Quotes & Sayings About Bell Ringing

DOST thou not hear the silver bell,
Through yonder lime-trees ringing?
'Tis my lady's light gazelle.
To me her love thoughts bringing,
All the while that silver bell
Around his dark neck ringing. — Thomas Moore

When you drop a glass or a plate to the ground it makes a loud crashing sound. When a window shatters a table leg breaks or when a picture falls off the wall it makes a noise. But as for your heart when that breaks it s completely silent. You would think as it s so important it would make the loudest noise in the whole world or even have some ... Read Moresort of ceremonious sound like the gong of a cymbal or the ringing of a bell. But it s silent and you almost wish there was a noise to distract you from the pain. If there is a noise it s internal. It screams and no one can hear it but you. It screams so loud your ears ring and your head aches. It trashes around in your chest like a great white shark caught in the sea it roars like a mother bear whose cub has been taken. That s what it looks like and that s what it sounds like a trashing panicking trapped great big beast roaring like a prisoner to its own emotions. But that s the thing about love no one is untouchable. — Cecelia Ahern

I think Christians fail so often to get answers to their prayers because they do not wait long enough on God. They just drop down and say a few words, and then jump up and forget it and expect God to answer them. Such praying always reminds me of the small boy ringing his neighbor's door-bell, and then running away as fast as he can go. — Edward McKendree Bounds

The great bell of Beaulieu was ringing. Far away through the forest might be heard its musical clangor and swell. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Oberon could not speak for the burning anger on is tongue. Instead, he drew back his mighty fist and would have knocked his captain clean off the wall, down on the jagged rocks below...
Only suddenly, standing between him and his prey was the gloriously golden image of his wife smiling sweetly up at him.
"Really, darling, such a display. And so public too!" she said, laughing like the ringing of a bell chorus. "What will all the little ones think?'
"Out of my way, Titania!" Oberon bellowed. "Puck has told me of your part in all this nonsense, and I'll be dealing with you next!"
But Titania had seen too many of her husband's tempers over the long centuries of their marriage to mind him much now. "Don't be ridiculous," she said lightly, tapping him on the nose with one long, elegant finger. 'Do you really want to stand in the way of true love? When you start meddling with people's hearts, things never go well, as everyone knows. — Camryn Lockhart

Woman and children behind the lines!' he yelled, and all the girls jumped. Henry froze with his mouth open. 'Bang the drum slowly and ask not for whom the bell's ringing, for the answer's unfriendly!' He threw a fist in the air. 'Two years have my black ships sat before Troy, and today its gate shall open before the strength of my arm.' Dotty was laughing from the kitchen. Frank looked at his nephew. 'Henry, we play baseball tomorrow. Today we sack cities. Dots! Fetch me my tools! Down with the French! Once more into the breach, and fill the wall with our coward dead! Half a league! Half a league! Hey, batter, batter!'
Frank brought his fist down onto the table, spilling Anastasia's milk, and then he struck a pose with both arms above his head and his chin on his chest. The girls cheered and applauded. Aunt Dotty stepped back into the dining room carrying a red metal toolbox. — N.D. Wilson

His soul (was) ringing like a well-struck bell. But it was a bell that rang with more than joy and adoration - there was the sound there too of anger and resentment. She would not look at him because she did not want to be in his presence. She hated him and he (how could he not?) hated her in return. — Paul Hoffman

A 'woman on the loose' is a woman who leaves the woods where she has been growing strong all these years. She swoops out of trees, ringing her bell. She is saying, I am here now. And I am not going away.
The motto that the women on the loose adopted is: 'To improvise, surprise, and come uninvited. — Sue Monk Kidd

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

In the beginning, everybody that gets to work with me, thinks I'm nice. But three weeks later, they hear a bell ringing. Then they realise I meant everything I said during that first week. It's not my fault people are not taking me serious from the first moment. — Andrew Eldritch

Shoulder up, I reeled around to face Boo Radley and his bloody fangs; instead, I saw Dill ringing the bell with all his might in Atticus's face. — Harper Lee

I've had my fill of Hitler. These conferences called by the ringing of a bell are not to my liking. The bell is rung when people call their servants. And besides, what kind of conferences are these? For five hours I am forced to listen to a monologue which is quite fruitless and boring — Benito Mussolini

The poor gentleman has no way of showing that he is a gentleman but by virtue, by being affable, well-bred, courteous, gentle-mannered, and kindly, not haughty, arrogant, or censorious, but above all by being charitable; for by two maravedis given with a cheerful heart to the poor, he will show himself as generous as he who distributes alms with bell-ringing, and no one that perceives him to be endowed with the virtues I have named, even though he know him not, will fail to recognise and set him down as one of good blood; and it would be strange were it not so; praise has ever been the reward of virtue, and those who are virtuous cannot fail to receive commendation. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse. — Charles Williams

I don't like ringing the bell at the door. Its' tingaling just sounds beautiful. It makes one equal innocent sound, and it doesn't matter who is ringing. But knocking is distinctive. Human beats something physically - you can hear the reflected feeling. Of course, the hand always gets slightly painful. — Haruki Murakami

I don't want a door bell. I don't want anyone ringing my door bell ... seems to be intrusive. They can call me on their cell phones. — Malcolm Gladwell

I'm also old ... and my own gift for writing fantasy grows out of very literal-minded, pragmatic soil: the things I do when I'm not telling stories have always been pretty three-dimensional. I used to say that the only strong attraction reality ever had for me was horses and horseback riding, but I've also been cooking and going for long walks since I was a kid (yes, the two are related), and I'm getting even more three dimensionally biased as I get older - gardening, bell ringing ... piano playing ... And the stories I seem to need to write seem to need that kind of nourishment from me - how you feed your story telling varies from writer to writer. My story-telling faculty needs real-world fresh air and experiences that create calluses (and sometimes bruises). — Robin McKinley

In the end, coming to faith remains for all a sense of homecoming, of picking up the threads of a lost life, of responding to a bell that had long been ringing, of taking a place at a table that had long been vacant. — Malcolm Muggeridge

The great miraculous bell of translucent ice is suspended in mid-air.
It rings to announce endings and beginnings. And it rings because there is fresh promise and wonder in the skies.
Its clear tones resound in the placid silence of the winter day, and echo long into the silver-blue serenity of night.
The bell can only be seen at the turning of the year, when the days wind down into nothing, and get ready to march out again.
When you hear the bell, you feel a tug at your heart.
It is your immortal inspiration. — Vera Nazarian

When the lab rats hear the bell ringing, they freeze. That's what fear does to you - fear stops you dead in your tracks. Fear can keep you from harm, but fear can also rob you of your potential. Fear can rob you of an experience. Fear can rob you of happiness. Fear can rob you of real life ... Darkness has a way of scaring us ... — Rob Bell

When she (Miss Betsey - M. Zh.)reached the house she gave another proof of her identity. My father had often hinted that she seldom conducted herself like any ordinary Christian; and now, instead of ringing the bell, she came and looked in at that identical window, pressing the end of her nose against the glass to that extent that my poor dear mother used to say it became perfectly flat and white in a moment.
She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been convinced I am indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born on a Friday. (Chapter I) — Charles Dickens

I have for four years now been ringing the bell. Economic Holocaust is coming. Economic day of reckoning is coming. — Beck

I could tell he wanted the best for me. Of course, he assumed that would be getting out. Everyone always thought that, not of what we had to go back to, at home. Maybe our parents had thrown away our mattresses. Maybe they'd told our siblings we'd been run over by trains, to make our absence fonder.
Not everyone had a parent. It could be that nothing was waiting for us. Our keys would no longer fit the locks. We'd resort to ringing the bell, saying we've come home, can't we come in?
The eye in the peephole would show itself, and that eye could belong to a stranger, as our family had moved halfway across the country and never informed us. Or that eye could belong to the woman who carried us for nine months, who labored for fourteen hours, who was sliced open with a C-section to give us life, and now wished she never did.
The juvenile correctional system could let us out into the world, but it could not control who would be out there, willing to claim us. — Nova Ren Suma

The bell that measures time is ringing — Margaret Atwood

I'm worried that a few people are confusing the ringing of a church bell with the ringing of a cash register, .. When I hear about leaders of charities being provided a $300,000 Bentley to drive around in, my fear is that it's the taxpayers who subsidize this charity who are really being taken for a ride. — Chuck Grassley

The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through ... ringing throughout the house was an alarm bell that no one but Alfred and Enid could hear directly. — Jonathan Franzen

Even after the ringing stopped, the sound of the bell lingered through the evening gloom like the dust floating in the air. — Haruki Murakami

Tess, Tess, Tessa.
Was there ever a more beautiful sound than your name? To speak it aloud makes my heart ring like a bell. Strange to imagine that, isn't it - a heart ringing? But when you touch me, that is what it is like, as if my heart is ringing in my chest and the sound shivers down my veins and splinters my bones with joy. — Cassandra Clare

But now there were ten bells. And the bell for Lost-Hope was ringing violently. — Susanna Clarke

On Christmas morning, my Mam and Dad were downstairs shouting to me to look out the window.
They'd shout, 'There's Santa.'
Dad used to ring this bell and say it was one of Santa's bells on the sleigh. I could hear Santa's bells ringing as I jumped out of bed, really excited and I looked out the bedroom window in to the dark morning, fully expecting to see Santa and co magically flying through the air and maybe even he would spot me and give me a wave.
'I can't see him,' I'd proclaim in sadness and then the bells would stop and I knew he'd have gone to someone else's house, but I also knew that he hadn't forgotten me.
I'd run downstairs and in to the room whilst still in my pyjamas where the prezzies were. The excitement was unbelievable and my parents used to buzz as they watched my face beaming up at them in joy. — Stephen Richards

I stood for a moment, letting my ears do the walking, and then I gave the bell a thorough ring and waited thirty thoughtful seconds before ringing it again.
And that, let me assure you, is not a waste of time. Public institutions throughout the fifty states provide food and clothing and shelter for lads who don't ring the bell first. — Lawrence Block

His voice is unmuffled - it is like a bell, clearly ringing in the night of our confusion; but the clarity is the clarity of imponderable depth ... — Mervyn Peake

I walk in just as the bell is ringing, and I'm in a serious daze. It's lucky that my hands seem to know my locker combination, because my brain has checked out. People talk to me, and I nod along, but absolutely nothing penetrates. — Becky Albertalli

In an instant he forgot Joe's poem about Japan except the part about 'you are the bell, and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,' and a new sound entered his life, like when he was a kid and he first heard the sound of horses clip-clopping and he asked his mother in wonder, What's that sound, because I've never heard it before? — Melina Marchetta

I stood there ringing the bell and banging on the door, feeling I could make someone be there, knowing all the time that I couldn't. — Dodie Smith

Evanton creaked his way toward the sound of the bell at a speed that made snails look fast - if he decided to answer the door at all. If you made the mistake of ringing the bell while he was already on the way, he got angry. Kaylin had learned this early. On the other hand, if he'd actually failed to hear the door when she was expected, and she failed to ring the bell a second time, he also got angry. It was very much lose-lose, with hope wedged in to add anxiety. — Michelle Sagara

Temptation is a fearful word. It indicates the beginning of a possible series of infinite evils. It is the ringing of an alarm bell, whose melancholy sounds may reverberate through eternity. Like the sudden, sharp cry of "Fire!" under our windows by night, it should rouse us to instantaneous action, and brace every muscle to its highest tension. — Horace Mann

I'd smack you over the head with it so hard your bell would still be ringing for Church next Saturday night. ~ Jaz — Jennifer Rardin

No, Rodion Romanovitch, Nikolay doesn't come in! This is a fantastic, gloomy business, a modern case, an incident of to-day when the heart of man is troubled, when the phrase is quoted that blood 'renews,' when comfort is preached as the aim of life. Here we have bookish dreams, a heart unhinged by theories. Here we see resolution in the first stage, but resolution of a special kind: he resolved to do it like jumping over a precipice or from a bell tower and his legs shook as he went to the crime. He forgot to shut the door after him, and murdered two people for a theory. He committed the murder and couldn't take the money, and what he did manage to snatch up he hid under a stone. It wasn't enough for him to suffer agony behind the door while they battered at the door and rung the bell, no, he had to go to the empty lodging, half delirious, to recall the bell-ringing, — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I felt I wrote my views of my experience with mere encouragement I got in Earth, I researched like a wanderer did, with songs of my creation ever had in me and I would be pleased to give away my knowledge to mankind like my ashes I diffuse with my society. — Nithin Purple

He doesn't have to say it, i feel it too; it's not subtle - like every bell for miles and miles is ringing at once, loud and clanging, hungry ones and tiny, happy, chiming ones, all of them sounding off in this moment. I put my hands around his neck, pull him to me, and then he's kissing me hard and so deep, and i am flying, sailing, soaring ... — Jandy Nelson

I can hear. Hear them. It. Don't you hear? It was a struggle to speak, to form coherent thoughts. The call here was different; not the beehive sound of Craigh na Dun, but a hum like the vibration of the air following the striking of a great bell. I could feel it ringing in the long bones of my arms, echoing through pectoral girdle and spine. Jamie — Diana Gabaldon

There was a stiff bell-pull instead of a doorbell that Teddy had to yank hard for any result. They could hear a faint ringing somewhere beyond the fortress-like front door. No footsteps of anyone rushing to open it. It was a house in mourning, Teddy supposed. — Kate Atkinson

In the Clarendon Library at Oxford University sits a battery-powered bell that has been ringing since the year 1840. The bell "rings" so quietly it's almost inaudible, using only a tiny amount of charge with every motion of the clapper. Nobody knows exactly what kind of batteries it uses because nobody wants to take it apart to figure it out. — Randall Munroe

Sleep pressed upon him with an urgency that became resistless. And April Bell was calling to him. Her voice came clearly to him, above all the subdued murmur of traffic noises. It was a ringing golden chime, more penetrating than the occasional beep of a driver's horn or the far clamor of a streetcar. It shimmered out of the dark, in waves of pure light as green as her malachite eyes. Then he thought he could see her, somehow, far across the slumberous town. Only she wasn't a woman. — Jack Williamson

Forgiveness to letting go of a bell rope. If you have ever seen a country church with a bell in the steeple, you will remember that to get the bell ringing you have to tug awhile. Once it has begun to ring, you merely maintain the momentum. As long as you keep pulling, the bell keeps ringing. Forgiveness is letting go of the rope. It is just that simple. But when you do so, the bell keeps ringing. Momentum is still at work. However, if you keep your hands off the rope, the bell will begin to slow and eventually stop. — Corrie Ten Boom

There was the sun, letting down great glowing masses of heat; there was life, active and snarling, moving about them like a fly swarm - the dark pants of smoke from the engine, a crisp "all aboard!" and a bell ringing. Confusedly Maury saw eyes in the milk train staring curiously up at him, heard Gloria and Anthony in quick controversy as to whether he should go to the city with her, then another clamor and she was gone and the three men, pale as ghosts, were standing alone upon the platform while a grimy coal-heaver went down the road on top of a motor truck, carolling hoarsely at the summer morning. CHAPTER — F Scott Fitzgerald

One's own flowers and some of one's own vegetables make acceptable, free, self-congratulatory gifts when visiting friends, though giving zucchini - or leaving it on the doorstep, ringing the bell, and running - is a social faux pas. — Barbara Holland

Whenever you fire a gun, it's like ringing a bell for Pavlov's dog. — Bobby Adair

I had a question. 'Why does the name Pearl Harbor sound so familiar?'
The lieutenant colonel's eyes narrowed. 'Pearl Harbor is the most famous U.S. military base in the world,' he said crisply. 'It's the only place on U.S. soil that has been attacked in a wars, since the Revolutionary War.'
None of this was ringing a bell, but you already know I'm totally uneducated.
Gazzy leaned over to whisper, 'It was a movie with Ben Affleck.'
Ah. Now I remembered. — James Patterson

I used to do bell ringing in Benenden church. It was really good fun, actually. My best friend's dad was the local vicar, and so it was expected as her best friend that I would go to church every Sunday with her. — Jo Brand

He never ever learned to read or write so well, but he could play his guitar like he was ringing a bell. — Chuck Berry

The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people. — Ezra Pound

Aboard at a ship's helm
A young steersman steering with care.

Through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,
An ocean-bell - O a warning bell, rock'd by the waves.

O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,
Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place.

For as on the alert O steersman, you mind the loud admonition,
The bows turn, the freighted ship tacking speeds away under her grey sails,
The beautiful and noble ship with all her precious wealth speeds away gaily and safe.

But O ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship! Ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, voyaging, voyaging. — Walt Whitman

I think it was a sense of being completely swallowed up by nature that gave the prairie its powerful attraction.There is nothing like it in all of Europe. Even high up on a Swiss glacier one is still conscious of the toy villages below, the carefully groomed landscape of multicolored fields,the faraway ringing of a church bell. It is all very beautiful, but it does not convey the utmost escape. I believe, with the Indians, that a landscape influences and forms the people living on it and that one cannot understand them and make friends with them without also understanding, and making friends with, the earth from which they came. — Richard Erdoes

If it had been a heart attack, the newspaper
might have used the word massive,
as if a mountain range had opened
inside her, but instead
it used the word suddenly, a light coming on
in an empty room. The telephone
fell from my shoulder, a black parrot repeating
something happened, something awful
a sunday, dusky. If it had been
terminal, we could have cradled her
as she grew smaller, wiped her mouth,
said good-bye. But it was sudden,
how overnight we could be orphaned
& the world became a bell we'd crawl inside
& the ringing all we'd eat. — Nick Flynn

brain and other nerve-related problems such as headaches from concussions, vascular dementia (dementia caused by blood vessel problems in the brain), migraines, Bell's palsy (a paralysis of the facial nerve), and tinnitus (ringing of the ears). He emphasized he was influenced by research that had been done in Israel on light therapy and the brain. Dr. Shimon Rochkind, a neurosurgeon at Tel Aviv University, originally pioneered work using lasers to treat injuries in the peripheral nervous system, that is, all the nerves in the body except those in the brain and spinal cord. Injury to peripheral nerves can lead to problems sensing or moving. — Norman Doidge

In the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University sits a battery-powered bell that has been ringing since the year 1840. The bell "rings" so quietly it's almost inaudible, using only a tiny amount of charge with every motion of the clapper. Nobody knows exactly what kind of batteries it uses because nobody wants to take it apart to figure it out. Sadly, there's no light hooked up to it. — Randall Munroe

The art of change-ringing is peculiar to the English, and, like most English peculiarities, unintelligible to the rest of the world. (The change-ringer's) passion - and it is a passion - finds its satisfaction in mathematical completeness and mechanical perfection, and as his bell weaves her way rhythmically up from lead to hinder place and down again, he is filled with the solemn intoxication that comes of intricate ritual faultlessly performed. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Everything smelled of sheep. The dandelions were suddenly more sheep than flower, each petal reflecting wool and the sound of a bell ringing off the yellow. But the thing that smelled the most like sheep, was the very sun itself. When the sun went behind a cloud, the smell of the sheep decreased, like standing on some old guy's hearing aid, and when the sun came back again, the smell of the sheep was loud, like a clap of thunder inside a coffee cup.

(from "On Paradise", page 50) — Richard Brautigan

The world needs you. There is large work to be done, good work, and you can make a difference. Whatever your life work, take it seriously and enjoy it. Let's never be the kind of people who do things lukewarmly. If you're going to ring the bell, give the rope one hell of a pull. I wish you the fullest lives possible - full of love and bells ringing. — David McCullough

Sorrow, like a heavy ringing bell, once set on ringing, with its own weight goes; then little strength rings out the doleful knell. — William Shakespeare

Some girl named Eva has him convinced that you put out after one beer."
"What?" My voice was as shrill as the ringing tardy bell
"I personally don't believe it" he went on blithely, "and I have a Porsche. Not as much leg room as a Beamer, but so much hotter, I'm told. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Unconsciousness obeyed the wispy psyche, and of some tiresome wanting, I would, no longer want my body again, when the soul was somewhere beyond the horizon.My Pains are swelling in me; agony crept to me in all of its forms. — Nithin Purple

He could play the guitar just like ringing a bell. — Chuck Berry

Two blades clashed, ringing like a bell. Like all small boys, Philip thought his father was invincible; and this was the moment when he learned the truth. — Ken Follett

Gary Bell is nicknamed Ding Dong. Of course. What's interesting about it is that "Ding Dong" is what the guys holler when somebody gets hit in the cup. The cups are metal inserts that fit inside the jock strap, and when a baseball hits one it's called ringing the bell, which rhymes with hell, which is what it hurts like. It's funny, even if you're in the outfield, or in the dugout, no matter how far away, when a guy gets it in the cup you can hear it. Ding Dong. — Jim Bouton

The green has widened for an Arcadian delight, and over the sky, the sun had departed. But the moonlit beams unshackled the sulky spells of life. Moon adorned with eloquent jewelry of purple as a semblance to her inward gloom and outward passion. — Nithin Purple

Each quantum event, each of the trillions of times reality's particles interact with each other every instant, is like a note that rings and resonates throughout the great bell of creation. And the sound of the ringing propagates instantaneously, everywhere at once, interconnecting all things. This is a truth of our universe. It is a mystical truth, that reality at its deepest level is an undivided wholeness.

~ David Zindell — David Zindell

Inside the maize mill, the owners no longer had any use for a broom. The hungry people kept the floors cleaner than a wet mop. At the beginning of the month, the mill was packed full of those waiting for fallen scraps. The crowd would part long enough to allow women to pass with their pails of grain. As the machine rumbled and spit a white cloud of flour into the pails, the multitude of old people, women, and children watched intently with eyes dancing like butterflies. Once the pail was pulled away, they themselves on hands and knees and scooped the floor clean. Afterward, old women would rattle their walking sticks up inside the grinder as if ringing a bell, collecting the loose flour that drifted to the floor. — William Kamkwamba

A sharp ringing of a bell suddenly split the air, signaling that the quadrille was soon to begin. Realizing that the ladies shielding her from view were going to have to take their seats, Wilhelmina began backing as quickly as she could underneath the chair behind her, her only thought being to make an escape as quietly as possible. She'd gotten halfway underneath the chair before her bustle, dratted contraption that it was, snagged on the underside of the chair. Before she could get herself free, a loud clearing of a throat sent a sense of dread flowing through her veins. Lifting her head, she refused a sigh when her gaze was caught and held by none other than the gentleman she'd been hoping to avoid. Mr. Edgar Wanamaker. — Jen Turano

How Nathan doesn't know I fancy him is beyond me. I may as well walk around with a sandwich board, saying 'I heart Nathan', ringing a bell — Samantha Towle

He wanted to be all poetic, but in an instant he forgot Joe's poem about Japan except the part about 'you are the bell, and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,' and a new sound entered his life ... — Melina Marchetta

Your name still rings a bell when you say something good, not by causing catastrophe in a bid to sound more interesting. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Sergent Earl Hale sent us out to get transportation. We went out to look for what we could find.

We came across Hitler's car, but it had no wheels. We found a bus, but it wouldn't start. We saw a fire truck and took that. On the way back to camp we had a wonderful time ringing the bell. Hale was upset. He didn't want a fire truck.


- Henry Zimmerman — Marcus Brotherton

Excited, on hearing your words o' man, as you shattered in yourself with pain,that occupied somewhere between your spirit and success.
I can bring out a reflection for you to keep - the inspiration that wanders to communicate my presence in your visible soul. It can hold you like a tendril to you only until the wake. — Nithin Purple