  Solar flares are observed and classified according to their intensity
measured with the GOES X-ray Sensors. We show that the duration of a flare, as
measured by the full width at half maximum (FWHM) in GOES is not related to the
size of the flare as measured by GOES intensity. The durations of X-class
flares range from a few minutes to a few hours, and the same is true of M- and
C-class flares. In this work, we therefore examine the statistical
relationships between the basic properties of flares -- temperature, emission
measure, energy, etc. -- in comparison to both their size and duration. We find
that the size of the flare is directly related to all of these basic
properties, as previously found by many authors. The duration is not so clear.
When examining the whole data set, the duration appears to be independent of
all of these properties. In larger flares, however, there are direct
correlations between the GOES FWHM and magnetic reconnection flux and ribbon
area. We discuss the possible explanations, finding that this discrepancy may
be due to large uncertainties in small flares, though we cannot rule out the
possibility that the driving physical processes are different in smaller flares
than larger ones. We discuss the implications of this result and how it relates
to the magnetic reconnection process that releases energy in flares.
