213 Quotes by Alan Lightman

The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.

Events, once happened, lose reality, alter with a glance, a storm, a night. In time, the past never happened. But who could know? Who could know that the past is not as solid as this instant…

Two men who had never seen each other before and would not likely see each other again. But their sincerity and sweetness, their sharing an instant in a fleeting life. It was almost as if a secret had passed between them. Was this some kind of love? I wanted to follow them, to touch them, to tell them of my happiness. I wanted to whisper to them: 'This is it. This is it'".

At the present time... we certainly do not know all the laws of nature, and it is a good bet that most of our current formulations of those laws will be revised in the future.Yet the great majority of scientists believe that a complete and final set of laws governing all physical phenomena exists, and that we are making continual progress toward discovery of those laws.

Human beings consider themselves satisfied only compared to some other condition. A man who has owned nothing but a bicycle all of his life feels suddenly wealthy the moment he buys an automobile...But this happy sensation wears off. After a while the car becomes just another thing that he owns. Moreover, when his neighbor next door buys two cars, in an instant our man feels wretchedly poor and deprived.

In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time.""They do not keep clocks in their houses. Instead, they listen to their heartbeats. They feel the rhythms of their moods and desires.""Then there are those who think their bodies don't exist. They live by mechanical time. They rise at seven o'clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the clock.

Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.

Time is the clarity for seeing right and wrong.

Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.