Clock Quotes - Page 23

• Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

  Thornton Wilder

  Coffee, Sleep, Sunflower

  Thornton Wilder (1966). “Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker”

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• - he's finished with that; it's like an old clock that won't tell time but won't stop neither, with the hands bent out of shape and the face bare of numbers and the alarm bell rusted silent, an old worthless clock that just keeps ticking and cuckooing without meaning nothing.

  Ken Kesey

  Hands, Numbers, Alarms

  Ken Kesey (2016). “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”, p.28, Hamilton Books

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• And an unstable childhood makes you appreciate calmness and not crave excitement. To spend a Saturday afternoon mopping your kitchen floor while listening to opera on the radio, and to go that night to an Indian restaurant with a friend and be home by nine o'clock - these are enough. They are gifts.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Home, Night, Appreciate

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• Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess. And it is still true, no matter how old you are - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

  Robert Fulghum

  Thinking, Government, Naps

  "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten". Book by Robert Fulghum, 1986.

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• Policeman: "A hermit eh? Then why's your table set for four?" Groucho: "That's nothing. My alarm clock is set for eight.

  Groucho Marx

  Eight, Four, Tables

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• I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain - and back in rain. I have out walked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet. When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly light, One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.

  Robert Frost

  Rain, Eye, Night

  "Acquainted with the Night" l. 1 (1928)

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• Life would go out in a 'fraction of a second' (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn't change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory--or for ever.

  Graham Greene

  Pain, Night, Light

  Graham Greene (1971). “The Power and the Glory”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• For me the noise of Time is not sad: I love bells, clocks, watches — and I recall that at first photographic implements were related to techniques of cabinetmaking and the machinery of precision: cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing, and perhaps in me someone very old still hears in the photographic mechanism the living sound of the wood.

  Roland Barthes

  Technique, Cameras, Sound

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• Somehow, Sydney had an internal clock that told her when time was up. I think it was part of her inherent ability to keep track of a hundred things at once. Not me. In these moments, my thoughts were usually focused on getting her shirt off and whether I’d get past the bra this time. So far, I hadn’t.

  Richelle Mead

  Past, Thinking, Track

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• There's a clock on the wall. Press your hand against the face and turn it very slightly to the. Left. There'll be a click to tell you it's done." "Sounds easy enough." "Yes it does," said Sanguine. "Kiss for good luck?" "Maybe later," said Gracious. "How about a handshake?" Asked Donegan.

  Derek Landy

  Wall, Good Luck, Kissing

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• Stress is an alarm clock that lets you know you're attached to something not true for you.

  Byron Katie

  Positive, Freedom, Stress

  Twitter post from Mar 28, 2011

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• Time is of your own making;
  Its clock ticks in your head.
  The moment you stop thought
  Time too stops dead.

  Angelus Silesius

  Time, Moments, Tick

  Angelus Silesius, Frederick Franck (2005). “Messenger of the Heart: The Book of Angelus Silesius with Observations by the Ancient Zen Masters”, p.39, World Wisdom, Inc

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• A clock is a little machine that shuts us out from the wonder of time.

  Susan Glaspell

  Time, Littles, Machines

  Susan Glaspell, George Cram Cook (1920). “Plays”

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• There is a balance, a kind of standoff between the time continuum and the human entity, our frail bundle of soma and psyche. We eventually succumb to time, it's true, but time depends on us. We carry it in our muscles and genes, pass it on to the next set of time-factoring creatures, our brown-eyed daughters and jug-eared sons, or how would the world keep going. Never mind the time theorists, the cesium devices that measure the life and death of the smallest silvery trillionth of a second.... We were the only crucial clocks, our minds and bodies, way stations for the distribution of time.

  Don DeLillo

  Daughter, Time, Son

  Don DeLillo (2015). “Underworld: Picador Classic”, p.232, Pan Macmillan

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• One day some as yet unborn scholar will recognize in the clock the machine that has tamed the wilds.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Time, One Day, Machines

  J. M. Coetzee (2017). “In the Heart of the Country: A Novel”, p.7, Penguin

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• I can never understand why I should eat at one or sleep at eleven, if it is, as it often is, my one and my eleven and nobody else's. For, as between the clock and me alone, one and eleven and all other o'clocks are mine and I am not theirs. But I have known men and women living in hotels who would interrupt a sunset to go to dine, or wave away the stars in their courses to go to sleep, merely because the hour had struck.

  Zona Gale

  Time, Stars, Sunset

  "Friendship Village Love Stories".

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• What is a clock? Something agreed upon and arbitrarily imposed upon us. Standard time. Not true time. Symbolizing the whole standardization of our lives.

  Susan Glaspell

  Time, Standards, Standardization

  Susan Glaspell, George Cram Cook (1920). “Plays”

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• One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse beneath the sandstone arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time. Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession. And beyond any particular clock, a vast scaffold of time, stretching across the universe, lays down the law of time equally for all.

  Alan Lightman

  Time, Church Bells, Years

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.25, Vintage

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• I don't suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch or a clock. You don't have to. You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn't hear.

  William Faulkner

  Time, Long, Mind

  William Faulkner (2013). “The Sound And The Fury”, p.63, Random House

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• Time has two aspects. There is the arrow, the running river, without which there is no change, no progress, or direction, or creation. And there is the circle or the cycle, without which there is chaos, meaningless succession of instants, a world without clocks or seasons or promises.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Running, Time, Circles

  Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “The Dispossessed”, p.99, Hachette UK

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• And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
  Says very wisely, "It is ten o'clock:
  Thus we may see," quoth he, "how the world wags."

  William Shakespeare

  Time, Eye, World

  William Shakespeare, Michael Hattaway (2009). “As You Like It”, p.133, Cambridge University Press

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• Middle age is when you're faced with two temptations and you choose the one that will get you home by nine o'clock.

  Ronald Reagan

  Birthday, Home, Two

  Ronald Reagan (2004). “The uncommon wisdom of Ronald Reagan: a portrait in his own words”

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• It is clear the future holds great opportunities. It also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get back home by six o'clock.

  Woody Allen

  Life, Graduation, Home

  Woody Allen (2007). “The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose”, Random House Incorporated

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• Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
  The brook runs down in sending up our life.
  The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
  And there is something sending up the sun.

  Robert Frost

  Life, Running, Sun

  Robert Frost (1955). “Selected poems”

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• She went from opera, park, assembly, play,
  To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day.
  To part her time 'twixt reading and bohea,
  To muse, and spill her solitary tea,
  Or o'er cold coffee trifle with the spoon,
  Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon.

  Alexander Pope

  Life, Morning, Prayer

  'Epistle to Miss Blount, on her leaving the Town, after the Coronation' (of King George I, 1715) (1717)

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