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Here are some of my favourite quotes that have helped me reflect on my relationship with time, busyness, speed, slowing down and much more.
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important” — Dwight Eisenhower
“To commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of modern times.” — Thomas Merton
“Rushing around can be a pointless diversion from actually living your life” — Claire Messud
“When things happen too fast, nobody can be certain about anything, about anything at all, not even about himself.” — Milan Kundera
“Our hurry-up culture teaches that reaching the destination is more important than the journey itself” — Carl Honore
“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it” — Henry Ford
“I am not keeping myself busy. If anything, I am attempting to keep myself unbusy and finding that to be something of a full-time job.” — Jon Kabat Zinn
“And yet some things cannot, should not, be sped up. They take time; they need slowness. When you accelerate things that should not be accelerated, when you forget how to slow down, there is a price to pay.” — Carl Honore
Be fast when it makes sense to be fast, and be slow when slowness is called for. Seek to live at what musicians call the tempo giusto—the right speed.” — Carl Honore
“The whole struggle of life is to some extent a struggle about how slowly or how quickly to do each thing.” — Sten Nadolny,
If we feel short of time, it can be for a variety of reasons and take a variety of forms. Indeed, it may even be the case that some of us have more time, but not time of the right kind or when we need it.” — Judy Wajcman
“Remember how long you have been putting this off, how many times you have been given a period of grace by the gods and not used it. It is high time now for you to understand the universe of which you are a part, and the governor of that universe of whom you constitute an emanation: and that there is a limit circumscribed to your time – if you do not use it to clear away your clouds, it will be gone, and you will be gone, and the opportunity will not return.” — Marcus Aurelius
“How you spend your hours and days is how you spend your life.” — Nilanjana Roy
“There Is more to life than increasing its speed.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“We do not remember days, we remember moments. The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.” — Cesare Pavese
“Time is basically an illusion created by the mind to aid in our sense of temporal presence in the vast ocean of space.” — Abhijit Naskar
