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"Quality time" (QT) is an informal reference to time spent with loved ones (e.g., close family, partners or friends) that is in some way important, special, productive or profitable. It is time that is set aside for paying full and undivided attention to the person or matter at hand. It may also refer to time spent performing some favorite activity.
"Quality time" (noun phrase) is a relatively new expression, in use since the 1970s. One of the earliest records of this phrase in print was in the Maryland (USA) newspaper The Capital, January 1973, in the article "How To Be Liberated":
The major goal of each of these role changes is to give a woman time to herself, Ms. Burton explained. "A woman's right and responsibility is to be self fulfilling," she said. She gives "quality time" rather than "quantity time" to each task, whether it be writing, cleaning the house or tending the children.Famous quotes containing the words quality time, quality and/or time:
“Working parents are often told that it is the quality of time, rather than the quantity of time one spends with children, that is significant. Unfortunately, good quality time is difficult to define, to measure, and to make happen on schedule.”
—Joyce Portner (20th century)
“Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannnot endure it.... Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)