The vivid fall colors slap me in the face, waking me to the fact that time marches on.

Seemingly overnight, the leaves have transformed into beautiful, bright yellow, deep magentas, blazing orange-reds. And they call out to me—Hey, what are you doing over there with your time? Are you using it wisely? Because it’s kinda fleeting.

Of course I’m grateful that I have time left on this earth to enjoy the wonders of Fall with it’s artful display of color, the pleasant scent of decaying leaves, the crisp mornings. But this time of year magnifies change and time and, well, it scares me just a bit. My parents are aging. I’m aging. My son is suddenly in sixth grade. I worry that there’s not enough time to get out of debt and—gulp—save for college. Blah blah blah.

Time! I need more time!

My angst led me to look up quotes about time, hoping other perspectives would calm me. And they have. So, whether you have angst about time passing or are simply looking for inspiration, these quotes are for you.

But first, this hilarious video of George Carlin discussing time:

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
~ Carl Sandburg

Time is a created thing. To say “I don’t have time,” is like saying, “I don’t want to.”
~ Lao Tzu

Time is an illusion.
~ Albert Einstein

We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

~ Nelson Mandela

How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?
~ Dr. Seuss

Yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
~ Kahlil Gibran

It’s being here now that’s important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.
~ George Harrison

There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.
~ Mahatma Gandhi

Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
~ Ambrose Bierce

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
~ George Bernard Shaw

Aside from velcro, time is the most mysterious substance in the universe. You can’t see it or touch it, yet a plumber can charge you upwards of seventy-five dollars per hour for it, without necessarily fixing anything. ~ Dave Barry

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.
~ Mother Teresa

The future is uncertain but the end is always near.
~ Jim Morrison

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
~ C.S. Lewis

Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
~ Marthe Troly-Curtin, Phrynette Married

You may delay, but time will not.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Time is the longest distance between two places.
~ Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.
~ William Penn

For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again. 

~ Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button screenplay

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
~ Henry David Thoreau

Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.
~ Coco Chanel

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
~ Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

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

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

~ Bill Watterson

Free time is the most expensive time you have, because nobody pays for it but you. But that also makes it the most valuable time you have, as you alone stand to reap the profits from spending it wisely.
~ Jarod Kintz, I Should Have Renamed This

Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.
~ Denis Waitley

The past is a ghost, the future a dream and all we ever have is now.
~ Bill Cosby

Never waste a minute thinking about people you don’t like.
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
~ Abraham Lincoln

Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.
~ Max Frisch

Time is a game played beautifully by children.
~ Heraclitus

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