“Human beings are the same joyful, resilient, imperfect people today that we were 100 years ago, 1,000 years ago, and 10,000 years ago. We have the same ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ข๐ถ๐ต๐ช๐ง๐ถ๐ญ minds.” โ Phil Van Treuren
The ancient Stoics realized that time was one of our most valuable possessions, because we ultimately have a limited amount of it. As the quotes below will show you, time is something that’s given a lot of attention in Stoicism.
We only have one life, and once a moment passes by, it’s gone forever. Stoicism teaches that we should utilize every minute to make the most of our lives and seek wisdom and virtue.
Remember: it’s not necessarily the amount of time that you have in your life, but how you live the time you have that’s important. Keep that in mind as you read the Stoic quotes about time that we’ll share below, and don’t ever take one second for granted.
Stoic Quotes on Time & the Past from Marcus Aurelius
“Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.”
“Donโt waste the rest of your time here worrying about other peopleโunless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful.”
“All that you see will soon have vanished, and those who see it vanish themselves, and the ones who reached old age have no advantage over the untimely dead.”
โRemember how long youโve been putting this off . . . that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you donโt use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.”
“Remember: Matter — How tiny your share of it. Time — how brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate — How small a role you play in it.”
“Some things are rushing into existence, others out of it. Some of what now exists is already gone. Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity. We find ourselves in a river. Which of the things around us should we value when none of them can offer a firm foothold?”
Stoic Quotes on Time & the Past from Epictetus
“For I am not Eternity, but a human being; a part of the whole, as an hour is part of the day. I must come like the hour, and like the hour must pass!”
“No thing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.”
Stoic Quotes on Time & the Past from Seneca
“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortuneโs control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
“The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live.”