Timepieces Quotes

Like a genial hotelier, Rolex has introduced me to some of the nicest people. I ask about their Rolex and they ask about mine. It's as marvelous a conversation piece as it is a timepiece. ~ Maurice Chevalier

He walked down the path of villains, but he became a hero in the end. He has the timepieces, and they have touched his soul forever. He must learn to walk in the darkness between times and wield power without rage. ~ N.D. Wilson

I picked the Scholar's or the Chancellor's doors or - especially fun for me - the Timekeeper's, resetting his clock and timepieces? That had especially angered my father, but I'd only done it hoping it would create an extra hour in his day for me. ~ Mary E. Pearson

The street heaves and winds,
burns and bumps,
but behind the glass
the locksmith,
the old curator of timepieces,
stands motionless
with a single protruding eye,
one amazing eye
which peers into the mystery,
the secret hearts of clocks,
and looks deeply in
until the elusive butterfly
of time in its measure
is trapped in his forehead
and the wings of the watch beat."

-from "To Don Asterio Alarcón, Clocksmith of Valparaíso ~ Pablo Neruda

If I have a weakness, it's for timepieces - if I see one I like and can afford it, I'll buy it. ~ Ross Kemp

Today, a single affluent family generally has more timepieces at home than an entire medieval country. You ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Alice in Darkness

Forget tears. Chasing
white animals with timepieces
in this drug-trip landscape
can only lead to more of same.
Hedgehogs, playing cards, paintbrushes:
full of undisclosed danger.
Didn't your mother tell you
not to kiss strangers?
That Cheshire smile shouldn't fool you.
Pull your skirt down.
Your nails are growing so fast
you're hardly human.
Alice, fight your version of Bedlam
as long as you can.
Sleep the sweet dream away
from that gooey looking glass, or mushrooms,
or the fear of your own body.
Forget what the night tastes like.
Stop wondering through the shadows,
holding your neck out
for the slice of the axe. ~ Jeannine Hall Gailey

Besides that, his secret - and principal - reason for retiring was to devote himself entirely to his idée fixe, his collection which was becoming ever larger and more complicated. Van Hulle's concern was no longer simply to have beautiful clocks or rare timepieces; his feelings for them were not simply those one has for inanimate objects. True, their outward appearance was still important, their craftsmanship, their mechanisms, heir value as works of art, but the fact that he had collected so many was for a different reason entirely. It was a result of his strange preoccupation with the exact time. It was no longer enough for him that they were interesting. He was irritated by the differences in time they showed. Above all when they struck the hours and the quarters. One, very old, was deranged and got confused in keeping count of the passage of time, which it had been doing for so long. Others were behind, little Empire clocks with children's voices almost, as if they had not quite grown up. In short, the clocks were always at variance. They seemed to be running after each other, calling out, getting lost, looking for each other at all the changing crossroads of time. ~ Georges Rodenbach

A gentleman's choice of timepiece says as much about him as does his Saville Row suit. ~ Ian Fleming

Designer Kisses"

I'm glum about your sportive flesh in the empire of blab,
and the latest guy running his trendy tongue like a tantalizing surge
over your molars, how droll. Love by a graveyard is redundant,
but the skin is an obstacle course like Miami where we are
inescapably consigned: tourists keeping the views new.
What as yet we desire, our own fonts of adoration. By morning,
we're laid out like liquid timepieces, each other's exercise in perpetual
enchantment, for there is that beach in us that is untranslatable; footprints
abound. I understand: you're at a clothes rack at Saks
lifting a white linen blouse at tear's edge wondering. ~ Major Jackson

How absurd to try to make two men think alike on matters of religion, when I cannot make two timepieces agree. ~ Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

Animal minds are simple, and therefore sharp. Animals never spend time dividing experience into little bits and speculating about all the bits they've missed. The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. This frees the mind from unnecessary thoughts and gives it a cutting edge where it matters. Your normal animal, in fact, never tries to walk and chew gum at the same time.

The average human, on the other hand, thinks about all sorts of things around the clock, on all sorts of levels, with interruptions from dozens of biological calendars and timepieces. There's thoughts about to be said, and private thoughts, and real thoughts, and thoughts about thoughts, and a whole gamut of subconscious thoughts. To a telepath the human head is a din. It is a railway terminus with all the Tannoys talking at once. It is a complete FM waveband- and some of those stations aren't reputable, they're outlawed pirates on forbidden seas who play late-night records with limbic lyrics. ~ Terry Pratchett

Generally speaking, a web of great mystification has been woven around time. Above all, the mystification about the ostensible objectivity of time. Utter nonsense. Time is a completely subjective matter, but every person is not a subject, and that is the problem. Timepieces are perhaps exact, but time is not, time is a matter of personality, or even of affinity. ~ Svetislav Basara