Life & Wisdom Quote by Edward Young

A poet-priest’s warning disguised as a clean epigram, "Procrastination is the thief of time" works because it turns an abstract habit into a criminal with agency. Edward Young doesn’t describe delay as laziness or indecision; he casts it as larceny. That metaphor quietly shifts responsibility and stakes at once: if time is being stolen, you are both victim and negligent caretaker, leaving the door unlocked again and again.

Young wrote in an era that was retooling time into something measurable, moral, and monetizable. Early modern Britain saw expanding commerce, stricter schedules, and the rising prestige of industriousness. In that context, procrastination isn’t just a personal quirk. It’s a breach of duty. Young’s broader project in works like Night Thoughts is preoccupied with mortality and salvation, so "time" here carries a double charge: hours wasted on earth, and the shrinking interval in which one might repent, create, love properly, or set one’s life in order before the ultimate deadline arrives.

The line’s brilliance is its economy. "Thief" is harsher than "waste". Waste sounds passive, almost aesthetic; theft implies loss you can’t recover and a culprit that returns. It also preserves a sliver of self-deception: people who procrastinate often feel acted upon by mood, fear, or circumstance. Young weaponizes that feeling, saying: yes, it feels external, and that’s the danger. The robber is inside the house.