Shortcoming

“ It is not the part of men, but of fanatics—or of mathematicians, if you will—to say that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them. Five minutes of to-day are worth as much to me as five minutes in the next millennium. ”

“ Will delay render it less gigantic, or give us more Herculean strength to meet and subdue it at a future time? Oh, no—delay breeds danger—procrastination is the thief of time, and the refuge of sluggards. ”

“ But on these instructive complications I must not enlarge more than to say that they could all be resumed in the one word: Delay.
A mankind which has invented the proverb, “Time is money,” will understand my vexation. ”

“ We have no time for useless tears or fretting:
Life is too short.
Life is too short for any bitter feeling;
Time is the best avenger if we wait;
The years speed by, and on their wings bear healing ”

“ What about the men and women and children who look forward for weeks and months, and who plan and save and economise, sometimes hopelessly, that somewhere they may have two weeks together, free from the worry and care and eternal grind of their daily life? ”

“ The ten years from forty to fifty—the best ten years of his life! And if one counted the years before, the silent years of dreams, assimilation, preparation—then call it half a man's life-time: half a man's life-time thrown away! ”

“ And who knows how short our time may be? When the end comes, will it be easy to bear, the thought that we lost one day, one moment of union, out of respect for idle prejudices which vanish as soon as they find themselves ineffectual? ”

“ In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment ”

“ I speak of those innumerable accidental limitations that are always falling across our path—bad weather, confinement to this or that house or room, failure of appointments or arrangements, waiting at railway stations, missing posts, finding unpunctuality when we want punctuality, or, what is worse, finding punctuality when we don’t. ”

“ The years are long for separation, dearest; they are too long. Let us be poor together. What does it matter? Nothing matters but the passing of time, and you away from me. Let us be together. I see death cutting down people all around me, and I am afraid. Life is passing, passing. ”

“ Yet Time, forsooth, wrests even this anchorage from you. Comes an hour when, confronted by the inevitable, helpless in its grip, unreconciled even in your resignation, you dully stand by a bedside and wait—wait—wait. ”

“ On the contrary, there are long periods during which growth in some directions is [115] going hand in hand with decay in others; losses in one kind are being compensated, or more than compensated, by gains in another; during which a language changes, but only as the bud changes into the flower, and the flower into the fruit. A time indeed arrives when the growth and gains, becoming ever fewer, cease to constitute any longer a compensation for the losses and the decay; which are ever becoming more; when the forces of disorganization and death at work are stronger than those of life and order. ”

“ His shortcomings appal, for "by the law is the knowledge of sin," and he feels that beyond the sin which he knows, there is a dark region in him where foul things nestle and breed fast. "Secret faults" are those hidden, not from men, but from himself. ”

“ There is no standard by which time can be measured, but the succession of our thoughts, and the changes that take place in the external world: from the latter I was totally excluded; the former made the lapse of some hours appear like the tediousness of weeks and months. At length a new sensation recalled my rambling meditations, and gave substance to my fears: I now felt the cravings of hunger, and perceived that, unless my deliverance were speedily effected, I must suffer a tedious and lingering death. ”

“ Short-term goals were more easily realized. The future had a nasty habit of rearranging one's plans; life changed so fast that it left one groping for stability as if spun furiously on the head of a top. ”

“ Your life’s journey may extend far away over the unexplored future, and may in some cases be a very long one; but, although this is possible, we are not allowed to forget that it is always precarious—unexpected graves are constantly reminding us how short may be the time of any one of us—how the night cometh. ”

“ Only let us try for them, and they will certainly be ours; and what is still a comfort, shortly too; for if we look back on a past life, it appears but a very short span; and whatever we may think of the rest of life, it will yet be found of less duration: as we grow older the days seem to grow shorter, and our intimacy with Time ever lessens the perception of his stay. ”

“ But in the last week all the thoughts, the plans, the ambitions, the discoveries of a new future, seem to be concentrated. The minutes drag by with a laborious and torpid slowness, and there is an intensity of time which seems to crowd sixty hours into one single hour by the clock. ”

“ Of these the present time is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain. ”

“ Measured on the dial, an hour in a week or a lifetime out of an eternity is too brief to allow of one wasted moment, one experimental or ignorant touch upon a soul. But measured by the duration of a given opportunity the time is shorter still. Conditions in the life are constantly [Pg 140] changing, never to return in the same way again. What is done in "buying up the opportunity," must be done quickly. ”

“ They could not hinder him from carrying through what he had set his mind on. To-morrow was a day, and the next was another, and the next again; and life, considered thus in days and opportunities, was infinitely long. ”

“ How rapid as we go on in life becomes the awful beat of each recurring year! When the feeling of novelty has grown rare, and when interests have lost their edge, time glides by with an ever-increasing celerity. ”

“ Oh the slow agony of waiting! the torture of enumerating minutes—each minute seemingly an age—the dull, heart-sickening suspense of awaiting tidings—tidings which the heart tells us—the heart, too faithful prophet of the future—cannot by possibility be good; while reason interposes her vain veto to the heart’s decision, and hope uplifts her false and siren song. ”

“ How much of human life is lost in waiting! ”

“ This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all. ”

“ The logical consequence was to make dying the chief end of living. Who cannot remember being told to despise the present, to consider how brief it is, like a cloud before the dawn of the endless day? It was compared to the short waiting outside some door beyond which was warmth, cheer, and unending bliss. So that the pious soul thought of life only in terms of waiting, watching, enduring. ”

“ The minute which is gone can never be recalled, while the next minute is fraught with uncertainty. We are sure—not of this minute, but of this instant only, of time. Then, while we may, let us say the loving word, do the kind act, suppress the unkind remark, encourage those who are struggling by the way—this minute. ”

“ Our years, when they are gone, can no more be recalled than the word that we have spoken can. The loss and waste of our time, which are our fault and folly, may be thus complained of: we should spend our years like the despatch of business, with care and industry ”

“ On the other hand, the miscalculation of time involves us in perpetual hurry, confusion, and difficulties; and life becomes a mere shuffle of expedients, usually followed by disaster. Nelson once said, “I owe all my success in life to having been always a quarter of an hour before my time.” ”

“ I will conclude this subject with remarking, that the fancied shortness of life is aided by the apprehension of a future state. The constantly directing our hopes and fears to a higher state of being beyond the present, necessarily brings death habitually before us, and defines the narrow limits within which we hold our frail existence, as mountains bound the horizon, and unavoidably draw our attention to it. ”

“ I ask not any long consideration, any great trial of time or absence—they are both circumstances which may deceive either way; for things viewed at a distance, are not seen in their true light; and one may be as much deceived at the end of a year, as at the end of [109] a month—and life is short. ”

“ It is easy to say, "Wait awhile;" so easy to let the burden of to-day's work and duties fall on to-morrow. But when to-morrow comes it has its own peculiar duties, and the result is, we simply have extra burdens to meet when the time finally comes that our work can no longer be delayed. ”

“ Our more complicated machinery is wound up to go for a certain number of years, months, days; when that number of years, months, and days is elapsed, we stop—that is all. What is this life, about the taking or keeping of which we make such a clamour, as if it were some great, costly, goodly thing? ”

“ The days of the upright are always full. Spare moments in the day! But are your duties always fulfilled? Are your houses regulated, your children instructed, the afflicted relieved, the poor visited, the works of piety accomplished? Time is short; your obligations so infinite; and you can still find so many spare moments in the day? ”

“ Unhappily, a slow gradual progress is sadly opposed to my inconstant nature, and after one of the many interruptions it meets with, how prone am I to wish for some flying leap to make up for the past! ”

“ Every hour you continue on this ill-chosen ground, your difficulties thicken around you; and therefore my conclusion is, remove from a bad position as quickly as you can. The disgrace, and the necessity of yielding, both of them, grow upon you every hour of your delay. ”

“ Yet it is true, that now when I am older and a certain event cannot be postponed much longer, I do often regret that I neglected to take this unique chance, if in truth there was one, of prolonging an existence which after all has its consolations—especially when one has made one's pile. ”

“ Laborious plans, vast enterprises, schemes that require long long years to perfect, might all be laid aside, and our energies fixed upon the period that is ours. We work in the dark, and half our work is vain. Well, well, time will show; and our labours must not be imperfect, because we know not the result. Yes, with this ever-ready fate yawning before me, nought must be delayed. ”

“ But for less accomplished mortals the sense of limited time with otherwise unlimited opportunity, tends to a certain breathlessness which, however, in our case, gradually gave way before the influences of the country. ”

“ And yet the periods and portions of the stream of time, as they pass by us, will often be felt by us as insufferably slow in their progress, and we would give no inconsiderable sum to procure that the present section of our lives might come to an end, and that we might turn over a new leaf in the volume of existence. ”

“ Johnson said: “So little do we accustom ourselves to consider the effects of time, that things necessary and certain often surprise us like unexpected contingencies. We leave the beauty in her bloom, and, after an absence of twenty years, wonder, at our return, to find her faded. ”

“ The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change; ”

“ I came into the world two months too soon, I was in such a hurry. ”

“ The supply of to-day will be no supply for to-morrow. But what if each man should have the spring in himself? What if it should be a spring ever renewed, kept alive by Him who first opened it?' 'A strange thought,' you will say, 'to set before an ignorant woman! ”

“ It is clear that with work unwasted it can be short. It is clear also that much work which is now a torment, would be easily endurable if it were much shortened.
Variety of work is the next point, and a most important one. ”