When I was a senior in high school, the quote I used under my yearbook picture paraphrased the great English poet, John Milton:

"How soon hath time, the subtle thief of youth, stolen on its wing my one and seventeenth year?"

Believe me, I was no wise-before-my-time teenager -- I was a party girl who lived in the moment, as children are wont to do, thinking little of the past and nothing of the future. But I must have figured out that my life was going to change very fast once I ran out that door with my diploma. And it did.

In that vein, and for your pleasure, I've assembled a few favorite quotes from far wiser men and women than I.

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

-- Frank Zappa, American rock composer
Asteroid in his name: 3834 Zappafrank

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The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

-- Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet
Won Nobel Prize in Literature

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Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

-- Carl Sandburg, American writer
Won three Pulitzers

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Time spent with cats is never wasted.

-- François-René de Chateaubriand, French author
Considered the father of French Romanticism

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I'm trying very hard to understand this generation. They have adjusted the timetable for childbearing so that menopause and teaching a sixteen-year-old how to drive a car will occur in the same week.

-- Erma Bombeck, American humorist
Wrote popular column and umpteen best-sellers

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The soul doesn't wear a watch.

-- Prem Rawat, Indian-born spiritual teacher
His foundation provides food and water to the poor

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The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

-- Bertrand Russell, English philosopher
History of Western Philosophy became best-seller

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