Procrastination is the thief of time.

Edward Young (1683–1765), an English poet and Anglican clergyman, coined this line in his long, reflective poem *The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality* (commonly *Night Thoughts*). The work, published in the 1740s, is a series of meditations prompted by bereavement and moral urgency, urging readers to confront mortality and live purposefully. The aphorism appears in the opening “Night,” where Young presses the reader to awaken from delay and distraction, framing wasted time as a spiritual and existential loss rather than merely a practical inefficiency.

The metaphor casts procrastination as a stealthy robber: time is not merely “spent” but actively stolen when one postpones necessary or meaningful action. Young’s phrasing implies that delay has cumulative, often unnoticed costs—opportunities vanish, habits harden, and life’s finite span diminishes. In *Night Thoughts*, the warning is sharpened by a memento mori perspective: because death is certain and time irrecoverable, postponement becomes a moral failing as well as a personal miscalculation. The line endures because it compresses a complex truth—about attention, choice, and finitude—into a vivid, memorable image.