Every man has his devilish minutes. [ Lavater ]
The rose is fragrant, but it fades in time:
The violet sweet, but quickly past the prime:
White lilies hang their heads, and soon decay,
And white snow in minutes melts away. [ Dryden ]
Little drops of water, little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.
Thus the little minutes, humble though they be,
Make the mighty ages of eternity. [ F. S. Osgood ]
Haste turns usually on a matter of ten minutes too late. [ Bovee ]
A thing that may not happen in a year may happen in two minutes. [ Spanish Proverb ]
Eternity gives nothing back of what one leaves out of the minutes. [ Schiller ]
Great events are the hour-hands of time, while small events mark the minutes. [ Ramsay ]
I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves. [ Lord Chesterfield ]
O, what damned minutes tells he over, who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves! [ William Shakespeare ]
I have made it a rule never to be with a person ten minutes without trying to make him happier. [ Dr. Raffler ]
But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day and the race a life. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]
Man has here two and a half minutes, - one to smile, one to sigh, and half of one to love; for in the midst of this minute he dies. [ Richter ]
Little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year. [ Horace Mann ]
A discursive student is almost certain to fall into bad company. Ten minutes with a French novel or a German rationalist have sent a reader away with a fever for life. [ Willmott ]
Haste turns usually upon a matter of ten minutes too late, and may be avoided by a habit like that of Lord Nelson, to which he ascribed his success in life, of being ten minutes too early. [ Bovee ]
Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Faerie Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrews's Sermons? [ Lamb ]
I had fifteen years' apprenticeship on the press of New York, writing editorials upon every conceivable subject, often at a few minutes notice, acquiring in this way rapid thought and rapid expression. ... The proof of genius lies in continuity. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]