weep. — Pleasefindthis

Time flies when you're having fun, and I've been having fun for the last thirty years.
Reflecting on the upcoming 30th anniversary of Apollo 11. — Pete Conrad

They say time flies when you're having fun, but boy does it move at a snail's pace when you're worried or depressed or anxious. — Kim Askew

Who are you writing to, Linus?"
"This is the time of year to write to the Great Pumpkin. On Halloween Night, the Great Pumpkin rises out of his pumpkin patch and flies through the air with his bag of toys for all the children!"
"You must be crazy! When are you going to stop believing in something that isn't true?"
"When *you* stop believing in that fellow with a red suit and the white beard who goes, 'Ho, ho, ho!'"
"We're obviously separated by denominational differences. — Charles M. Schulz

Damn, time flies when you're fucking high. — Erik Williams

The wide stare stared itself out for one while; the Sun went down in a red, green, golden glory; the stars came out in the heavens, and the fire-flies mimicked them in the lower air, as men may feebly imitate the goodness of a better order of beings; the long dusty roads and the interminable plains were in repose-and so deep a hush was on the sea, that it scarcely whispered of the time when it shall give up its dead. — Charles Dickens

When you're engaged in what you love to do, it's like driving in the fast lane. Time flies by and more roads open up to you, alternate routes you may not have even known existed. — T. Harv Eker

Time flies when you're falling down ... (not from a book, it's a lyric) — Courtney Love

It is not enough to say the crow flies purposefully, or heavily, or rowingly, or whatever. There are no words to capture the infinite depth of crowiness in the crow's flight. All we can do is use a word as an indicator, or a whole bunch of words as a general directive. But the ominous thing in the crow's flight, the bare-faced, bandit thing, the tattered beggarly gipsy thing, the caressing and shaping yet slightly clumsy gesture of the down-stroke, as if the wings were both too heavy and too powerful, and the headlong sort of merriment, the macabre pantomime ghoulishness and the undertaker sleekness - you could go on for a very long time with phrases of that sort and still have completely missed your instant, glimpse knowledge of the world of the crow's wingbeat. And a bookload of such descriptions is immediately rubbish when you look up and see the crow flying. — Ted Hughes

As we all know, time sometimes flies like a bird, and sometimes
crawls like a worm, but people may be unusually happy when they do not
even notice whether time has passed quickly or slowly — Ivan Turgenev

Time flies when you're running out of money. — James Cook

You deserve a lover who wants you disheveled, with everything and all the reasons that wake you up in a haste and the demons that won't let you sleep.
You deserve a lover who makes you feel safe, who can consume this world whole if he walks hand in hand with you; someone who believes that his embraces are a perfect match with your skin.
You deserve a lover who wants to dance with you, who goes to paradise every time he looks into your eyes and never gets tired of studying your expressions.
You deserve a lover who listens when you sing, who supports you when you feel shame and respects your freedom; who flies with you and isn't afraid to fall.
You deserve a lover who takes away the lies and brings you hope, coffee, and poetry. — Frida Kahlo

The human heart is like a night bird. Silently waiting for something, and when the time comes, it flies straight toward it. — Haruki Murakami

I guess time flies when you're playing hockey every day and getting laid every night. — Sarina Bowen

Time flies when you are anxious! — Maria Bamford

I don't understand
how everything moves so quickly.
They say time flies when you're having fun,
but I wasn't always having fun.
Even when I was mad or sad,
time was always on the run. — Amanda Leigh

Time flies when you are having fun. — Albert Einstein

When there are lines upon my face from a lifetime of smiles,
When the time comes to embrace for one long last while,
We can laugh about how time really flies,
We won't say goodbye 'cause true love never dies,You'll always be beautiful in my eyes. — Joshua Kadison

Part of Eve's Discussion
It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand,
and flies, just before it flies, the moment the rivers seem to still
and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when
a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop,
very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you
your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like
the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say,
it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only
all the time. — Marie Howe

For there is no such thing:
Right person at the right time!
Instead with the right team,
Embrace Time that simply flies.
Never when meeting old friends
Does time really pass by?
In trust and truth they make amends
So Time they can really defy.
Hence, no one denies then:
In all it revitalizes.
Principled friendship never dies! — Ana Claudia Antunes

Better questions to ask regarding a career or job choice would be: What was I born to do? What would be my greatest contribution to others? What do I really love to do (and when I'm doing it, time just flies by)? What are the recurring themes that I find myself drawn to? How do I want to be remembered? — Dan Miller

Time flies when you're fulfilling your ambitions in a completely unexpected way. — J.C. Lillis

There's divinity within because we come from the divine,
A force that's not seen, but you feel it every time:
When the wind blows, and the world turns,
And the rain drops, and the baby cries,
And the bird flies, and the ground quake,
And the stars gleam. — Q-Tip

She flies higher than she's ever flown before, maybe she is trying to leave the earth. She isn't sure, she isn't thinking about it. She's far in her mind, deep in her own thoughts, the air on her wings feels amazing, she is swimming, rolling through the air as if it's water. She lifts her head as she flies and lets out a series of loud chirps. And that's when she sees it. The largest bat ever. Flying faster than any hawk or eagle or owl, roaring like some sort of monster. She doesn't know the human word 'dragon' otherwise she would call it that. There is no time to flee. No time to turn. No time to shriek, and no pain. It is like being thrown into the stars. — Nnedi Okorafor