Philosophers' views and litterateurs' conceptions of time are surveyed, quoting examples of the latter from English-language fiction. Time is explored as the essential component of humanity and the world in a discussion of the notions of "static time," "linear time," and "cyclic time." Special attention is devoted to the interpretation of time as space. Folk proverbs and literary metaphors of time are analyzed, within the theoretical framework of G. Lakoff and M. Johnson's 'Metaphors We Live By' (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1980) and Lakoff's (1989) invariance hypothesis, to test a postulate that time is not always and not necessarily space and the assumption that there is a qualitative difference between conceptual and categorial metaphors. The material leads to the conclusion that no unconditional claim can be made about time being space and support's Leonard Talmy's (1988) "the deployment of perspective" tenet of cognitive linguistics. (LLBA, Z. Dubiel, Accession Number 200110508, (c) CSA [1999]. All rights reserved.)