Quotes on Years

A country of a thousand war-chariots cannot be administered unless the ruler attends strictly to business, punctually observes his promises, is economical in expenditure, loves the people, and uses the labor of the peasantry only at the proper times of year.

It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all.

Last year, I was sort of a kid and I was a little scared, I ain't scared any more.

Don Quixote — I read that every year, as some do the Bible.

How many years have slipped through our hands?
At least as many as the constellations we still can identify.
The quarter moon, like a light skiff,
 floats out of the mist-remnants
Of last night’s hard rain.
It, too, will slip through our fingers
 with no ripple, without us in it.

What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, superfluous, labor of verification.

I have seen for the first time in 100 years of conflict, the two peoples - the Israeli people and the Palestinian people - are ahead of their leaderships.

What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism

An integrated cup of coffee isn't sufficient pay for four hundred years of slave labor.

Ten years ago, if you asked me where I'd be now, I'd have said F-ing dead. But I'm not dead. I have an awesome life. And I'm just very grateful. That's the one thing I try to convey. Gratitude.

As in the pseudoscience of bloodletting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning, years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense.

Nowadays, a 13-year-old would probably know more than Bobby Fischer knew when he retired. They analyse all the moves and prepare themselves on their computers. But that doesn’t mean they are special.

I don't like to dwell on the past. I'm interested in Fischerandom now, I am working on a new clock, I'm trying to make chess a more exciting game today. I am not interested in sitting in my rocking chair thinking what I did 10, 20 or 30 years ago.

Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.

It took a long time to understand why people were so interested in me, but I assumed it was because my wonderful husband had done a lot of wonderful work leading up to our marriage and our relationship. But then, over the years, you see yourself as a good product that sits on a shelf and sells well. People make a lot of money out of you.

Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased - not a reduced - flow of revenues to the federal government.

I have myself, for many years, made it a practice to read through the Bible once ever year.... My custom is, to read four to five chapters every morning immediately after rising from my bed. I employs about an hour of my time.

We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.

But do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know.

I remember nothing about it except a philological fact. My mother said nothing about the dragon, but pointed out that one could not say 'a green great dragon', but had to say 'a great green dragon'. I wondered why, and still do. The fact that I remember this is possibly significant, as I do not think I ever tried to write a story again for many years, and was taken up with language.

I love to keep poking and prodding at it. I’ve thought about it so much over the years that that fascination is bound to spill over into my writing.