The universe can take quite a while to deliver.

Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

‚I wish life was not so short,‘ he thought. ‚Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.‘

Up until the 1920s, everyone thought the universe was essentially static and unchanging in time.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

If you are the kind of person who is waiting for the ‚right‘ thing to happen, you might wait for a long time. It’s like waiting for all the traffic lights to be green for five miles before starting the trip.

One of the most important decisions you’ll ever make is choosing the kind of universe you exist in: is it helpful and supportive or hostile and unsupportive? Your answer to this question will make all the difference in terms of how you live your life and what kind of Divine assistance you attract.

If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

The ultimate connection is when you are connected to the creator of the universe.

We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

Being at ease with not knowing is crucial for answers to come to you.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

We get the exciting result that the total energy of the universe is zero. Why this should be so is one of the great mysteries – and therefore one of the important questions of physics. After all, what would be the use of studying physics if the mysteries were not the most important things to investigate?

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.

Some of the stories I admire seem to zero in on one particular time and place. There isn’t a rule about this. But there’s a tidy sense about many stories I read. In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

I read to my kid, but I can’t stand reading.

We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!

Nothing 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.

I don’t think that the total creation took place in six days as we now measure time. If we can confirm, say, the Big Bang theory, that doesn’t at all cause me to question my faith that God created the Big Bang.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.

Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.

I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

A lot of good love can happen in ten years.

Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

It is extremely difficult to say how long the process actually took to finally achieve my fragrance, Boudoir, because there was a lot of time waiting around for other people.

Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

Modern science says: ‚The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.‘ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure it.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

We’ve gotta become the Martians. I’m a Martian – I tell you to become Martians. And we’ve gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

Why is it that although it takes us years to get into our messes, we expect God to get us out of them in a few days?

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

Endurance is patience concentrated.

Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surrounding, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance.

It seems that I have always been ahead of my time. I had to wait nineteen years before Niagara was harnessed by my system, fifteen years before the basic inventions for wireless which I gave to the world in 1893 were applied universally.

The human body is strange and flawed and unpredictable. The human body has many secrets, and it does not divulge them to anyone, except those who have learned to wait.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

All fiction is about people, unless it’s about rabbits pretending to be people. It’s all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that’s what we call ‚the plot‘.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.