Clock Quotes

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

“THE FOUR HEAVENLY FOUNTAINS


Laugh, I tell you
And you will turn back
The hands of time.

Smile, I tell you
And you will reflect
The face of the divine.

Sing, I tell you
And all the angels will sing with you!

Cry, I tell you
And the reflections found in your pool of tears -
Will remind you of the lessons of today and yesterday
To guide you through the fears of tomorrow.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“The finished clock is resplendent. At first glance it is simply a clock, a rather large black clock with a white face and a silver pendulum. Well crafted, obviously, with intricately carved woodwork edges and a perfectly painted face, but just a clock.
But that is before it is wound. Before it begins to tick, the pendulum swinging steadily and evenly. Then, then it becomes something else.
The changes are slow. First, the color changes in the face, shifts from white to grey, and then there are clouds that float across it, disappearing when they reach the opposite side.
Meanwhile, bits of the body of the clock expand and contract, like pieces of a puzzle. As though the clock is falling apart, slowly and gracefully.
All of this takes hours.
The face of the clock becomes a darker grey, and then black, with twinkling stars where numbers had been previously. The body of the clock, which has been methodically turning itself inside out and expanding, is now entirely subtle shades of white and grey. And it is not just pieces, it is figures and objects, perfectly carved flowers and planets and tiny books with actual paper pages that turn. There is a silver dragon that curls around part of the now visible clockwork, a tiny princess in a carved tower who paces in distress, awaiting an absent prince. Teapots that pour into teacups and minuscule curls of steam that rise from them as the seconds tick. Wrapped presents open. Small cats chase small dogs. An entire game of chess is played.
At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dress in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the clock chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern.
After midnight, the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the cloud returns. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes.
By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Why should I wake when I'm half past dead?”
― Emilie Autumn

“Some are condemned to remain mere “clock and smart phone watchers”, inasmuch as they are not able to read and interpret the lines of their life or don't even treasure the enchantment of daily captivating moments. If we are not prepared to give some personal time to social time, we walk like blind men through gloomy alleys of our existence. ( " Please. Just a bit of a chat " )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“As we are whiling away days of idleness, time may flow rashly through the screen of our thoughts and veil the relevance of individual fragments in our story. The clock of reality can arrest us, though, and compel us to confront the demands of the truth. ("Non mais, t'as vu l'heure !")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“If we learn to listen to the others and try to capture the soul of their language, and can scent the fragrance of the words we hear, we can be transported to a nirvana of deep understanding, without being overwhelmed by the reality of the clock. ("Watching the flight of time")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Her eyes were of different colors, the left as brown as autumn, the right as gray as Atlantic wind. Both seemed alive with questions that would never be voiced, as if no words yet existed with which to frame them. She was nineteen years old, or thereabouts; her exact age was unknown. Her face was as fresh as an apple and as delicate as blossom, but a marked depression in the bones beneath her left eye gave her features a disturbing asymmetry. Her mouth never curved into a smile. God, it seemed, had withheld that possibility, as surely as from a blind man the power of sight. He had withheld much else. Amparo was touched—by genius, by madness, by the Devil, or by a conspiracy of all these and more. She took no sacraments and appeared incapable of prayer. She had a horror of clocks and mirrors. By her own account she spoke with Angels and could hear the thoughts of animals and trees. She was passionately kind to all living things. She was a beam of starlight trapped in flesh and awaiting only the moment when it would continue on its journey into forever.” (p.33)”
― Tim Willocks, The Religion

“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, Scar Tissue

“There was a sudden stillness like the gap between ticks on a clock, but the next tick never coming.”
― Sadie Jones, The Outcast

“Day is just a collection of hours.”
― Serj Tankian

“Again time elapsed.”
― Carolyn Keene, The Secret of the Old Clock

“When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.”
― William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets

“Time in itself, absolutely, does not exist; it is always relative to some observer or some object. Without a clock I say 'I do not know the time' . Without matter time itself is unknowable. Time is a function of matter; and matter therefore is the clock that makes infinity real.”
― John Fowles, Áristos

“Montag shook his head. He looked at a blank wall. The girl's face was there, really quite beautiful in memory: astonishing, in fact. 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 had to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darknesses, but moving also toward a new sun.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“You know the horrible life of the alarm clock – it’s a monster that has always appalled me because of the number of things its eyes project, and the way that good fellow stares at me when I enter a room.”
― Jacques Vache

“You can hear it in the midst of the night
While your gaze roams the vast plains on the ceiling”
― Erna Grcic, Beneath the Surface

“A story conducted by the time of a clock and calendars alone would be a story not of human beings but of mechanical toys.”
― Mary Lascelles, Jane Austen And Her Art

“The clock sweats out each minute
of what meat is left to us.”
― Joseph Bathanti, This Metal

“We progress a step farther, in each tick of the clock”
― Ronnie Cornelisz

“You can stop the clock, but not the time.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“Dear Daughter,
Revolutionise your life. Rise and cease looking down on yourself. You have what it takes to dream big and manifest big dreams. Do it. Do it now. Do not wait for tomorrow. The clock is ticking.”
― Gift Gugu Mona , Dear Daughter: Short and Sweet Messages for a Queen

“Jake: This thing runs but cannot walk, sometimes sings but never talks. Lacks arms, has hands; lacks a head but has a face. What is it, Blaine?
Blaine: A CLOCK.
Jake: (whispering, lips compressing) Shit.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Be brief, for [life] is short.”
― Monaristw

“Sometimes I’ll lie awake at night and listen to the sound of the clock. The motor ticks on endlessly. What an unsettling sound it is when you’ve yet to find peace - to find solace. Sometimes no matter how exhausted my body is, no matter how tired my thoughts are, no matter how sore my brain and my heart are...even then I still can’t fall asleep. Sometimes I wish for nothing more than to sleep. Please, allow me to slip away into the darkest corners of the world and let me be. Just let me sleep. You can close your eyes to the surroundings, but you can’t close your ears off to the sound around it. And sometimes the things you wish the most not to hear - are the loudest. They will not go away in the night and be silenced.”
― Christina Casino

“[They] turn their faces upward, and from the abyss of the Prague streets gaze at the strip of sky overhead, at the clouds, to see what time it really was, according to nature and not by the clock.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, I Served the King of England

“Seconds passed. If there’d been an old clock in here, its ticks would have sounded slow and menacing.”
― Phil Rickman, The Fever of the World

“Near the door towered a brightly painted clock with jewelled pendulums. But instead of hours, it seemed to have names of food and drink. Things like Dumplings & Meat, Fish Stew, Mystery Stew, Toast and Tea, Porridge, Ale, Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider, Honey Pie, Brambleberry Crisp, Forest Cakes.”
― Stephanie Garber, The Ballad of Never After

“Opposite the bed is a cabinet built in to the wall, taking the whole length of it. It has a painted clock face on the front, with constellations instead of numbers. The arms of the clock are pointed toward a configuration of stars prophesying a particularly amorous lover.

Inside, it appears merely a wardrobe overstuffed with Cardan's clothes. I pull them out, letting them fall to the floor in a pile of velvet cuffs, satin, and leather. From the bed, Cardan makes a sound of mock distress.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“It didn't so much as quiver when the Midnight Man appeared, suddenly and silently, tall, thin, and very old…”
― Kajoch, Deliriums