Theme
Time
Impermanence, the present moment, and how we spend our days.
Every quote here is provenance-checked. AI will happily put a fake quote on a beautiful slide — these are the ones you can actually use, with the right name on them.
Ready for your slide
Verified quotes about time
Each is traced to a real source and correctly credited. ✓ Free to use = public domain, cleared for commercial reuse. Open one for a paste-ready credit line and its reuse status.
“All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike”
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream”
“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life”
“Carpe diem”
“Confine yourself to the present”
“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of”
“Every moment is a fresh beginning”
“Forever is composed of nows”
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world”
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it”
“Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies”
“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well”
“Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future”
“The life so short, the craft so long to learn”
“The past is but the beginning of a beginning”
“The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine”
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer”
“Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind”
“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life”
“In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: it goes on”
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards”
“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm”
“We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed”
“You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you”
No public-domain quotes on this theme yet — try another, or use an in-copyright one with attribution.
Don’t get caught out
Commonly shared about time — but misattributed
Popular time lines that get pinned on the wrong name. If you use one, credit it correctly.
“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness”
ReallyAnonymous
“History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes”
ReallyUnknown — misattributed to Mark Twain · not Mark Twain
“How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?”
ReallyRev. Clarence H. Wilson · not Wayne Dyer
“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time”
ReallyBlaise Pascal · not Mark Twain
“If you remember the '60s, you really weren't there”
ReallyCharles Fleischer · not Robin Williams
“Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen”
ReallyMary Schmich · not Kurt Vonnegut
“Laughter is timeless, imagination has no age, and dreams are forever”
ReallyUnknown (falsely credited to Walt Disney) · not Walt Disney
“Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans”
ReallyAllen Saunders
“Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived”
ReallyJames J. Lachard (pen name of Jim Brown) · not Dalai Lama
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished”
ReallyLao Tzu
“No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance”
ReallyAtwood H. Townsend · not Confucius
“Sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit”
ReallyAnonymous — an old Maine fisherman · not A. A. Milne
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory”
ReallyGeorges Duhamel · not Dr. Seuss
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now”
ReallyAnonymous (American, by 1967) · not Confucius
“The future starts today, not tomorrow”
ReallyPope John Paul II
“There is plenty of time to sleep in the grave”
ReallyBenjamin Franklin · not William Shakespeare
“This is your life, not a dress rehearsal”
ReallyWayne Dyer · not Wayne Dyer
“Time and tide wait for no man”
ReallyA traditional English proverb