80 of the Best Quotes About Time, Life, and Memories
Reading quotes from writers, philosophers, and thinkers about life’s main issues can change your point of view. Whether it’s because you need words of encouragement, are looking for some quotes to include on your social media pages, or just like memorizing interesting quotes, we’ve prepared a selection of the best quotes about time, life, and memories.
On our list, you’ll find many different points of view on these three topics. In fact, some of them contradict each other, so it’s up to you to choose the quotes you like best. We certainly hope you find what you’re looking for.
Some of the best quotes about time, life, and memories
You often take certain concepts for granted in your daily life. Life, time, memories, and their associated elements are some of the most important. Here are some of the best quotes on these three subjects:
1. “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time, they will do it all”. (Leo Tolstoy)
They’re warriors that you should always use to your advantage. However, many of us do just the opposite. But, nothing good can come of rowing against the tide. You learn a little more about life when you appreciate the importance of being patient and using your time more wisely.
2. “Don’t waste your time with anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy”. (Roy T. Bennett)
Think about how many hours of your life you’ve dedicated to regret, anger, and worries that led nowhere. Also, consider how many grudges you’ve held. There’ll undoubtedly be lots of them.
Did they do you any good? No. They’re a waste of time and make you unhappy.
3. “What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that is gone forever, impossible to reproduce”. (Karl Lagerfeld)
Hence the importance of taking pictures of your happiest moments. With them, you can freeze a moment in time and make it a permanent memory. Without a doubt, this is one of the best quotes ever about time, life, and memories.
4. “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be”. (Douglas Adams)
Don’t beat yourself up regretting what could’ve been. Instead, focus on what it is and what you can do with what you have and where you are.
5. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life”. (Steve Jobs)
Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not to please others and don’t mortgage your life to someone else. Your life boils down to the time you have. Don’t waste it.
6. “The main thing is not how long but how well you have lived”. (Seneca)
Some people in their 20s have lived more than some 80-year-old adults. It all comes down to how well you’ve appreciated your time and the things you’ve done, discovered, and experienced. You can’t say that you’ve lived if you’ve always been afraid to step out of your comfort zone.
7. “No one can ever take your memories from you – each day is a new beginning – make good memories every day”. (Catherine Pulsifer)
“Living consists of building future memories” Ernesto Sábato once said. Try to create situations where you can gather as many of them as you can in your daily life.
8. “You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it”. (Charles Buxton)
You probably often use the excuse of not having time to do certain things. However, time is the same for everyone and, wherever you are, the day lasts for 24 hours. It’s how you take advantage of those hours that matters.
9. “Our childhood memories are often fragments, brief moments or encounters, which together form the scrapbook of our life”. (Edith Eger)
The best memories, those that you associate with happiness, can be found in your childhood.
10. “Life can be noisy. It can be exhausting too. There are too many things vying for our attention, and sometimes we inadvertently forget how important our well-being is”. (Jayne Hardy)
You must remember the physical and the emotional. Many of us focus on taking care of the way we look, with diet and exercise, but we completely forget about our emotional well-being. If you want to have true balance in your life, you must pay attention to both.
11. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself “. (George Bernard Shaw)
It means creating the path that you have to travel. In essence, you’re living at the same time that you’re creating your own path.
12. “Life is 10 percent of what happens to you and 90 percent how you react”. (Charles R. Swindoll)
Taking advantage of both the good and bad things determines the degree of prosperity you achieve during your life. How you recover from the bad times and how well you know how to enjoy the good ones determines who you are.
13. “Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time’ is like saying ‘I don’t want to'”. (Lao Tse)
Have you ever thought of time this way? In fact, you often use the excuse of not having enough time as a euphemism for really saying that you’re not interested in doing something.
As insignificant as those things are, you may often use time as an excuse. If you really care about something, you’ll organize yourself to dedicate time to it.
14. “Life is a succession of lessons that must be lived to be understood”. (Helen Keller)
And, the more lessons you assimilate during your life, the more you’ll learn from them. This is why older people are generally full of wisdom that they transmit to others by way of advice. If you pay attention to them, you’ll direct your life in a more profitable way.
15. “Do we need more time? Or do we need to be more disciplined with the time we have?” (Kerry Johnson)
This quote about time, life, and memories places you as the protagonist and organizer of your own time. You probably know certain people who seem to have 48 hours in their day. Be organized and you’ll be able to do everything you want during your week.
16. “I believe that every human being has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine…” (Neil Armstrong)
Seizing every moment to the best of your ability is the best way of paying tribute to life.
17. “Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny”. (Stephen Hawking)
This sentence contains a paradox, one that provides a bittersweet perspective.
18. “Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will do nothing with it”. (M.Scott Peck)
Because wasting your time is just a way of wasting your life. Doing this means not valuing what you are or what you can achieve.
19. “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better”. (Emerson)
By experimenting, we don’t mean taking your experiences to the extreme but learning from them, enjoying them, and sharing as much as you can with the time you have. There’ll come a time when you’re unable to do what you can today, and there’s nothing more tragic than reaching this stage full of regrets.
20. “Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, and a tragedy for the poor”. (Sholem Aleichem)
Another of the phrases about time and life that we couldn’t omit from our list. With a little luck, you might be able to experience life as a dream.
21. “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)
You’re given this coin at birth and only you can decide how you want to spend it. Some people squander it on a bad bet or spend it prematurely. Treat it wisely. Then, at the end, you’ll be able to say you’ve had a good life.
22. “The worst memories stay with us, while the nice ones always seem to slip through our fingers”. (Rachel Vincent)
This is one of the most common mistakes. Life can’t be divided into black and white, it’s gray. Good and bad memories are part of you, you decide if the worst are the most important.
23. “Your time is your life. That is why the greatest gift you can give someone is your time”. (Rick Warren)
This is why it’s so important that you’re considerate and respectful of other people’s time. After all, you don’t know how precious time may be for them.
24. “Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart”. (Murakami)
This is a duality from which no one can escape. As we mentioned earlier, in the end, it’s you who decides how to classify your memories in order of importance. No one else will. Therefore, you should take the lead if you want to value your happy memories more intensely.
25. “Time is a gift that most of us take for granted”. (Cheryl Richardson)
Unfortunately, this quote is absolutely true. You always believe that you’ll have time in the future, which leads you to completely forget about the present. Bear in mind that your life is today, not tomorrow.
26. “I use memories, but do not allow memories to use me”. (Shiva Sutras)
By the time you learn this, you’ll have taken a giant step on the road to wellness. In fact, it’s one of our best quotes about time, life, and memories to bear in mind when your memories are haunting you.
27. “We do not remember days, we remember moments”.(Cesare Pavese)
Moments that have marked your life, for better or for worse. Try to accumulate as many as you can, especially with your friends and family. In the end, they’ll remain only in your memory.
28. “Time is the wisest counsellor of all”. (Pericles)
You can count on time for meditating on your worries, anxieties, or uncertainties. Indeed, allowing your problems to marinate over time will help you solve them.
29. “I’ve always been fascinated by memories and dreams because they are both completely our own. No one else has the same memories. No one has the same dreams”. (Lois Lowry)
You must learn to value them as entirely yours. Another quote about time, life, and memories that you’ll want to remember.
30. “Take care of all your memories. You can’t relive them”. (Bob Dylan)
Although you can access them in your mind, you’ll never be able to completely reconstruct these moments. Always keep them in mind, value them, and never let them sink into oblivion.
31. “Life doesn’t just hand you things. You have to get out there and make things happen. That’s the exciting part”. (Emeril Lagasse)
Many of the positive elements in your life are the product of your efforts and the result of initiatives in which you’ve invested various resources.
32. “The happiest memories are of moments that ended when they should have”. (Robert Brault)
This quote gives you a lot to think about. It suggests that many memories are so good because they ended at just the right time.
33. “Life is a mountain. Your goal is to find the path, not to reach the top”. (Maxime Lagacé)
Finding and clearing your path is the most important part of your life. Many people focus only on climbing the mountain and wandering around it without any kind of trail. They always end up getting lost.
34. “The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why”. (Mark Twain)
So, the sooner you discover the latter, the better it is. Don’t delay or you may discover the meaning when it’s too late.
35. “Despite the forecast, live like it’s spring”. (Lilly Pulitzer)
Avoid doing the opposite and facing life as if it were a cold and bitter winter. Your emotions don’t change the world but they do change the way you decide to deal with it.
36. “If you spend too much time thinking about something, you will never get it done”. (Bruce Lee)
Thinking this way always involves inactivity. Your dreams and projects only come true when you get down to work.
37. “Only time can heal what reason cannot”. (Seneca)
Time allows for the pondering of important issues. Losses and obstacles always end up healing with the passage of time.
38. “Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion, you’re wasting your life”. (Jackie Robinson)
After all, who’s having more fun: the spectators or the players? Don’t let your whole life pass by while you watch from the stand. Jump onto the pitch whenever you want.
39. “You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot – it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive”. (Maya Angelou)
Life in itself is the sum of all of your experiences. You’re who you are today because of the things you’ve had to face. Don’t be ashamed of them or let them determine what you’re able to achieve in the future.
40. “If life were predictable, it would cease to be life and be without flavor”. (Eleanor Roosevelt)
The magic of life is found in its uncertainty. If you already knew in advance everything that you were going to experience, could you really say that you enjoyed it when it arrived?
41. “Experience had taught me that even the most precious memories fade with the passage of time”. (Nicholas Sparks)
Has your mind ever been lit up with a really happy memory that you’d previously completely forgotten? This is the best example of how delicate memories are.
42. “Life is far too important a thing to ever talk seriously about”. (Oscar Wilde)
Another quote that addresses the important issue of life but with a sarcastic tinge.
43. “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards”. (Kierkegaard)
The older you are, the better you understand life, not the other way around. Unfortunately, the laws of life have been stipulated in this way and you have to falter many times while you’re learning how to navigate it. As Steven Wright said, “Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it”.
44. “Memories, even bittersweet ones, are better than nothing”. (JL Armentrout)
Memories are synonymous with what’s been lived. Moreover, many great moments have a bittersweet taste, as happiness and sadness often walk together.
45. “Life is not a matter of having good cards, but of playing a bad hand well”. (Jack London)
This is a handy quote for pessimists. We can’t all have the same cards, but that doesn’t mean we should stop playing the game.
46. “My life is my message”. (Gandhi)
If you’re looking for an inspiring quote about life, look no further than this one from Gandhi.
47. “Living is the strangest thing in the world. Most people exist, that’s all”. (Oscar Wilde)
Have you ever been through times when you felt like you were just existing? Tiring days of work, study, or responsibilities of adult life. Most of these are temporary, at least until you decide you want to start living.
48. “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get”. (Forrest Gump)
This quote is taken from the famous movie starring Tom Hanks. If you like, read some of our famous movie quotes.
49. “Sometimes…I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see”. (Arthur Golden)
That’s because those moments have been engraved in your mind with absolute lucidity. In fact, the happiest memories are often those you keep to yourself.
50. “Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life”. (Eleanor Roosevelt)
In part, curiosity is the engine of life. It’s something that can be seen in children. Try to imitate the curiosity of a child and you’ll keep the flame of life burning.
51. “The past limits us, but the future frightens us. The only safe place is the present”. (Isaac López)
You should never anchor your life to the past or the future. The present, the now, is the only tangible place.
52. “The only real treasure is in your head. Memories are better than diamonds and no one can steal them from you”. (Rodman Philbrick)
Moreover, it’s a treasure you know exactly where to find, which is safe from the clutches of others.
53. “All that really belongs to us is time; even he who has nothing else has that”. (Baltasar Gracián)
It’s your first and last great possession. Don’t waste it. Regardless, you’ll always regret not having used it in a better way.
54. “Life is really simple, but we insist on complicating it”. (Confucius)
Few sentences can express questions about life so directly and simply. Many people make it more complicated than it really is. Inevitably, this results in them being unable to navigate through it.
55. “That’s the problem with memories: you can visit them, but you can’t live in them”. (SD Hutchinson)
A problem that might be classified as minor, as the simple act of remembering can completely change your attitude when facing a difficult day.
56. “I wasted time. Now time is wasting me”. (William Shakespeare)
Do your best not to find yourself repeating these words at the end of your life. Another quote about time, life, and memories that you should apply in your daily life.
57. “Only I can change my life, no one can change it for me”. (Carol Burnett)
You’re responsible for how you guide yourself through life, what you do with it, and what you want to become. Blaming others is an act of responsibility avoidance.
58. “Time is the best author, it always finds the perfect ending”. (Charles Chaplin)
But, you sometimes have to give it space to do its work. Don’t expect things to be solved immediately. This is one of the biggest problems in society today: immediacy.
59. “The important thing about having lots of things to remember is that you’ve got to go somewhere afterward where you can remember them, you see? You’ve got to stop. You haven’t really been anywhere until you’ve got back home”. (Terry Pratchett)
Even if you can’t relive the moment, you can always go back to the place where you were happy. Without a doubt, your home will be among your favorite places to return to.
60. “When it comes to memories, the good and bad never balance”. (Jodi Picoult)
You’ll always have more episodes of one or the other that you can catalog within your memory. However, this doesn’t have to affect your emotions.
61. “Time is nothing but the current in which I am fishing”. (HD Thoreau)
And the amount of fish that you’ll catch depends on how much you know about taking advantage of the tide.
62. “There is no memory that time does not erase or sorrow that death does not end”. (Miguel de Cervantes)
Hence the consoling role of time.
63. “Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old”. (Franz Kafka)
Perhaps this is why the younger stages of life are associated with happiness.
64. “Old age and the passage of time teach all things”. (Sophocles)
You shouldn’t rush to gain the key to a successful life early. It comes with the passage of time, as you gain experience.
65. “Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age”. (Victor Hugo)
This quote about time, life, and memories is extremely practical. But, only when you’ve reached both of these stages will you recognize it.
66. “Time is a great teacher but unfortunately it kills all its students”. (Héctor Berlioz)
The only certain thing in life is death. However, this doesn’t have to limit your attitude toward doing things before it arrives.
67. “The purpose of life is to believe, to hope, and to strive”.(Indira Gandhi)
Another quote about the meaning of life that can help you gain momentum at difficult times.
68. “The first forty years of life give us the text, the next thirty the comment”. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
Hence, it’s said that life begins at forty. Not in the literal sense, of course, but via a radical change in the way you approach life.
69. “Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of the spirit”. (Mateo Alemán)
Many older people have more creative and curious spirits than young people in their 20s.
70. “Let’s give time to time: for the glass to overflow it must be filled first”. (Antonio Machado)
Bear in mind that your glass will fill up even if you only fill it drop by drop. Another quote that you shouldn’t ignore.
71. “Your best life will not be found in comfort. It will be found in fighting for what you believe in”. (Maxime Lagacé)
At the end of that fight, you’ll find comfort. However, it won’t come by itself, nor is it something that life owes you for the simple fact of being alive. It’s something that you have to conquer yourself.
72. “I’ve never tried to block out memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don’t understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps you to become the person you are now”. (Sophia Loren)
As we’ve already mentioned, never let your past disturb your present. That’s not to say you should pretend it never happened.
73. “And the moral of the story is that you don’t remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened”. (John Green)
Have you ever tried to compare a specific moment with the memory that different people have of it? If so, you’ll surely recognize how much truth is hidden behind these words.
74. “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive, and to do so with some passion, compassion, humor, and style”. (Maya Angelou)
Life isn’t just about breathing, going to work, or doing the dishes. You can make every day worthwhile, with the smallest of actions.
75. “Tomorrow is just an adverb of time”. (Graham Greene)
However, it’s one that many of us place all our hopes on. Instead, focus on today and your life will start to change.
76. “The shortness of life, so often lamented, maybe the best thing about it”. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
The shortness of life doesn’t have to be the reason for your misfortunes.
77. “I think the only answer is to live life to the fullest while you can and collect memories like fools collect money. Because in the end that’s all you have: happy memories”. (Sarah Strohmeyer)
If you reach an age where you can say that you’ve had a good life (referring to your memories) then you’ll have made it.
78. “We have evolved to look for meaning, but ultimately life has none”. (Naval Ravikant)
But, it can have a purpose, and one which is more tangible and personalized. Find a purpose, stick with it, and do your best to achieve it.
79. “We no longer live life, we consume it”. (Vicki Robin)
One of the few quotes about time, life, and memories that puts the magnifying glass on life today. Unfortunately, continual consumption is often confused with the act of living.
80. “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive…” (Joseph Campbell)
For many of us, feeling alive is the most important thing in the world. Being happy, experiencing good times, and enjoying good health and prosperity are just a part of it.
With this last reflection, we come to the end of our list of quotes about time, life, and memories. You may well have found some words of encouragement among our selection. Maybe some have even opened up new horizons for you.
