Samuel Smiles：Self-Help, Excerpt 120

What a solemn and striking admonition to youth is that inscribed on the dial at All Souls, Oxford—“Pereunt et imputantur”—the hours perish, and are laid to our charge. Time is the only little fragment of Eternity that belongs to man; and, like life, it can never be recalled. “In the dissipation of worldly treasure,” says Jackson of Exeter, “the frugality of the future may balance the extravagance of the past; but who can say, ‘I will take from minutes to-morrow to compensate for those I have lost to-day’?” Melancthon noted down the time lost by him, that he might thereby reanimate his industry, and not lose an hour. An Italian scholar put over his door an inscription intimating that whosoever remained there should join in his labours. “We are afraid,” said some visitors to Baxter, “that we break in upon your time.” “To be sure you do,” replied the disturbed and blunt divine. Time was the estate out of which these great workers, and all other workers, formed that rich treasury of thoughts and deeds which they have left to their successors.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/935
Locator：Excerpt 120 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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