Quotes from The Time Keeper

Mitch Albom ·  224 pages

Rating: (84.7K votes)


“Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. an alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“It is never too late or too soon. It is when it is supposed to be.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“There is a reason God limits our days.'
'Why?'
'To make each one precious.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper



“Sometimes, when you are not getting the love you want, giving makes you think you will.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“I made such a fool of myself,” she lamented.
“Love does not make you a fool.”
“He didn’t love me back.”
“That does not make you a fool, either.”
“Just tell me …” Her voice cracked. “When does it stop hurting?”
“Sometimes never.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“Holding on to things only breaks your heart.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“Knowing something and understanding it were not the same thing.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper



“When we are most alone is when we embrace another's loneliness.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“Ends are for yesterday, not tomorrows.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“As mankind grew obsessed with its hours, the sorrow of lost time became a permanent hole in the human heart. People fretted over missed chances, over inefficient days; they worried constantly about how long they would live, because counting life’s moments had led, inevitably, to counting them down. Soon, in every nation and in every language, time became the most precious commodity.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“A heart weighs more when it splits in two; it crashes in the chest like a broken plane.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“There is a reason God limits man's days.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper



“But a desperate heart will seduce the mind.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“No matter how smart she appeared, she was
fragile at her core.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“But hurting ourselves to inflict pain on others is just another cry to be loved.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“But fates are connected in ways we don’t understand.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“He cried that night for all that he had lost, but he would say it taught him a valuable lesson: that holding on to things "will only break your heart.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper



“You had many more years,” he said.
“I didn’t want them.”
“But they wanted you. Time is not something you give back. The very next moment may be an answer to
your prayer. To deny that is to deny the most important part of the future.”
“What’s that?”
“Hope.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“She felt worthless and hollow. There was no hope of fixing this.
And when hope is gone, time is punishment.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“But they wanted you. Time is not something you give back. The very next moment may be answer to your prayer. To deny that is to deny the most important part of the future.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“But you grab a moment, or you let it pass.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“A man who can take anything will find most things unsatisfying. And a man without memories is just a shell.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper



“There was always a quest for more minutes, more hours, faster progress to accomplish more in each day. The simple joy of living between summers was gone.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“The length of your days does not belong to you.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“Everything man does today to be efficient, to fill the hour? It does not satisfy. It only makes him hungry to do more. Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time. When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“Mankind is connected in ways it does not understand - even in dreams.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper



About the author

Mitch Albom
Born place: in Passaic, New Jersey, The United States
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― Jonathan Swift, quote from Gulliver's Travels


“Everyone thinks I'm showing off when I talk, ridiculous when I'm silent, insolent when I answer, cunning when I have a good idea, lazy when I'm tired, selfish when I eat one bite more than I should.”
― Anne Frank, quote from The Diary of a Young Girl


“I'm not choosing, but I'm running out of fight.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from If I Stay


“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)”
― Gillian Flynn, quote from Gone Girl


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