hour

I always claim the mission workers came out too early to catch any sinners on this part of Broadway. At such an hour the sinners are still in bed resting up from their sinning of thenight before, so they will be ingood shape for more sinning a little later on.

—Runyon, (Alfred) Damon

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Awaits alike th' inevitable hour, The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

—Gray,Thomas

   Monsieur Wagner has good moments, but awful quarters of an hour!

—Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio

All books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

—Ruskin,John

   Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damned perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come. Fair nature's eye, rise, rise, again, and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but Ayear, a month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his soul! O lente, lente currite, noctis equi: The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. Oh, I'll leap up to my God!öWho pulls me down?ö See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul, half a drop, ah, my Christ.

—Marlowe, Christopher

A child's a plaything for an hour.

—Lamb, Charles

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:ö So this winged hour is dropt to us from above. Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower, This close-companioned inarticulate hour When twofold silence was the song of love.

—Rossetti, Dante Gabriel

A sonnet is a moment's monument,ö Memorial from the Soul's eternity To one dead deathless hour.

—Rossetti, Dante Gabriel

Do not expect again a phoenix hour, The triple-towered sky, the dove complaining, Sudden the rain of gold and heart's first ease Traced under trees by the eldritch light of sundown.

—Day-Lewis, Cecil

At some time during that hour, though not for the whole hour, I forgot what things were called and saw instead what theyare.

—Atwood, Margaret Eleanor

To see a world in a grain of sand, And heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.

—Blake,William

   It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet; Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit. The glassisfalling hourby hour, theglass will fall forever, But if you break the bloody glass, you won't hold up the weather.

—MacNeice, (Frederick) Louis

Oh! ever thus, from childhood's hour, I've seen my fondest hopes decay; I never loved a tree or flower, But 'twas the first to fade away. I never nursed a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well, And love me, it was sure to die!

—Moore,Thomas

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, öDrawing no dividend from time's to-morrows. In the great hour of destiny they stand, öEach with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows. Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win öSome flaming, fatal climax with their lives. Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin öThey think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

—Sassoon, Siegfried Louvain

Nae man can tether time or tide; The hour approachesTam maun ride; That hour, o'night's black arch the key-stane, That dreary hourTam mounts his beast in.

—Burns, Robert

Whatever may have been my enthusiasm or impatience to be up and doing on the night before, the hour for getting up always finds me with no other ambition in the world than to be permitted to lie where I am and sleep, sleep, sleep.Not soTilman.Ihave never met anyonewith such a complete disregard for the sublime comforts of the early morning bed. However monstrously early we might decide, thenight before, toget up, hewas about at least half an hour before the time. He was generally very good about it, and used to sit placidly smoking his pipe over the fire.

—Shipton, Eric Earle

Igreet you as the advanceguard of the world proletarian army. The hour is not far off when†the German people will turn their weapons againsttheircapitalist exploiters. The sun of the socialist revolution has already risen.

—Lenin,Vladimir Ilyich originally Vladimir IlyichUlyanov

And when the spring comes her hour is upon her again. 'Testhehand of Nature and we women cannot escape it.

—Gibbons, Stella Dorothea

  I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death.O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.

—Keats,John

For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often-times The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.

—Wordsworth,William

If I be evil intreated, or sent away with a flea in mine ear, let him look that Iwill rail onhimsoundly; nor foranhour or a day, whiles the injury is fresh in my memory; but in some elaborate polished poem, which I will leave to the world when I am dead, to be a living image to all ages of his beggarly parsimony and ignoble illiberality.

—Nashe,Thomas

The hour's come, but not the man.

—Scott, Sir Walter

These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead.

—Housman, A(lfred) E(dward)

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.

—Barrie, SirJ(ames) M(atthew)

Fools! For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet.

—Chesterton, G(ilbert) K(eith)

Tempt me no more; for I Have known the lightning's hour, The poet's inward pride, The certainty of power.

—Day-Lewis, Cecil

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

—Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)

Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour.

—Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

   Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter.

—Klee, Paul

Jesussaithuntoher,Woman, what have Ito dowiththee? mine hour is not yet come.

—Bible (NewTestament)

Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not.

—Wordsworth,William

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your gory bed,ö Or to victorie!ö Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front o' battle lour; See approach proud Edward's power, Chains and Slaverie!

—Burns, Robert

Time that is moved by little fidget wheels Is not myTime, the flood that does not flow. Between the double and the single bell Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells From the dark warship riding there below, I have lived many lives, and this one life Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells.

—Skirving, Adam

I had rather owner be Of thee one hour, than all else ever.

—Donne,John

Oh, for an hour of Herod!

—Hope, Anthony pseudonym of SirAnthonyHopeHawkins

When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day's occupation that is known as the cocktail hour.

—DeVoto, Bernard

Her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate: Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe, That all was lost.

—Milton,John

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure Les jours s'en vont je demeure. Let night come, ring out the hour, The days go by, I remain.

—Kostrowitzki

Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour; And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know.

—Wordsworth,William

An'now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkan, A certain Bardie's rantin, drinkin, Some luckless hour will send him linkan, To your black pit; But faith! he'll turn a corner jinkan, An'cheat you yet.

—Burns, Robert

This is the prospect from the watershed, and when the traveller reaches it, it is a good thing to take an hour's leisure and lookout on the visible portions of the journey, since never in one's life can one seethe same view twice.

—Stark, Dame Freya Madeleine

Ah! County Guy, the hour is nigh, The sun has left the lea, The orange flower perfumes the bower, The breeze is on the sea.

—Scott, Sir Walter

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: 'This was their finest hour.'

—Churchill, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer

Un vaste et tendre Apaisement Semble descendre Du firmament . . . C'est l'heure exquise. Avast and tender Calm Seems to descend From the heavens . . . This is the exquisite hour.

—Verlaine, Paul

Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor paltered with Eternal God of power.

—Tennyson

It was her voice that made The sky acutest at its vanishing. She measured to the hour its solitude. She was the single artificer of the world In which she sang.

—Stevens,Wallace

In the uncertain hour before the morning Near the ending of interminable night At the recurrent end of the unending.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

And those who watch at that midnight hour From Hall orTerrace or loftyTower, Cry as the wild light passes along, 'The Dong!öthe Dong! The wandering Dong through the forest goes! The Dong!öthe Dong! The Dong with a Luminous Nose!'

—Lear, Edward

A pard-like Spirit, beautiful and swiftö A love in desolation masked;öa Power Girt round with weakness;öit can scarce uplift The weight of the superincumbent hour; It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, A breaking billow;öeven whilst we speak Is it not broken? Shelley

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

  The world's best moment is a calm hour passed In listening to a friend who can talk well.

—Abu'l-'Ala¤   Al-Ma'arri