"Remember that lost time does not return"
About this Quote
A Kempis doesn`t bother with inspiration; he reaches for the cold water. "Remember" is the operative word, a command aimed less at the intellect than at the will. In a medieval Christian world where salvation was imagined on a timeline and death could arrive without warning, forgetting was not a neutral lapse. It was a spiritual failure: a drift into distraction, vanity, and the easy alibis of tomorrow.
The line works because it refuses the consolations people reach for when they sense time slipping: nostalgia, reinvention, the fantasy that you can make it up later. "Lost time" is a deliberately moralized phrase. Time isn`t merely spent; it can be wasted, misdirected, forfeited. And the second clause lands with the finality of a bell: it does not return. No loopholes, no bargaining. The simplicity is rhetorical strategy - an ascetic style that mirrors the discipline it advocates.
As the author of The Imitation of Christ, a Kempis is writing inside the Devotio Moderna movement, which prized interior reform over public display. That context matters: the quote is not about productivity in the modern sense, but about attention. What you give your hours to becomes who you are, and the self you are forming can`t be rolled back like a ledger error.
The subtext is bracingly unsentimental: grace may be infinite, but your days are not.
The line works because it refuses the consolations people reach for when they sense time slipping: nostalgia, reinvention, the fantasy that you can make it up later. "Lost time" is a deliberately moralized phrase. Time isn`t merely spent; it can be wasted, misdirected, forfeited. And the second clause lands with the finality of a bell: it does not return. No loopholes, no bargaining. The simplicity is rhetorical strategy - an ascetic style that mirrors the discipline it advocates.
As the author of The Imitation of Christ, a Kempis is writing inside the Devotio Moderna movement, which prized interior reform over public display. That context matters: the quote is not about productivity in the modern sense, but about attention. What you give your hours to becomes who you are, and the self you are forming can`t be rolled back like a ledger error.
The subtext is bracingly unsentimental: grace may be infinite, but your days are not.
Quote Details
| Topic | Time |
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