Quotes about clock

A collection of quotes on the topic of clock, time, timing, likeness.

Quotes about clock

“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum

Money, Hell, Fight

“Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you — you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Letter to the Secretariat of the Soviet Writers’ Union (12 November 1969) as translated in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1970) edited by Leopold Labedz (1970) “Expulsion".

Time

“I have always been absurdly, ridiculously tall. To give you an idea- when we went on school trips to Interesting and Improving Places, the form-master wouldn't say "Meet under the clock tower," or "Meet under the War Memorial," but "Meet under Adams.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt

War, School, Idea, Memory

“How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man's finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Stuttgart. After 8th September 1831.
Source: "Selected Correspondence Of Fryderyk Chopin"; http://archive.org/stream/selectedcorrespo002644mbp/selectedcorrespo002644mbp_djvu.txt

Life, Children, People, Lie

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

From Cosmic Religion: with Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931), Albert Einstein, pub. Covici-Friede. Quoted in The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press; 2nd edition (May 30, 2000); Page 208, ISBN 0691070210
1930s

God

“The clock of communism has stopped striking. But its concrete building has not yet come crashing down. For that reason, instead of freeing ourselves, we must try to save ourselves from being crushed by its rubble.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

"How We Must Rebuild Russia" in Komsomolskaya Pravda (18 September 1990).

Communication

“It is of no use to possess a lively wit if it is not of the right proportion: the perfection of a clock is not to go fast, but to be accurate.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 177.

Perfection

“In the most trying hours, through dismal nights and endless interrogations and maltreatment, during days of killing solitude in cells and close confinement, we were always sustained by the hope that all these agonies were not in vain, that there was a strong and mighty country, however far away, in which all the dreams for which we were fighting had been fulfilled. For us it was the homeland of the workers, in which labour was honoured, in which love, comradeship, and sincerity prevailed. With what joy I had felt the strength of that country as, emerging from prison in 1934, I listened in the dead of each night to Radio Moscow and heard the clock of the Kremlin tower striking the hours, and the stirring strains of the 'International.”

Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman

Jasper Ridley, Tito: A Biography (Constable and Company Ltd., 1994), p. 128.
Other

Love, Dreams, Hope, Solitude

“Clocks and calendars do not exist to remind us of the Time we've forgotten but to regulate our relations with others and indeed all of society, and this is how we use them.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Time

“A stopped clock is correct twice a day, but a sundial can be used to stab someone, even at nighttime.”

John Hodgman More Information Than You Require

Source: More Information Than You Require

“Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark, it's midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year!”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Source: Collected verse from 1929 on

Children, Time, New Year

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

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

“It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.”

Dylan Thomas book Under Milk Wood

Source: " Under Milk Wood http://www.undermilkwood.net/prose_umw1.html" (1954)

People, Spring, Cats, Sleep

“The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present.”

Alice Morse Earle (1851–1911) American historian

History, Time, Waiting

“Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

World

“Sex and excretion are reminders that anyone's claim to round-the-clock dignity is tenuous. The so-called rational animal has a desperate drive to pair up and moan and writhe.”

Steven Pinker (1954) psychologist, linguist, author

Sex, Animals

“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 book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Variant: There is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock
Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

World, Loneliness

“You’re the captain. Get over the helm and start steering. Take control. There’s something going on here you can he a part of. You don’t have to see this thing run up on coral reefs, one time after another after another after another. This one is all yours. You’ve got it. And the clock is running. And it’s going to stop, invariably. But right now, you’re alive. Enjoy. Enjoy this existence. Enjoy this love. It is the deed of incredible compassion that you are here on the face of this earth. You have invested in many things. Maybe won, maybe lost. Maybe it’s time to invest in life because what you invest here will always he yours.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Montreal, Quebec, Canada, March 6, 1988
1980s

Love, Life, Time, Parting

“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Funeral Blues (1936)

Dogs, Silence

“The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 12

Wisdom

“The clock of doom had struck as fated;
the poet, without a sound,
let fall his pistol on the ground.”

Aleksandr Pushkin book Eugene Onegin

Source: Eugene Onegin (1823), Ch. 6, st. 30.

Fate

“Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

President Barack Obama on Twitter at September 16, 2015 https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656 <br class="br">2015

Science, Housing

“Time, unfortunately, though it makes animals and vegetables bloom and fade with amazing punctuality, has no such simple effect upon the mind of man. The mind of man, moreover, works with equal strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one second. This extraordinary discrepancy between time on the clock and time in the mind is less known than it should be and deserves fuller investigation.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 2

Time, Animals

“Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, "We've always done it this way." I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.”

Grace Hopper (1906–1992) American computer scientist and United States Navy officer

Unsourced variant: The most dangerous phrase in the language is, "We've always done it this way."
The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper (1987)

Love, Way, Change, Fight

“So he ignored the heat now and wondered about what he should do next. If he was going to show what he could do and really did it this time instead of saying he did when he didn't, he remembered that Bobo Kelton hung around the Rec Center a lot, every day, showing off as usual, laughing and sly, as usual. Jason looked at the clock. Ten minutes before three. Hot afternoon. He knew that Bobo would be at the Center. All he had to do was go there and wait. Across the street. A beautiful feeling of sweetness came over him. He lifted his head, let the feeling carry him for a while, like a fresh breeze in his heart. Then he went into the kitchen and took the butcher knife out of the drawer.”

Robert Cormier book The Rag and Bone Shop

Source: The Rag and Bone Shop (2000), p. 154

Beauty, Feeling, Time, Waiting

“A junky runs on junk time. When his junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junk time to start. A sick junkie has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait.”

William S. Burroughs book Junkie

Junkie (1953)

Time, Waiting

“Time is the wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

139
Stray Birds (1916)

Change, Time, Wealth

“When I was a boy, I had a clock with a pendulum that could be lifted off. I found that the clock went very much faster without the pendulum. If the main purpose of a clock is to go, the clock was the better for losing its pendulum. True, it could no longer tell the time, but that did not matter if one could teach oneself to be indifferent to the passage of time. The linguistic philosophy which cares only about language and not about the world, is like the boy who preferred the clock without the pendulum because, although it no longer told the time, it went more easily than before and at a more exhilarating pace.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Foreword to Ernest Gellner Words and Things (1959)
1950s

World, Boy, Time, Indifference

“The house clock, place certain there at the bottom of things, strikes the half hour dry and null. All is so much, all is so deep, all is so dark and cold!”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 60
The Book of Disquiet
Original: O relógio da casa, lugar certo lá ao fundo das coisas, soa a meia hora seca e nula. Tudo é tanto, tudo é tão fundo, tudo é tão negro e frio!

Housing

“I say that the eye is not open when it is limited to the passive role of a mirror – even if the water of that mirror offers some interesting peculiarities.... that eye impresses me as no less dead than the eye of a slaughtered steer if it has only the capacity to reflect – what if it reflects the object in one or in many aspects, in repose or in motion, in waking or in dream? The treasure of the eye is elsewhere! Most artists are still for tuning around the hands of the clock.... without having the slightest concern for the spring hidden in the opaque case. The eye-spring.... Arshile Gorky – for me the first painter to whom the secret have been completely revealed.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Breton's quote in the Introduction to the exhibition of Gorky's first show, Julien Levy Gallery, March 1945; as quoted in Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof, ed. by Matthew Spender, Ridinghouse, London, 2009, pp. 257-258
after 1930

Secret, Dreams, Spring, Water

“I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

Diary entry, as quoted in Defending and Parenting Children Who Learn Differently : Lessons from Edison's Mother (2007) by Scott Teel, p. 12.
Context: I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom. Seventy-five of us worked twenty hours every day and slept only four hours — and thrived on it.

Success

“Everyone knows that time is Death, that Death hides in clocks.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

Imposing another time powered by the Clock of the Imagination, however, can refuse his law. Here, freed of the Grim Reaper's scythe, we learn that pain is knowledge and all knowledge pain.
"Death"
I'm a Born Liar (2003)

Death, Time

“We have our divisions, and they are not new. Around-the-clock news cycles and social media sometimes amplify these divisions”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Statement on the Shootings in Baton Rouge (July 2016)
Context: We have our divisions, and they are not new. Around-the-clock news cycles and social media sometimes amplify these divisions, and I know we’re about to enter a couple of weeks of conventions where our political rhetoric tends to be more overheated than usual. And that is why it is so important that everyone -- regardless of race or political party or profession, regardless of what organizations you are a part of -- everyone right now focus on words and actions that can unite this country rather than divide it further. We don’t need inflammatory rhetoric. We don’t need careless accusations thrown around to score political points or to advance an agenda. We need to temper our words and open our hearts -- all of us. We need what we saw in Dallas this week, as a community came together to restore order and deepen unity and understanding. We need the kind of efforts we saw this week in meetings between community leaders and police -- some of which I participated in -- where I saw people of good will pledge to work together to reduce violence throughout all of our communities. That’s what’s needed right now. And it is up to all of us to make sure we are part of the solution and not part of the problem.

“In the Land of Memory the time is always.
In the Kingdom of Ago, the clocks tick… but their hands never move.
There is an Unfound Door
(O lost)
and memory is the key which opens it.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah

Source: Song of Susannah

Memory, Time

“In that moment, the machinery of the world lined up. Somewhere a clock struck midnight, and Hugo's future seemed to fall perfectly into place.”

Brian Selznick book The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Source: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

World, Future

“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

Past, Future

“The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book The Guns of August

Source: The Guns of August

World, History, Sun

“Who makes the world? Perhaps the world is not made. Perhaps nothing is made. Perhaps it simply is, has been, will always be there…a clock without a craftsman.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

World

“Six a. m.!" Xander cried. "I know that's a number on my clock, but I've never actually been awake to personally witness it!”

Alice Henderson American writer

Source: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 1

Personality

“A quarter past three," she exclaimed, catching sight of the bedside clock. "What a time to be drinking tea!"
"Anytime," Harold told her, "is time to be drinking tea.”

Miss Read (1913–2012) English novelist

Drink, Time, Past, Tea

“Love drains you, takes with it much of your blood sugar and water weight. You are like a house slowly losing its electricity, the fans slowing, the lights dimming and flickering; the clocks stop and go and stop.”

Lorrie Moore (1957) American writer

Source: Self-Help

Love, Light, Water, Housing

“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 book The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Source: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Time

“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 book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Life, Death, Nature, Thinking

“Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it.”

Michael Ende book Momo

Source: Momo

Time

“Where every day doesn't start with an alarm clock and end with the television.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Source: Diary

“They claim their labours are to build a heaven yet their heaven is populated with horrors. Perhaps the world is not made. Perhaps nothing is made. A clock without a craftsman. It's too late. Always has been, always will be…too late.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

World

“Time can tick when there is no clock.”

Anne Rice The Wolf Gift

Source: The Wolf Gift

Time

“If you pluck out my heart
To find what makes it move,
You’ll halt the clock
That syncopates our love.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: Selected Poems

Love, Heart

“I have to tell you I love living in a world without clocks. The shackles are gone. I’m a puppy unleashed in a meadow of time. -- Stargirl”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

Love, World, Time

“I was like a clock that had exploded- my springs were hanging out, my hands were cockeyed, and my numbers were falling off.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Spring

“The clock always ticks. There are times you don't hear it, and there are times that you do.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Time

“As a performer, I wanted to be the loudest, most persistent alarm clock I could be, because there didn’t seem like any other way to snap society out of its Christianity- and media-induced coma.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Source: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

Way

“Because Father said clocks slay time. He said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Variant: Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
Source: The Sound and the Fury (1929)

Life, Time, Dead

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

Martin Amis book The Information

Source: The Information

“I saw the best minds of my generation who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

Time

“No life goes past so swiftly as an eventless one, no clock spins like a clock whose days are all alike.”

Wallace Stegner book Angle of Repose

Source: Angle of Repose

Life, Past

“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

Scott Westerfeld book Behemoth

Source: Behemoth

“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 (1890–1977) American comedian

“He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Dreams, Idea, Waiting

“The answer of course, is that the clock isn't meant to measure earthly time, but the time of the soul. Redemption and condemnation time. For the soul, each instant is always a minute short of judgment.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Soul, Time

“The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike”

Christopher Marlowe The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Source: Dr. Faustus

Star, Time

“The time flies. The time flies feed on rotting clocks.”

Craig Clevenger Dermaphoria

Source: Dermaphoria

Time

“A broken clock is right two times a day.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Shadow

Source: Ender's Shadow

Time

“I see no advantage in these new clocks. They run no faster than the ones made 100 years ago.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

“There are moments when i wish i could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but i have a feeling that if i did, the joy would be gone as well. So i take the memories as they come, accepting them all, letting them guide me whenever i can.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Sadness, Feeling, Memory, Joy

“There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Sadness, Feeling, Joy, Sad

“Biological clock? I don't even own a watch.”

Sarah Mlynowski (1977) Novelist

Source: Milkrun

“With children the clock is reset. We forget what came before”

Jhumpa Lahiri book The Lowland

Source: The Lowland

Children, Forgetting

“Before the mind snaps, or the heart breaks, it gather itself like a clock about to strike. It might even be said one pulls himself together to disintegrate.”

Peter de Vries (1910–1993) American editor and novelist

Source: The Blood of the Lamb

Heart

“Ignatius, when he heard the clock strike, would say, "Now I have another hour to answer for." (Eph. 5:16)”

John Piper (1946) American writer

“It took hours to turn the clock back 30 seconds.”

Jonathan Franzen book Strong Motion

Source: Strong Motion

“He rolled his eyes. "First, my Dad's Korean and my mom was Swedish. Second, I totally suck at math. I don't like cuckoo clocks or skiing or fancy chocolate either."
I sputtered a laugh. "I think that's Swiss.”

Kelley Armstrong book The Summoning

Source: The Summoning

Moms, Thinking

“"Oh," I say under my breath. "Tick, tock." My eyes sweep around the full circle of the arena and I know she's right. "Tick, tock. This is a clock."”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Katniss, p. 325
The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)
Source: Mockingjay

“Do days exist without calendars? Does time pass when there are no human hands left to wind the clocks?”

Howard Koch (1901–1995) American screenwriter

Source: War Of The Worlds : The Invasion From Mars

Time

“cozy+smell of pancakes-alarm clock=weekend”

Amy Krouse Rosenthal (1965–2017) author, a radio show host and producer, and filmmaker

Source: This Plus That: Life's Little Equations

“Grimly, she realized that clocks don't make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of a grave.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“Okay, Shane," Agnes said as Brenda's clock gonged midnight. "I got Joey in the kitchen, a cop in the front hall, a dead body in the basement, and you in my bedroom. Where do you want to start?”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Source: Agnes and the Hitman

Dead

“You fish, swim, eat, laze around, and everyone's so friendly. It's such simple stuff, but… If i could stop the world and restart life, put the clock back, i think I'd restart it like this. For everyone.”

Alex Garland book The Beach

Source: The Beach

Life, World, Thinking, Fish

“People think they own time. They have watches and clocks and digital pulses. But they are wrong.”

Caroline B. Cooney Both Sides of Time

Source: Both Sides of Time

People, Thinking, Time

“Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.”

Ben Hecht (1894–1964) American screenwriter

Books

World, Time, Reading

“sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks…”

Hunter S. Thompson The Rum Diary

Source: The Rum Diary

Life, People, Hope

“one must not allow the clock and the calender to blind him to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle --and mystery”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny

Life

“There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock. People so tired, mutilated either by love or no love.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Love, People, World, Loneliness

“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 book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Way, Time

“He would look so young. They were both so young. Tessa knew it was unusual to marry at seventeen and eighteen, but they were racing a clock.
The clock of Jem's life, before it wound down.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Life

“Life is long. Just because you don't get your chance right when you want or expect it doesn't mean it won't come. Fate doesn't punch a time clock or consult a schedule.”

Sarah Dessen book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

Life, Fate, Chance, Time

“I'm going to take you out of here… I'm going to take you home, to the world where you belong, where cats with bent tails live, and there are little backyards, and alarm clocks ring in the morning.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

World, Home, Cats

“The clock is a conspiracy & a crime against humanity
and I would not own one
except I miss appointments without it.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

“The solution of (1), which represents a homogeneous manifold, may be written in the form:ds^2 = \frac{d\rho^2}{1 - \kappa^2\rho^2} - \rho^2 (d\theta^2 + sin^2 \theta \; d\phi^2) + (1 - \kappa^2 \rho^2)\; c^2 d\tau^2, \qquad (2)where \kappa = \sqrt \frac{\lambda}{3}. If we consider \rho as determining distance from the origin… and \tau as measuring the proper-time of a clock at the origin, we are led to the de Sitter spherical world…”

Howard P. Robertson (1903–1961) American mathematician and physicist

"On Relativistic Cosmology" (1928)

World, Time

“Two in two minutes for him, and Brazil's World Cup is surely over. This is the first time ever, that Brazil have trailed by four goals in a World Cup match. Four-nil down, twenty-six minutes on the clock. Germany, just too good? This is Brazil, not so much without Neymar. But, without Thiago Silva. Organizing their defense, and this could get a lot worse. Yeah? Unless this team tightens up somehow. Terrible mistake by Fernandinho on that last goal.”

Ian Darke (1950) British association football and boxing commentator

Brazil v. Germany (8 July 2014).
2010s, 2014, 2014 FIFA World Cup

World, Time

“If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at five o' clock, I say why not one o' clock?”

John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath

As quoted in "The Passing of a Great Mind" by Clay Blair, Jr., in LIFE Magazine (25 February 1957), p. 96

“Time is that which is measured by a clock. This is a sound way of looking at things. A quantity like time, or any other physical measurement, does not exist in a completely abstract way. We find no sense in talking about something unless we specify how we measure it. It is the definition by the method of measuring a quantity that is the one sure way of avoiding talking nonsense about this kind of thing.”

Hermann Bondi (1919–2005) British mathematician and cosmologist

Hermann Bondi (1980), Relativity and Common Sense: A New Approach to Einstein, p. 65

Way, Sense, Time

“It's no fun being a broody Iranian woman. Every time I said to people "My body clock is ticking," they would hit the ground!”

Shappi Khorsandi (1973) Iranian born comedian

Live at the Apollo (Series 4 Episode 2, December 2008)

People, Time

“The house kept its own time, like the old-fashioned grandfather clock in the living room. People who happened by raised the weights, and as long as the weights were wound, the clock continued ticking away. But with people gone and the weights unattended, whole chunks of time were left to collect in deposits of faded life on the floor.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 32, An Unlucky Bend in the Road

Life, People, Fashion, Time

“the clock
chimes, chimes, and stops
but the river…”

William J. Higginson (1938–2008) American writer

Meeting Award, Haiku Society of America, May 1969
Poetry quotes

“Having finished his argument Stephen walked on in silence. He felt Cranly's hostility and he accused himself of having cheapened the eternal images of beauty. For the first time, too, he felt slightly awkward in his friend's company and to restore a mood of flippant familiarity he glanced up at the clock of the Ballast Office and smiled:”

James Joyce book Stephen Hero

It has not epiphanised yet, he said.
Stephen Hero (1944)

Hostility, Smile, Beauty, Mood

“Sheep are especially sensitive to the exact moment of the turn of the tide. In this game, nine tethered sheep react, pull on the stakes, jolt the chairs and rattle the tea-cups. Bets are taken on the combined sensitivity of any three lines of sheep -- read vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Since there are normally three tide-turns every twenty-four hours, it is normal practice to take the best of three results. Reliable clocks, calendars, and time-tables are used to determine the accuracy of the sheep's forecast.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Drowning By Numbers

Game, Time, Reading, Tea

“And I wanted to say something before I go — I told you guys it's been a bad year — when you have these kind of moments when you are in despair, I just want to remind you that God does not take a break — he does not clock out, he doesn't get caught off-guard — there is nothing that goes on that he is not allowing. So everything is as it should be, no matter how wrong, or scary, or sad, or angry, or afraid, or any of it — everything is as it should be. And we need to remember that, and that we love Him and He loves us. Whatever we're feeling, we need to remember the truth.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

Quote from video posted a day after both her YouTube channels were suspended (have been reinstated), two days after being laid off, and about a month after the cause of her worsening chronic pain was diagnosed as fibromyalgia (no cure or effective treatment). "Update 12/12/08" (12 December 2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHYdRwaLQN0&feature=related

Love, God, Truth, Sadness

“Do deaf people have alarm clocks? I asked a deaf guy that one time, the sumbitch just stared at me.”

Larry the Cable Guy (1963) American stand-up comedian, actor, country music artist, voice artist

Tailgate Party (2009)

People, Guy, Time