Clock Quotes - Page 40

• Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Rain, Wind, Tea

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• I remember it all: every word, every breath, every tick of the clock . . . everything that happened is with me forever. I can never forget it. But that dosen't mean I can live it again. You can't live what's gone, you can only remember it, and memories have no life. They're just pale reminders of a time that's gone - like faded photographs, or a dried-up daisy chain at the back of a drawer. They have no substance. They can't take you back. Nothing can take you back. Nothing can be the same as it was. Nothing is. All I can do is tell it.

  Kevin Brooks

  Memories, Mean, Forever

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• Sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, " I cannot say that i have heard him precisely snore, and therefore must not make that statement. But on winter evenings, when he has fallen asleep at his table, I have heard him, what I should prefer to describe as partially choke. I have heard him on such occasions produce sounds of a nature similar to what may be heard in dutch clocks. Not," said Mrs. Sparsit, with a lofty sense of giving strict evidence, " That I would convey any imputation on his moral character. Far from it.

  Charles Dickens

  Character, Winter, Giving

  Charles Dickens “Hard Times”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock

  Charles Bukowski

  Loneliness, Hands, Movement

  Charles Bukowski (2012). “The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993”, p.222, Canongate Books

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• The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.

  Terry Pratchett

  Mind, Cuckoos, Dukes

  "Wyrd Sisters". Book by Terry Pratchett, 1988.

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• Perhaps the clock hands had become so tired of going in the same direction year after year that they had suddenly begun to go the opposite way instead.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Tired, Hands, Years

  Jostein Gaarder (1996). “The Christmas Mystery”, p.13, Macmillan

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• Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There's no hurry, for there's nowhere to go and nothing to buy... and no money to buy it with.

  Harper Lee

  Sweet, Morning, Tired

  "Fictional character: Older Scout". To Kill a Mockingbird, www.imdb.com. 1962.

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• He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed.

  Martin Amis

  Alarms, Usual, Six

  Martin Amis (1995). “The Information”

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• Even if all the clocks in the station break down, thought Hugo, time won't stop. Not even if you really want it to. Like now.

  Brian Selznick

  Want, Breaking Down, Stations

  Brian Selznick (2015). “The Invention of Hugo Cabret”, p.375, Scholastic Inc.

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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. It is this backward motion toward the source, Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in, The tribute of the current to the source. It is from this in nature we are from. It is most us.

  Robert Frost

  Running, Sun, Source

  928 'West-Running Brook'.

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• It was three o'clock in the morning – the wisest and most accursed hour of the clock. But sometimes it sets us free.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Life, Morning, Three

  Lucy Maud Montgomery (2016). “THE BLUE CASTLE (Unabridged)”, p.48, e-artnow

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• Instead of things I'm good at, it might be faster to list the things I can't do. I can't cook or clean the house. My room's a mess, and I'm always losing things. I love music, but I can't sing a note. I'm clumsy and can barely sew a stitch. My sense of direction is the pits, and I can't tell left from right half the time. When I get angry, I tend to break things. Plates and pencils, alarm clocks. Later on I regret it, but at the time I can't help myself. I have no money in the bank. I'm bashful for no reason, and I have hardly any friends to speak of.

  Haruki Murakami

  Regret, House, Half

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• In mind's special processes, a ten-mile run takes far longer than the 60 minutes reported by a grandfather clock. Such time, in fact, hardly exists at all in the real world; it is all out on the trail somewhere, and you only go back to it when you are out there.

  John L. Parker Jr.

  Running, Real, Mind

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• O how all things are far removed and long have passed away. I do believe the star, whose light my face reflects, is dead and has been so for many thousand years. I had a vision of a passing boat and heard some voices saying disquieting things. I heard a clock strike in some distant house... but in which house?... I long to quiet my anxious heart and stand beneath the sky's immensity. I long to pray... And one of all the stars must still exist. I do believe that I would know which one alone endured, and which like a white city stands at the ray's end shining in the heavens.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Stars, Believe, Heart

  Rainer Maria Rilke, “Lament (O How All Things Are Far Removed)”

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• I loathe the expression “What makes him tick.” It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solutions, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.

  James Thurber

  Fall, Simple, Expression

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• The huge round lunar clock was a gristmill. Shake down all the grains of Time—the big grains of centuries, and the small grains of years, and the tiny grains of hours and minutes—and the clock pulverized them, slid Time silently out in all directions in a fine pollen, carried by cold winds to blanket the town like dust, everywhere. Spores from that clock lodged in your flesh to wrinkle it, to grow bones to monstrous size, to burst feet from shoes like turnips. Oh, how that great machine…dispensed Time in blowing weathers.

  Ray Bradbury

  Feet, Wrinkles, Dust

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• But there is something about Time. The sun rises and sets. The stars swing slowly across the sky and fade. Clouds fill with rain and snow, empty themselves, and fill again. The moon is born, and dies, and is reborn. Around millions of clocks swing hour hands, and minute hands, and second hands. Around goes the continual circle of the notes of the scale. Around goes the circle of night and day, the circle of weeks forever revolving, and of months, and of years.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Stars, Rain, Moon

  Madeleine L'Engle (1968). “Prelude”

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• Perhaps it's true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house---the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture---must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstitutred. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.

  Arundhati Roy

  House, Events, Ordinary

  Arundhati Roy (2002). “The God of Small Things”, p.32, Penguin Books India

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• The night breathed through the apartment like a dark animal. The ticking of a clock. The groan of a floorboard as he slipped out of his room. All was drowned by its silence. But Jacob loved the night. He felt it on his skin like a promise. Like a cloak woven from freedom and danger.

  Cornelia Funke

  Dark, Animal, Night

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• Time and I have quarrelled. All hours are midnight now. I had a clock and a watch, but I destroyed them both. I could not bear the way they mocked me.

  Susanna Clarke

  Life, Midnight, Watches

  Susanna Clarke (2009). “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”, p.827, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• A broken clock is right two times a day.

  Orson Scott Card

  Two, Broken

  Orson Scott Card (2002). “Ender's Shadow”, p.81, Macmillan

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• So one day he found her crying Coiled up on the dirty ground Her prince finally came to save her & the rest you can figure out But it was a trick & the clock struck twelve Well make sure to build your home brick by boring brick or the wolf's gonna blow it down Keep your feet on the ground When your head's in the clouds

  Hayley Williams

  Dirty, Home, Blow

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• Emotions weren’t created to just lie around. You should experience things to the full. I’ve got a sense of the clock ticking. We have to feel all those things to the maximum. Like, I don’t eat a lot but I really love eating. And I like being precise and particular. There is a certain respect in that. If you can do your day depending on how you feel, and enjoy things as well.

  Bjork

  Lying, How You Feel, Emotion

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• What lingered after them was not life, which always overcomes natural death, but the most trivial list of mundane facts: a clock ticking on a wall, a room dim at noon, and the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Wall, Thinking, Overcoming

  Jeffrey Eugenides (1993). “The Virgin Suicides: A Novel”, p.242, Macmillan

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• Time passes unhindered. When we make mistakes, we cannot turn the clock back and try again. All we can do is use the present well.

  Dalai Lama

  Inspirational, Mistake, Trying

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