Clock Quotes

“The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike”
― Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus

“It had a very long pendulum, and the pendulum swung with a slow tick-tock that set his teeth on edge, because it was the kind of deliberate annoying ticking that wanted to make it abundantly clear that every tick and every tock was stripping another second off your life. It was the kind of sound that suggested very pointedly that in some hypothetical hourglass somewhere, another few grains of sand had dropped out form under you.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

“Ah, how quickly the hands on the clock circle toward the future we thought was far away! And how soon we become our mothers.”
― Peggy Toney Horton, Somewhere in Heaven My Mother Is Smiling

“I’ve read somewhere in a book when something happens that is unbearable to you, sometimes, time stops. Like your inner clock just stops working, even if the world keeps spinning you will stand still for the rest of your life.”
― Katja Michael, She Came at Dawn

“In times like these I always cheered myself up with a certain story. I forgot just when I first heard it, or who I heard it from... but, back when I was young it would cheer me up when I was feeling depressed. Basically, you think of life in terms of a single 24 hour day. So if you take the average human lifespan, to be around 72 years, then dividing that by 24... that comes to 3 years per hour. Meaning, that if you were 18 it'd only be 6 AM! 6 in the morning is nothing! Schools aren't even open by then! It's only been a couple of hours before sunrise, the day's just begun! So if you're 18, you can still fix you life by then! In fact even if you were 30 year old, that's still only 10 AM! The sun's still high, and there's still 2 hours until noon! You still have the whole afternoon to fix your life! You could still make something of yourself. I've always been thinking that, but... I'm now 45 years old! 45 divided by 3 is 15 meaning, that the time 3PM! Ring Ring Ring! I can hear the clock, ringing in my mind! There's only 2 hours before work is over at 5PM! I can't redo anything, it's almost time to go home already.”
― Nobuyuki Fukumoto, Saikyō Densetsu Kurosawa 9

“Is it true that man was once perfectly pure and innocent, and that he became degenerate by disobedience? No. The real truth is, and the history of man shows, that he has advanced. Events, like the pendulum of a clock have swung forward and backward, but after all, man, like the hands, has gone steadily on. Man is growing grander. He is not degenerating. Nations and individuals fail and die, and make room for higher forms. The intellectual horizon of the world widens as the centuries pass. Ideals grow grander and purer; the difference between justice and mercy becomes less and less; liberty enlarges, and love intensifies as the years sweep on. The ages of force and fear, of cruelty and wrong, are behind us and the real Eden is beyond. It is said that a desire for knowledge lost us the Eden of the past; but whether that is true or not, it will certainly give us the Eden of the future.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of a night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second, with a white silence and a glowing, all certainty and knowing what it has to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darknesses, but moving also toward a new sun.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Unlike clocks, hours have no reverse motion..”
― Anonymous

“Contrasts

The windows of my poetry are wide open on the boulevards and in the shop windows

Shine

The precious stones of light

Listen to the violins of the limousines and the xylophones of the linotypes

The sketcher washes with the hand-towel of the sky

All is color spots

And the hats of the women passing by are comets in the conflagration of the evening


Unity

There's no more unity

All the clocks now read midnight after being set back ten minutes

There's no more time.

There's no more money.

In the Chamber

They are spoiling the marvelous elements of raw material

("Contrasts")”
― Blaise Cendrars, Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques de Blaise Cendrars: Edition critique et commentée

“A glance toward her digital clock showed the numbers twitching and randomly changing on their own, as though her clock couldn’t make up its mind on what time it wanted to be.”
― Kelly Creagh, Nevermore

“Then there are those who think their bodies don't exist. They live by mechanical time. They rise at seven o'clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the clock. They make love between eight and ten at night. They work forty hours a week, read the Sunday paper on Sunday, play chess on Tuesday nights. When their stomach growls, they look at their watch to see if it is time to eat. When they begin to lose themselves in a concert, they look at the clock above the stage to see when it will be time to go home. They know that the body is not a thing of wild magic, but a collection of chemicals, tissues, and nerve impulses. Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain. Sexual arousal is no more than a flow of chemicals to certain nerve endings. Sadness no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum. In short, the body is a machine, subject to the same laws of electricity and mechanics as an electron or clock. As such, the body must be addressed in the language of physics. And if the body speaks, it is the speaking only of so many levers and forces. The body is a thing to be ordered, not obeyed.”
― Alan Lightman from i Einstein's Dreams i

“the moon is just another kind of clock”
― Kelli Russell Agodon, Hourglass Museum

“The dial of the clock wears out unevenly;
Most worn
Is the area round eight.
As it is stared at with abrasive glances
unfailingly twice a day,
It is weathered away.
On the other side
The area at two
Is only half as worn,
For closed eyes at night
Pass without stopping.
If there is one who possesses a flat watch evenly worn,
It is he who, failing at the start, is running one lap behind.

Thus the world is always
A lap fast--
The world he thinks he sees
Has not yet begun.
Illusory time,
When the hands stand vertically on the dial;
Without the bell announcing the raising of the curtain,
The play has come to an end.”
― Abe Kōbō, The Box Man

“Time is an imp—a pesky, little, hellish troll that hastens the clock when I smile but then delays the passing of minutes when I frown.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“To refrigerate a clock was an extremely violent act, not one I could explain to anyone.”
― Peter Carey, The Chemistry of Tears

“Mathematicians call it “the arithmetic of congruences.” You can think of it as clock arithmetic. Temporarily replace the 12 on a clock face with 0. The 12 hours of the clock now read 0, 1, 2, 3, … up to 11. If the time is eight o’clock, and you add 9 hours, what do you get? Well, you get five o’clock. So in this arithmetic, 8 + 9 = 5; or, as mathematicians say, 8 + 9 ≡ 5 (mod 12), pronounced “eight plus nine is congruent to five, modulo twelve.”
― John Derbyshire, Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics

“Tick. Tick. Tick.
This is the sound of your life running out.”
― Anonymous

“Even natural languages have personalities. 'Escapement' is the name of a device, a toothed wheel, that controls the motion of the hands of the clock. The word has connotations of gaining freedom. The German equivalent is 'Hemmung.' It means 'restraint,' and also, 'inhibition.' It conjures up images of of losing freedom. In describing a presumably emotionally neutral gadget, the two languages perceive in its functions two diametrically opposite states of human condition.”
― J. T. Fraser, The Study of Time II: Proceedings of the Second Conference of the International Society for the Study of Time Lake Yamanaka-Japan

“When that little clock on my wall says “Olaotan! Olaotan!! Olaotan!!! It’s half past time to write”, I only have three things at my disposal: A pen, A piece of paper, and a crowded mind.”
― Olaotan Fawehinmi

“Tick-Tock Tick-Tock Memory

The tick tock tick tocks goes the clock

The memory in my heart not aged but I am aged,

As the tick tock tick tock goes on.”
― Sarvesh Murthi .D.D

“...knowing what o'clock it is gives ye the illusion that ye have some control over your circumstances.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Written in My Own Heart's Blood

“Breakfast was an irritable business. The clock, on the wall, MapHead noticed, seemed to make everyone unhappy. Everyone checked the clock on the wall, then rushed around looking grim. It would be a simple matter to fix it, MapHead thought. No reason not to be happy.”
― Lesley Howarth, MapHead 2

“A positive attitude creates a passion that wakes a leader up. To the leader, attitude is more powerful than an alarm clock. Positive attitude in true leadership is what makes an alarm clock unnecessary!”
― Israelmore ayivor, Leaders' Watchwords