There is nothing which I wish more that you should know, and which fewer people do know, than the true use and value of time. It is in everybody's mouth, but in few people's practice. Every fool, who slatterns away his whole time in nothing, utters, however, some trite commonplace sentence, of which there are millions , to prove, at once, the value and the fleetness of time. The sun-dials all over Europe have some ingenious inscriptions to that effect; so that nobody squanders away their time without hearing and seeing daily how necessary it is to employ well, and how irrecoverable it is if lost.
Lord Chesterfield
Letters to His Son