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
c.1000  Luzu'  miyya'  t, stanza 32 (translated by R  A Nicholson in Studies in Islamic Poetry,1921).

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
  Les  Alcools,'Le Pont Mirabeau'.

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
  Murder in the Dark,'Strawberries'.

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)
The Little Minister, vol.1, ch.1.

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

-Bible (NewTestament)
St  John 2:4.

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
c.1803  Auguries of Innocence, l.1^4.

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
  'Address to the Deil', stanza 20.

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
  'Tam o' Shanter.  A  Tale'.

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
  'Bruce's  Address at Bannockburn', stanza1.

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)
  'The Donkey'.

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
  Speech,18  Jun. Quoted in  A  J P  Taylor English History 1914^45, p.491.

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

-Day-Lewis, Cecil
  The Magnetic Mountain, pt.3, no.24.

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
  'From Feathers to Iron'.

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

-DeVoto, Bernard
The Hour.

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

-Donne,John
c.1595^1605  'A Fever', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

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)
  Four Quartets,'Little Gidding', pt.2.

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

-Gibbons, Stella Dorothea
   Judith Starkadder, of Meriam. Cold Comfort Farm, ch.5.

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
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.29^36.

Oh, for an hour of Herod!

-Hope, Anthony pseudonym of SirAnthonyHopeHawkins
  On witnessing the first performance of  J M Barrie's children's play Peter Pan. Quoted in Denis Mackail Story of JMB (1941), ch.17. Records exist of something similar having been said by the English actress Dorothea  Jordan when watching the child actor William Betty and his imitators in the early19c.

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)
  Last Poems, no.37,'Epitaph on an  Army of Mercenaries'.