how essential is time

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that the stuff life is made of. There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing. The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. Time is a companion that goes with us on a journey. It reminds us to cherish each moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we have lived.
Time spent with cats is never wasted. Time is an illusion even in the bible from the book of Ecclesiastes:

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. Events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to us they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation. As if you could kill time without injuring eternity! The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time. Lost, yesterday, somewhere between Sunrise and Sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.

Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother. Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things. By labor we can find food and water, but all of our labor will not find for us another hour. Time and tide wait for no man. A pompous and self-satisfied proverb, and was true for a billion years; but in our day of electric wires and water-ballast we turn it around: Man waits neither for time nor tide.

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century. Love vanquishes time. To lovers, a moment can be eternity; eternity can be the tick of a clock. No time like the present.

... We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
The years teach much which the days never know. Come out of the circle of time
and into the circle of love. Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems -- but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems incredible. Whatever begins also ends. Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.
Time makes more converts than reason.

If there must be trouble let it is in my day, that my child may have peace. It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it. Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.