Chimes Quotes

Dear Night! this world's defeat; The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb; The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat Which none disturb! Christ's progress, and His prayer-time; The hours to which high Heaven cloth chime. ~ Henry Vaughan

I can still catch the fragrance of many things which stir me with feelings of melancholy and send delicious shivers of delight through me - dark and sunlit streets, houses and towers, clock chimes and people's faces, rooms full of comfort and warm hospitality, rooms full of secret and profound, ghostly fears. It is a world that savours of warm corners, rabbits, servant girls, household remedies and dried fruit. It was the meeting-place of two worlds; day and night came thither from two opposite poles. ~ Hermann Hesse

The Spirit of your child bewails the dead, and mingles with the dead - dead hopes, dead fancies, dead imaginings of youth,' returned the Bell, 'but she is living. Learn from her life, a living truth. Learn from the creature dearest to your heart, how bad the bad are born. See every bud and leaf plucked one by one from off the fairest stem, and know how bare and wretched it may be. Follow her! To desperation! ~ Charles Dickens

Storytelling in general is a communal act. Throughout human history, people would gather around, whether by the fire or at a tavern, and tell stories. One person would chime in, then another, maybe someone would repeat a story they heard already but with a different spin. It's a collective process. ~ Joseph Gordon-Levitt

He's never fought with religion; what is the point of railing against such beauty, such intimate theatre, such chime of eternity? He can treasure it without believing in it. ~ Ian McDonald

The ability to know that your perceptions are accurate has to happen without others' validation. Intuition is not the result of diet, rituals, or wind chimes. It's the natural consequence of having self-esteem, the greatest power you can have. With self-esteem, your life can broaden into an adventure because you can know in your gut that you can handle the unknown. And you can handle helping others without fear, which is true liberation. ~ Caroline Myss

In addition to exploring imaginative worlds, I believe that young people should have access to reading material that validates their life, that gives them a sense of identity - to be able to read texts that chimes with their own world, corrals thoughts, and connects with the emotional conflicts of growing up. ~ Theresa Breslin

It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another. ~ A. N. Wilson

Agnes Shay had the true spirit of a maid. Moistened with dishwater and mild eau de cologne, reared in narrow and sunless bedrooms, in back passages, back stairs, laundries, linen closets, and in those servants' halls that remind one of a prison, her soul had grown docile and bleak...Agnes loved the ceremonies of a big house. She drew the curtains in the living room at dark, lighted the candles on the table, and struck the dinner chimes like an eager altar boy. On fine evenings, when she sat on the back porch between the garbage pails and the woodbins, she liked to recall the faces of all the cooks she had known. It made her life seem rich. ~ John Cheever

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

In December ring Every day the chimes; Loud the gleemen sing In the streets their merry rhymes. Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire! ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I lie awake in bed until way past midnight, fervently hoping Ky is going make an appearance at any moment to explain his behavior. But as the clock chimes two, I have no choice but to face facts.
He isn't coming.
And it feels ominous.
Like the winds are changing, and destiny is altering.
His absence is more than telling.
It has a finality to it that scares me half to death. ~ Siobhan Davis

I'm looking for you
in the bare corridor
where my shadow is the only passerby
harmonizing an unsettling whisper:
echoed through my chiming thoughts
From the poem 'Looking For You ~ Munia Khan

They were old Chimes, trust me. Centuries ago, these Bells had been baptized by bishops: so many centuries ago, that the register of their baptism was lost long, long before the memory of man, and no one knew their names. They had had their Godfathers and Godmothers, these Bells (for my own part, by the way, I would rather incur the responsibility of being Godfather to a Bell than a Boy), and had their silver mugs no doubt, besides. But Time had mowed down their sponsors, and Henry the Eighth had melted down their mugs; and they now hung, nameless and mugless, in the church-tower. ~ Charles Dickens

Asia is the continent rhythm forgot. At best Asian music is off-brand American pop, like Sonny Bono in a karaoke bar. At worst Asian music sounds as if a truck full of wind chimes collided
with a stack of empty oil drums during a birdcall contest. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

There are worlds built on rainbows and worlds built on rain. There are worlds of pure mathematics, where every number chimes like crystal as it rolls into reality. There are worlds of light and worlds of darkness, worlds of rhyme and worlds of reason, and worlds where the only thing that matters is the goodness in a hero's heart. ~ Seanan McGuire

Lie on!' cried the usurer, 'with your iron tongue! Ring merrily for births that make expectants writhe, and marriages that are made in hell, and toll ruefully for the dead whose shoes are worn already! Call men to prayers who are godly because not found out, and ring chimes for the coming in of every year that brings this cursed world nearer to it's end.
No bell or book for me! Throw me on a dunghill, and let me rot there, to infect the air! ~ Charles Dickens

In bleakest times
In darkest climbs
When wind blows cold in skies above

When suns won't shine
And True Dark chimes
Still I'll return to thee, my love

Ever return to thee, true love ~ Jay Kristoff

Josey was a different person than she was even a month ago. She reminded Margaret so much now of Marco's cousins from Italy. They'd shown up in Bald Slope without warning once, early in Marco and Margaret's wedding. They were magical women, with their long curly hair, large breasts and movements like dancers. Their bracelets sounded like wind chimes when they walked. Margaret had been fascinated by them. Marco had ushered them out within hours of their arrival and taken them to Asheville for their stay. He was ashamed of them, their earthiness and sensuality, of their provincial ways. No one from Italy ever visited again. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

While the steeples are loud in their joy, To the tune of the bells' ring-a-ding, Let us chime in a peal, one and all, For we all should be able to sing Hullah baloo. ~ Thomas Hood

Those evening bells! those evening bells! How many a tale their music tells Of youth and home, and that sweet time When last I heard their soothing chime! ~ Charles Lamb

I'd prefer to never witness that again, so a full weather report will be added to Shera's daily tasks," Arion chimes in, looking idly around the airplane. "On another note, so long as I learn to land a plane, I'll already be an exceptionally better pilot than Vance."

"Do you have any idea how damn fine of a job I just did?" Vance asks Arion with narrowed eyes.

Arion glances over at the smoking wreckage, quirking an eyebrow. "Not really, no," the vampire quips in a very genuine tone.

"Fuck's sake, Arion. It wasn't me who crashed the plane; it was the - fuck it. Never mind," Vance says, sighing in exasperation as he pulls out his phone. "I'll have someone come take care of this and pick us up. ~ Kristy Cunning

After the Grand Perhaps"

After vespers, after the first snow
has fallen to its squalls, after New Wave,
after the anorexics have curled
into their geometric forms,
after the man with the apparition
in his one bad eye has done red things
behind the curtain of the lid & sleeps,
after the fallout shelter in the elementary school
has been packed with tins & other tangibles,
after the barn boys have woken, startled
by foxes & fire, warm in their hay, every part
of them blithe & smooth & touchable,
after the little vandals have tilted
toward the impossible seduction
to smash glass in the dark, getting away
with the most lethal pieces, leaving
the shards which travel most easily
through flesh as message
on the bathroom floor, the parking lots,
the irresistible debris of the neighbor's yard
where he's been constructing all winter long.
After the pain has become an old known
friend, repeating itself, you can hold on to it.
The power of fright, I think, is as much
as magnetic heat or gravity.
After what is boundless: wind chimes,
fertile patches of the land,
the ochre symmetry of fields in fall,
the end of breath, the beginning
of shadow, the shadow of heat as it moves
the way the night heads west,
I take this road to arrive at its end
where the toll taker passes the night, reading.
I fee ~ Lucie Brock-Broido

derelict. my voice cracked and yolk poured out. wind chimes rigid, no breeze, no song. my wings found hidden in your suitcase. pleas for help mistaken for a swan song. i'm stuffing pages from my journal down my throat as kindling. hoping the smoke will get the taste of you out of my mouth. he looks at me from across the room and all i want is to push him against the wall. ravage. ravage. carnage has never been more vogue. is it still art if it doesn't bring you to your knees? lover, let me prey at your altar. let me bare my fangs in praise. don't i look so pretty in a funeral shroud? i keep time with the click of my creaking bones. dance with me under the milky translucence of a world suffocating. how did you find me? i buried myself beneath the cicadas. is a girl trapped in glass still a prize?
let me get under your skin. i want to know what your fears taste like. i want to consume. ~ Taylor Rhodes

I wanted to freeze this moment forever, the chimes, the slight splash of water, the chink of dogs' leashes, laughter from the pool, the skritch of my mother's dip-pen, the smell of the tree, the stillness. I wished I could shut it in a locket to wear around my neck. I ~ Janet Fitch

On Sundays, at the matin-chime, The Alpine peasants, two and three, Climb up here to pray; Burghers and dames, at summer's prime, Ride out to church from Chamberry, Dight with mantles gay, But else it is a lonely time Round the Church of Brou. ~ Matthew Arnold

On Melbourne summer mornings the green trams go rolling in stately progress down tunnels thick with leaves: the bright air carries along the avenue their patient chime, the chattering of their wheels ~ Helen Garner

Those screams had been growing steadily louder, as the torture masters of Eld worked their way down the line of new prisoners. A few chimes ago, however, the screams had fallen mysteriously silent.
"Do you think the torture masters have tired themselves out?" Gaelen pondered with black humor.
"More likely, we're next, and they've just gone to sharpen their blades," Tajik said.
Locked up in the room with them, Farel gave a grunting laugh of amusement. "Could be. They've been using them enough."
"You know," Gil announced, "as rescues go, I have to say this one pretty much scorches rultshart turds. ~ C.L. Wilson

It would be easy to show that at our present rate of progress the kingdoms of this world never could become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. Indeed, many in the Church are giving up the idea of it except on the occasion of the advent of Christ, which, as it chimes in with our own idleness, is likely to be a popular doctrine. I myself believe that King Jesus will reign, and the idols be utterly abolished ... The Holy Ghost would never suffer the imputation to rest upon His holy name that He was not able to convert the world. ~ Charles Spurgeon

A love of neighbor manifests itself in the tolerance not only of opinions of others but, what is more important, of the essence and uniqueness of others, when we subscribe to that religious philosophy of life that insists that God has made each man and woman an individual sacred personality endowed with a specific temperament, created with differing needs, hungers, dreams. This is a variegated, pluralistic world where no two stars are the same and every snowflake has its own distinctive pattern. God apparently did not want a regimented world of sameness. That is why creation is so manifold. So it is with us human beings. Some are born dynamic and restless; others placid and contemplative…One man's temperament is full throated with laughter; another's tinkles with the sad chimes of gentle melancholy. Our physiques are different, and that simple difference oftentimes drives us into conflicting fulfillment of our natures, to action or to thought, to passion or to denial, to conquest or to submission. There is here no fatalism of endowment. We can change and prune and shape the hedges of our being, but we must rebel against the sharp shears being wielded by other hands, cutting off the living branches of our spirits in order to make our personalities adornments for their dwellings. ~ Joshua Loth Liebman

The demographic of our audience is young. It also contains a high proportion of black, Jewish and gay people, who have all been encouraged by society to think of themselves as oddities or mutants. I hope that's why X-Men chimes with them - it's certainly why I was attracted to the idea in the first place. ~ Ian McKellen

But the wind does not stop for my thoughts. It whips across the flooded gravel pits drumming up waves on their waters that glint hard and metallic in the night, over the shingle, rustling the dead gorse and skeletal bugloss, running in rivulets through the parched grass - while I sit here in the dark holding a candle that throws my divided shadow across the room and gathers my thoughts to the flame like moths.
I have not moved for many hours. Years, a lifetime, eddy past: one, two, three: into the early hours, the clock chimes. The wind is singing now ~ Derek Jarman

Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in the small-town 1950s. This is none of Ireland's subtle seasons mixed for a connoisseur's palate, watercolor nuances within a pinch-sized range of cloud and soft rain; this is summer full-throated and extravagant in a hot pure silkscreen blue. This summer explodes on your tongue tasting of chewed blades of long grass, your own clean sweat, Marie biscuits with butter squirting through the holes and shaken bottles of red lemonade picnicked in tree houses. It tingles on your skin with BMX wind in your face, ladybug feet up your arm; it packs every breath full of mown grass and billowing wash lines; it chimes and fountains with birdcalls, bees, leaves and football-bounces and skipping-chants, One! two! three! This summer will never end. It starts every day with a shower of Mr. Whippy notes and your best friend's knock at the door, finishes it with long slow twilight and mothers silhouetted in doorways calling you to come in, through the bats shrilling among the black lace trees. This is Everysummer decked in all its best glory. ~ Tana French

It is noted that from 1967 to 1995 essays on negative emotions far outnumbered those on positive emotions in the psychological literature. The ratio was 21:1. Even those supreme perpetrators of pop nihilism, The New York Times and The Washington Post, have a better ratio than psychological literature. They average 12 negative stories to every one that might be construed to be non-negative. Many of their non-negative stories, however, cover success in sports and entertainment.

I demand that the purveyors of despair who pretend to be dispassionate observes of the human condition go ahead and disclose that the 10 most beautiful words in the English languages are chimes, dawn, golden, hush, lullaby, luminous, melody, mist, murmuring, and tranquil; that Java sparrows prefer the music of Back over that of Schoenberg; that math experts have determined there are 1/96 trillion ways to lace up your shoes; that the Inuit term for making love is translated as 'laughing together in bed;' and that according to Buckminster Fuller, "pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. ~ Rob Brezsny

Must love decorating for holidays, mischief, kissing in cars, and wind chimes. No specific height, weight, hair color, or political affiliation required but would prefer a warm spirited non racist. Cynics, critics, pessimists, and "stick in the muds" need not apply. Voluptuous figures a plus. Any similarity in look, mind set, or fashion sense to Mary Poppins, Claire Huxtable, Snow White, or Elvira wholeheartedly welcomed. I am dubious of actresses, fellons and lesbians but dont want to rule them out entirely. Must be tolerant of whistling, tickle torture, James Taylor, and sleeping late. I have a slight limp, eerily soft hands, and a preternatural love of autumn. I once misinterpreted being called a coal-eyed dandy as a compliment when it was intended as an insult. I wiggle my feet in my sleep, am scared of the dark, and think the Muppets Christmas Carol is one of the greatest films of all time. All I want is butterfly kisses in the morning, peanut butter sandwiches shaped like a heart, and to make you smile until it hurts. ~ Matthew Grey Gubler

Most of what we got was crockery: from exotic crystal bowls to ceramic anomalies. Then, a cross-section of rugs- from a beautiful Kashmiri original to a memorable one with printed dragons and utterly incomprehensible hieroglyphics. Dibyendu (typically) gave us a scrabble set and Runai Maashi: that rocking chair. Yuppie work friends, trying to be unique and aesthetically offbeat, went for wind-chimes but there were really far too many of them by the end. We also got a fantastic number of white and off-white kurtas, jamdani sarees with complementary blouses, no less than nine suitcases, suit pieces, imported condoms, bed-sheets, bed-covers, coffee makers, coffee tables, coffee-table books, poetry books, used gifts (paintings of sunsets and other disasters), three nights and four days in Darjeeling, along with several variations of Durga, Ganesh and all the usual suspects in ivory, china, terracotta, papier-mâché, and what have you. Someone gave us a calendar that looking back, I think, was laudably sardonic. Others gave us money, in various denominations: from eleven to five hundred and one. And in one envelope, came a letter for her that she read in tears in the bathroom.'
('Left from Dhakeshwari') ~ Kunal Sen

God hears no sweeter music than the cracked chimes of the courageous human spirit ringing in imperfect acknowledgement of His perfect love. ~ Joshua L. Liebman

Her laugh sounds like wind chimes. ~ Emery Lord

She listened to the soft splashing sound when the water met the bank. It took just a few moments before she was able to completely fade out the smell of pollution and inhaled the salty air. The soft breeze mingled with the swooshing and splashing of the waves, with the rustling of grass, the tictac as long undressed twigs of the tree met each other, composing a gentle melody like wooden wind-chimes. The whole concert of nature calmed her down like nothing had ever been able to. ~ Jessica Werner

Consider the sea's listless chime: Time's self it is, made audible. ~ Dante Alighieri

And she laughed, a full octave, descending from high C like chimes. ~ Mary Doria Russell

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. ~ William Shakespeare

People are looking for chimes and resonances. Chimes leave echoes, and that's what rhyme is. Poetry is about leaving an echo imprint in somebody else's head, in the dark snow of their mind. ~ Diana Georgeff

Soon, droves of children start to show up, keeping us rather busy. We start tallying up the number of Trolls, Batmans, Lego men, and princesses we see. The most popular costume? Batman and Superwoman with the fabrics and accessories varying from child to child. But my favorite so far is the girl who dressed as Little Debbie, but then again, I may be biased.

"I think she might be my new favorite," Emma says as a little girl dressed as a nurse walks away.

"That's because you're a nurse, but you can't play favorites," I say, reminding Emma of the rules.

She levels with me. "This coming from the guy whose favorite child was dressed as Little Debbie."

"Come on." I lean back in my chair and motion to my head. "She had the rim of blue on her hat. That's attention to detail."

"And good fucking parenting," Tucker chimes in, and we clink our beer bottles together.

Amelia chuckles next to me as Emma shakes her head. "Ridiculous. What about you, Amelia? What costume has been your favorite so far?"

"Hmm, it's been a tough competition. There has been some real winning costumes and some absolute piss-poor ones." She shakes her head. "Just because you put a scarf around your neck and call yourself Jack Frost doesn't mean you dressed up."

"Ugh, that costume was dumb."

"It shouldn't be referred to as a costume, but that's beside the point." I like how much Amelia is getting into this little prete ~ Meghan Quinn

My father was always anxious to give pleasure to his children. Accordingly, he took me one day, as a special treat, to the top of the grand old tower, to see the chimes played. ~ James Nasmyth

He must notice that I'm not understanding. He dips a finger beneath the surface of the water and pulls up; with a vibrant pulse of his majick, the aqua raises him up until he's on something similar to a pillar and face to face with me. Then despite the language barrier, he speaks slowly and adds hand gestures. Like I'm the lake simpleton. The look on my face must pass along how I feel about it because he stops and laughs, reminding me of the sound wooden wind chimes make on a breezy day. It's deep, peaceful, and resonates with my power; my heart stutters from a mini overload, similar to having drunk too much caffeine. ~ Sara Brackett

It's not a purse, Rose," Connor chimes in, his lips rising. "It's your future." His amusement is palpable. ~ Krista Ritchie

What happens if the writer is good is usually not that the work seems derivative or trivial but just the opposite: the work actually acquires depth and resonance from the echoes and chimes it sets up with prior texts, weight from the accumulated use of certain basic patterns and tendencies. Moreover, works are actually more comforting because we can recognize elements of them from our prior reading. I suspect that a wholly original work, one that owed nothing to previous writing, would so lack familiarity as to be quite unnerving to readers. ~ Thomas C. Foster

Usually, the murmur that rises up from Paris by day is the city talking; in the night it is the city breathing; but here it is the city singing. Listen, then, to this chorus of bell-towers - diffuse over the whole the murmur of half a million people - the eternal lament of the river - the endless sighing of the wind - the grave and distant quartet of the four forests placed upon the hills, in the distance, like immense organpipes - extinguish to a half light all in the central chime that would otherwise be too harsh or too shrill; and then say whetehr you know of anything in the world more rich, more joyous, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes - this furnace of music - these thousands of brazen voices, all singing together in flutes of stone three hundred feet high, than this city which is but one orchestra - this symphony which roars like a tempest. ~ Victor Hugo

Listen,' she whispered and pointed towards the window. 'Whenever the wind blows from the east and the wind chimes dance in the moonlight, there is magic in the air. ~ Carole Carlton

He [Logan] wasn't wearing his baseball cap for once, and the day was bright, almost warm, so his face was bathed in a soft glow from the winter sun. Logan's normally shaded eyes looked a much lighter brown in the sun, and they crinkled up at the corners as he gave me an easy smile.
Are you deliberately screwing with me, sun? What's next? Is his smile going to sparkle as a bell-like "ding" chimes in the distance? Is a butterfly going to land on his shoulder? Give the boy a white horse and it's a wrap for poor Paige's heart. ~ Cara Lynn Shultz

Lakes, carillonst,
Pools and bells,
Fifes and freshets,
Harps and wells;
Flutes and rivers,
Streams, bassoons,
Geysers, trumpets,
Chimes lagoons,
Hear the music,
Drink the water,
As we poor lambs
All go to slaughter.
I love you Eliot.
Good-bye. I cry.
Tears and violins.
Hearts and flowers,
Flowers and tears.
Rosewater, good-bye. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I personally think 'Chimes of Midnight' is a much better film than 'Citizen Kane.' ~ Christian McKay

Do I really look so pathetic to all of you? Like I couldn't possibly meet someone on my own? Half the people in the world are women. Odds are that at least a few of them would be willing to go out with me.'
'Damn right,' Phillip chimes in. 'And it's not like he's been celibate since he moved out. He had sex last night, FYI.'
'Don't help me, Phillip. ~ Jonathan Tropper

Those nights when the future seemed to last only till the morning and he would count off the hours, one by one, by the chimes of distant church bells. ~ Paolo Giordano

It had had a fragrant element, reminding him of a regular childhood experience, a memory that reverberated like the chimes of a prayer bell inside his head. For a few moments, he pictured the old Orthodox church that had dominated his remote Russian village. The bearded priest was swinging the elaborate incense-burner, suspended from gold-plated chains. It had been the same odour. Hadn't it? He blinked, shook his head. He couldn't make sense of that.
He decided, with an odd lack of enthusiasm, that he'd imagined it. The effects of the war played tricks of the mind, of the senses. Looking over his shoulder, he counted all seven of his men as they emerged from the remnants of the four-storey civic office building.
A few muddied documents were scattered on the ground, stamped with the official Nazi Party eagle, its head turned to the left, and an emblem he failed to recognize, but which looked to him like a decorative wheel, with a geometrical design of squares at its centre. Even a blackened flag had survived the bomb damage. Hanging beneath a crumbling windowsill, the swastika flapped against the bullet-ridden façade, the movement both panicky and defiant, Pavel thought.
His men were conscripts. A few still wore their padded khaki jackets and mustard-yellow blouses. Most, their green field tunics and forage caps. All the clothing was lice-ridden and smeared with soft ash. Months of exposure to frozen winds had darkened their skins and narrowed their eyes. They'd ~ Gary Haynes

In the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales for the disrobed faceless forms of no position. Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts - all down in taken-for-granted situations. Tolling for the deaf an' blind, tolling for the mute, and the mistreated mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute, for the misdemeanor outlaw, chained an' cheated by pursuit. And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing. ~ Bob Dylan

The town was its green suburban lawns, sure, but it was also its secrets. The kind of place where people double-checked the locks at night or pulled their kids closer in the grocery store. They hung horseshoes over their front doors and put up bells instead of wind chimes. They wore crosses made from stainless steel instead of gold because gold couldn't protect them from people like me. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Swallows The peppered sky chimes in the key of swallows. Arcing northward from Central America, dual citizens of the torn world, though native to the unity, wonderful yet I find myself dispossessed of wonder. Like the birds, we all sleep under bridges of one kind or another. When the core competency of a culture is strategic judgmentalism many things go rancid into the mean and meaningless. The routines set in, the procedures, the long, slow death-drone of sameness. The occasional lone hawk feathers up a bit of mild novelty here and there, then gets wing-clipped by celebritism, homeless in a cage. If my faith was real, I would abandon my luxurious pursuit of a mythopoetic identity and go fetch water for the dying. We are each and all the dispossessed if one child stands at our gates unwelcome. ~ James Scott Smith

They did not hear Grimble, as he lay dying, chant in the true voice of the Boreal Owl, in tones like chimes in the night, an ancient owl prayer, "I have redeemed myself by giving belief to the wings of the young. Blessed are those who believe, for indeed they shall fly." ~ Kathryn Lasky

Old Year! upon the Stage of Time You stand to bow your last adieu; A moment, and the prompter's chime Will ring the curtain down on you. ~ Robert W. Service

Love Virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heav'n itself would stoop to her. ~ John Milton

Uh-oh," Brynna says. "Here comes Caleb."
"Caleb, I'd like to introduce - "
"Fine," says Caleb, Brynna's husband, holding his hand up for me to stop talking. "I know who you are. And I don't give a flying fuck. If you hurt her, I'll kill you and make it look like you did it to yourself, do you understand me?"
"Well, that's lovely," I mutter. "And unnecessary."
"He's here?" Will chimes in, hurrying over. "Dude, we'll kill you. But welcome. ~ Kristen Proby

A new heart for a New Year, always! ~ Charles Dickens

Big Ben ... hearing the chimes makes me feel at home. ~ Jane Birkin

The walls and windows popped in staccato percussion as they relinquished the heat of the day. The soft chimes of the mantle clock supplied a beckoning melody. ~ Laura Rudacille

And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, climb--on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of Pentecost--climb upon some elevated point, whence you command the entire capital; and be present at the wakening of the chimes. Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously. First come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin. Then, all at once, behold!--for it seems at times, as though the ear also possessed a sight of its own,--behold, rising from each bell tower, something like a column of sound, a cloud of harmony. First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; then, little by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations.

Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos; great and profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency; you behold the windings of each group of notes which escapes from the belfries. ~ Victor Hugo

This was why he couldn't let Richard know it was the chimes themselves that were loose. Richard would not have accepted what Zedd intended, what Zedd knew he must do. ~ Terry Goodkind

The great myth is the manager as orchestra conductor. It's this idea of standing on a pedestal and you wave your baton and accounting comes in, and you wave it somewhere else and marketing chimes in with accounting, and they all sound very glorious. But management is more like orchestra conducting during rehearsals, when everything is going wrong. ~ Henry Mintzberg

Girls should be strong together. Strong like steel, merry like the tinkling of chimes dancing in the wind. ~ Kristin Halbrook

Hark, how chimes the passing bell! There's no music to a knell; All the other sounds we hear, Flatter, and but cheat our ear. This doth put us still in mind That our flesh must be resigned, And, a general silence made, The world be muffled in a shade. ~ James Shirley

Fanfare for the Makers

A cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what?
To the small fire that never leaves the sky.
To the great fire that boils the daily pot.

To all the things we are not remembered by,
Which we remember and bless. To all the things
That will not notice when we die,

Yet lend the passing moment words and wings.

So fanfare for the Makers: who compose
A book of words or deeds who runs may write
As many who do run, as a family grows

At times like sunflowers turning towards the light.
As sometimes in the blackout and the raids
One joke composed an island in the night.

As sometimes one man's kindness pervades
A room or house or village, as sometimes
Merely to tighten screws or sharpen blades

Can catch a meaning, as to hear the chimes
At midnight means to share them, as one man
In old age plants an avenue of limes

And before they bloom can smell them, before they span
The road can walk beneath the perfected arch,
The merest greenprint when the lives began

Of those who walk there with him, as in default
Of coffee men grind acorns, as in despite
Of all assaults conscripts counter assault,

As mothers sit up late night after night
Moulding a life, as miners day by day
Descend blind shafts, as a boy may flaunt his kite

In an empty nonchalant sky, as anglers play
The ~ Louis MacNeice

The strident chimes of prayer bells from the distant temple resonated in the night air with ritual insistence, and nudged Kamala from her repose. What had once sounded to her like a sharp and persistent call to prayer now, with ceaseless repetition, mellowed to become plaintive and wistful, like one's favourite recording playing in the background to the syncopated percussion of lovemaking. (From the novel Blood & Nemesis by Ben Antao). ~ Ben Antao

The gabled eaves, with Legolandish civic pride, the church clock chimes nine golden times; an Alp rears up on every side; ~ David Mitchell

Whenever the sadness got too much, I would hire a rickshaw and go to the Upper Bazaar. Those little rickshaw trips to the market and back, shopping for lipsticks and imitation Gucci bags and wind-chimes and what not, are some of my happiest memories today. You know, one day, during one of those trips, I sold all my well-thumbed copies of 'Inside Outside' to the Tibetan guy who ran the old book store on Netaji Road for seventy rupees, six Tintins and a disarming smile. And all of a sudden, that moment, standing at the corner of Netaji road, I found out who I was.'
('Left from Dhakeshwari') ~ Kunal Sen

An important dimension of Tess of the d'Urbervilles is its debt to the oral tradition; to stories about wronged milkmaids, tales of superstition, and stories of love, betrayal and revenge, involving stock figures. This gives Tess of the d'Urbervilles an anti-realistic inflection. From the world of ballad and folktale Hardy draws such fateful coincidences as the failure of Angel to encounter Tess at the 'Club-walking' on which he intrudes with his brothers, the letter to Angel that she accidentally slips under the carpet, the loss of her shoes when she tries to visit his family, and the family portraits on the wall of their honeymoon dwelling, as well as several omens. This chimes effectively with a world in which the rural folk have a superstitious and fatalistic attitude to life. ~ Geoffrey Harvey

There's a legend about that clock. For a second, when it chimes the hour, the gates to Heaven open. ~ Cassandra Clare

I Will Not Tease Rebecca Grimes

I have to write one hundred times:
"I will not tease Rebecca Grimes."
Okay, that's one. I'm far from done.
(This isn't gonna be much fun.)
"I will not tease Rebecca Grimes."
That's two. I'm paying for my crimes.
It's all because I pulled her hair
And put spaghetti on her chair.

Because I gave her goofy looks
And squirted mustard on her books,
I have to write one hundred times:
"I will not tease Rebecca Grimes."

That's three. Whoopee. It's going slow.
Just ninety-seven more to go.
"I will not tease" (I'm keeping score.)
"Rebecca Grimes." (Now that makes four.)

I'm soaked with sweat. My shirt is damp.
I think I'm getting writer's cramp.
"I will not, will not, will not tease
Rebecca Grimes!" Can I stop, please?

The teacher frowns, and that means no.
I still have sixty-six to go.
"I will-will-will not-not-not-not
Tease-tease-tease-tease..." It's getting hot.

"I will not tease Rebecca Grimes."
That's ninety-nine. The school bell chimes.
Just one more line and I'll be through.
Rebecca Grimes, this one's for you!
My final line will rhyme with "Grimes":
"I will not tease Rebecca...Slimes!"
Rebecca Slimes! Ha ha! That's great!
I'd better hide it. Oops! Too late!

The teacher sees what I wrote down.
She takes my paper with a frown.
I now mus ~ Dave Crawley

The voice so sweet, the words so fair, As some soft chime had stroked the air; And though the sound had parted thence, Still left an echo in the sense. ~ Ben Jonson

Wind chimes are also earthquake chimes. ~ Demetri Martin

The voice of Time, ' said the Phantom, 'cries to man, Advance! Time is for his advancement and improvement; for his greater worth, his greater happiness, his better life; his progress onward to that goal within its knowledge and its view, and set there, in the period when Time and He began. Ages of darkness, wickedness, and violence, have come and gone--millions uncountable, have suffered, lived, and died-- to point the way before him. Who seeks to turn him back, or stay him on his course, arrests a mighty engine which will strike the meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the wilder, ever, for its momentary check! ~ Charles Dickens

I'll say she's brave," Grandma chimes in. "She's going to England day after tomorrow to hump some guy she barely knows. ~ Meg Cabot

A breeze lifted off the ocean and several hundred notes from the wind chimes tinkled like ice shaken in silver cups. They altered the mood of the forest the way an orchestra does a theater when it begins tuning up its instruments. ~ Pat Conroy

Give yourself to me, Gemma, and you will never be alone again. You'll be worshiped. Adored. Loved. But you must give yourself to me- a willing sacrifice.'
Tears slip down my face. 'Yes,' I murmur.
Gemma, don't listen,' Circe says hoarsely, and for a moment, I don't see Eugenia; I see only the tree, the blood pumping beneath its pale skin, the bodies of the dead hanging from it like chimes.
I gasp, and Eugenia is before me again. 'Yes, this is what you want, Gemma. Try as you might, you cannot kill this part of yourself. The solitude of the self taht waits just under the stairs of your soul. Always there, no matter how much you've tried to get rid of it. I understand. I do. Stay with me and never be lonely again.'
Don't listen... to that... bitch,' Circe croaks, and the vines tighten around her neck.
No, you're wrong,' I say to Eugenia as if coming out of a long sleep. 'You couldn't kill this part of yourself. And you couldn't accept it, either.'
I'm sure I don't know what you mean.' she says, sounding uncertain for the first time.
That's why they were able to take you. They found your fear.'
And what, pray, was it?'
Your pride. You couldn't believe you might have some of the same qualities as the creatures themselves.'
I am not like them. I am their hope. I sustain them.'
No. You tell yourself that. That's why CIrce told me to search my dark corners. So I wouldn't be caught off guard.'
Circe laughts, a splintered ca ~ Libba Bray

His high school girlfriend. I caught them in the act." "You caught them having sex at Homestyle Buffet?" Carlos chimes in, confused and maybe a little amused. ~ Simone Elkeles

There is law enough all about us
in almanack and season, anniversary
days come round, the round earth's carnivale
of chimes and recessionals.
Good to be included
there. Good also what is not
fixed or sure even,
the second breath of being
here when the May-bush
snows in mid-September, as giddy
happenstance leads us
this way into
a lost one's arms, or that way
deeper into the maze. ~ David Malouf

I often wonder what she's thinking," says Ed, still gazing up at her. "That's quite an intriguing expression she has."
"I often wonder that myself," chimes in Malcolm Gledhill eagerly. "She seems to have such a look of serenity and happiness ... Obviously, from what you've said, she has a certain emotional connection with the painter Malory ... I often wonder if he was reading her poetry as he painted ... "
"What an idiot this man is," says Sadie scathingly in my ear. "It's obvious I what I'm thinking. I'm looking at Stephan and I'm thinking, I want to jump his bones."
"She wanted to jump his bones," I say to Malcolm Gledhill. Ed shoots me a disbelieving look, then bursts into laughter. ~ Sophie Kinsella

Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail the sky cracked its poems in naked wonder, that the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze, leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder ~ Bob Dylan

I make an attempt to follow Reed's lead and lighten the mood. "What was your excuse last week when you ate an entire batch of cookies?"
"That was just me being hungry. Besides, they were cookies. Who needs an excuse to eat cookies?"
"I feel like that's a sexual question," Wade chimes in. "And the correct answer is, no one ever needs an excuse to eat cookies."
"You do need permission, though," Val says tersely, focusing her gaze on Wade for the first time since he sat down. "And if your mouth is all over someone else's cookies, then other bakers aren't going to be interested in offering you their cookies."
Then she gets up from the table and stomps off.
"Hey!" Wade shouts after her. "I only had those other cookies that one time and only because the baker I wanted to get the cookies from was closed!"
He shoots up from his seat and hustles after Val, leaving Easton, Reed, and me staring after them.
"I have a feeling they aren't talking about cookies," Easton remarks. ~ Erin Watt

I am the twentieth century. I am the ragtime and the tango; sans-serif, clean geometry. I am the virgin's-hair whip and the cunningly detailed shackles of decadent passion. I am every lonely railway station in every capital of Europe. I am the Street, the fanciless buildings of government. the cafe-dansant, the clockwork figure, the jazz saxophone, the tourist-lady's hairpiece, the fairy's rubber breasts, the travelling clock which always tells the wrong time and chimes in different keys. I am the dead palm tree, the Negro's dancing pumps, the dried fountain after tourist season. I am all the appurtenances of night. ~ Thomas Pynchon

It is a phrase that may well perplex a poor modern, girt about on every side by clocks and chimes...For we are all so busy, and have so many far-off projects to realise, and castles in the fire to turn into solid habitable mansions on a gravel soil, that we can find no time for pleasure trips into the Land of Thought and among the Hills of Vanity. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson