Quotes & Sayings About High Noon

THE ACCIDENT maybe you read it in the paper i was so young just a child i did something stupid nightstand by the bed found it in the drawer that was so often locked but not this time sunlight through curtains high noon reflected on polished steel heavy in my hand pretending to be a cop like my father but more like dirty harry like i saw on tv my little brother burst into the room four years old just four years old without thinking i aimed killer instinct squeeze tug bang slow motion exploding blood not a sound from him as if what happened was completely natural i replay it again and again efficient little hum that burning memory pulled the trigger and watched him fold like a house of cards and the questions hammer through my brain and i ask you again "how much more do i have to pay before becoming whole again? — Thee Karkajou Automaton

You told everyone when I locked myself out last week. I fielded calls on that one all day long." "Yes, well, that's because you were wearing only your towel, which you dropped when you climbed in the window, mooning Mr. Kletzy across the street. Word is he hadn't seen a naked woman in fifty years. He's now requesting that next time you lose your towel at high noon because the light is better. — Jill Shalvis

In firing his gun, John Brown has merely told what time of day it is. It is high noon. — William Lloyd Garrison

Thither he bent his way, determined there
to rest at noon; and entered soon the shade
high roofed, and walks beneath, and alleys brown,
That opened in the midst a woody scene;
Nature's own work it seemed, Nature-taught Art — John Milton

Science now held a position of unique honour among the First Men. This was not so much because it was in this field that the race long ago during its high noon had thought most rigorously, nor because it was through science that men had gained some insight into the nature of the physical world, but rather because the application of scientific principles had revolutionized their material circumstances. — Olaf Stapledon

From the dim morning hours of history when the father was king and priest down to this modern time of history's high noon when nations stand forth full grown and self-governed, the law of coherence and continuity in political development has suffered no serious breach. — Woodrow Wilson

The confidence and security of a people can be measured by their attitude toward laxatives. At the high noon of the British sun, soldiers in far-flung outposts of the Empire doctored themselves with "a spoonful o' gunpowder in a cuppa 'ot tea." Purveyors and users of harsh laxatives were not afraid of being thought mean and unfriendly just because their laxatives were. But in America, the need to be nice is so consuming that nobody would dare take a laxative that makes you run up the stairs two at a time, pushing others aside and yelling, "Get out of the way! — Florence King

Meridian


First daylight on the bittersweet-hung
sleeping porch at high summer; dew
all over the lawn, sowing diamond-
point-highlighted shadows;
the hired man's shadow revolving
along the walk, a flash of milkpails
passing; no threat in sight, no hint
anywhere in the universe, of that

apathy at the meridian, the noon
of absolute boredom; flies
crooning black lullabies in the kitchen,
milk-soured crocks, cream separator
still unwashed; what is there to life
but chores and more chores, dishwater,
fatigue, unwanted children; nothing
to stir the longueur of afternoon

except possibly thunderheads;
climbing, livid, turreted alabaster
lit up from within by splendor and terror
-- forded lightening's
split-second disaster. — Amy Clampitt

The arches of the woods, even at high noon, cast their sombre shadows on the spot, which the brilliant rays of the sun that struggled through the leaves contributed to mellow, and if such an expression can be used, to illuminate. It was probably from a similar scene that the mind of man first got its idea of the effects of gothic tracery and churchly hues, this temple of nature producing some such effect, so far as light and shadow were concerned, as the well-known offspring of human invention. — James Fenimore Cooper

There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today's pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent. — Charles Krauthammer

don't sit on your patio in the high noon of your tranquility and make light of the huts that people build in the midnight of their desperation. — Fred B. Craddock

But a voice said within her, Now it is too late.
They found her at high noon, just as the sun came out after the storm, floating among the reeds of the Lake. Her long hair was spread out on the surface like water reeds, and Morgaine, stunned with grief, could not find it in her heart to regret that Kevin had not gone alone into the shadowed land beyond death. — Marion Zimmer Bradley

The mayor informed General Petronio San Roman of the episode, down to the last literal phrase, in an alarming telegram. General San Roman must have followed his son's wishes to the letter, because he didn't come for him, but sent his wife with their daughters and two other older women who seemed to be her sisters. They came on a cargo boat, locked in mourning up to their necks because of Bayardo San Roman's misfortunes, and with their hair hanging loose in grief. Before stepping onto land, they took off their shoes and went barefoot through the streets up to the hilltop in the burning dust of noon, pulling out strands of hair by the roots and wailing loudly with such high-pitched shrieks that they seemed to be shouts of joy. I watched them pass from Magdalena Oliver's balcony, and I remember thinking that distress like theirs could only be put on in order to hide other, greater shames. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

To every hour, its mystery. At dawn, the riddles of life and light. At noon, the conundrums of solidity. At three, in the hum and heat of the day, a phantom moon, already high. At dusk, memory. And at midnight? Oh, then the enigma of time itself; of a day that will never come again passing into history while we sleep. — Clive Barker

The second call

The first call is frequently to follow Jesus or to prepare ourselves to do wonderful and noble things for the Kingdom. We are appreciated and admired by family, by friends or by the community. The second call comes later, when we accept that we cannot do big or heroic things for Jesus; it is a time of renunciation, humiliation and humility. We feel useless; we are no longer appreciated. If the first passage is made at high noon, under a shining sun, the second call is often made at night. We feel alone and are afraid because we are in a world of confusion. We begin to doubt the commitment we made in the light of day. We seem deeply broken in some way. But this suffering is not useless. Through the renunciation we can reach a new wisdom of love. It is only through the pain of the cross that we discover what the resurrection means. — Jean Vanier

Mummy dying with it; Christ dying with it, nailed hand and foot; hanging over the bed in the night-nursery; hanging year after year in the dark little study at Farm Street with the shining oilcloth; hanging in the dark church where only the old charwoman raises the dust and one candle burns; hanging at noon, high among the crowds and the soldiers; no comfort except a sponge of vinegar and the kind words of a thief; hanging for ever; never the cool sepulchre and the grave clothes spread on the stone slab, never the oil and spices in the dark cave; always the midday sun and the dice clicking for the seamless coat. — Evelyn Waugh

We commit our crimes at night and reveal ourselves in the high noon of studio lights. — Don DeLillo

Sounds awful."
"No, it's wonderful. And it's just for one year. Let's take a break. Blair's not here. she'll be back next year and we can jump back into the Christmas chaos, if that's what you want. Come on, Nora, please. We skip Christmas, save the money, and go splash in the Caribbean for ten days."
"How much will it cost?"
"Three thousand bucks."
"So we save money?"
"Absolutely."
"When do we leave?"
"High noon, Christmas Day."
They stared at each other for a long time. — John Grisham

I blaze with a deep sullen magic, smell lust like a heron on fire; all words I form into castles then storm them with soldiers of air. What I seek is not there for asking. My armies are fit and well trained. This poet will trust her battalions to fashion her words into blades. At dawn I shall ask them for beauty, for proof that their training went well. At night I shall beg their forgiveness as I cut their throats by the hill. My navies advance through the language, destroyers ablaze in high seas. I soften the island for landings. With words, I enlist a dark army. My poems are my war with the world. I blaze with a deep southern magic. The bombardiers taxi at noon. There is screaming and grief in the mansions and the moon is a heron on fire. — Pat Conroy

High Noon is a pretty corny movie. — Robert Duvall

Those who turn the day into night, the young, the drug addict, the profligate, the drunken and that most miserable, the lover who watches all night long in fear and anguish. These can never again live the life of the day. When one meets them at high noon they give off, as if it were a protective emanation, something dark and muted. The light does not become them any longer. They begin to have an unrecorded look. It is as if they were being tried by the continual blows of an unseen adversary. — Djuna Barnes

I don't like the tone of your voice. Speak respectfully when you speak to me."
"La-dee-da, and ho-ho-ho! The day I speak respectfully to you, Christopher, will be the day you earn my respect - and that will be the day you stand twelve feet high, and the moon is at noon, and a blizzard blows in a unicorn ridden by a gallant knight wearing pure white shining armor, with a green dragon's head
perched on the point of his lance! — V.C. Andrews

Just once I'd like to save the world at high noon like a cowboy. — Carey Corp

Energy is felt once the cards are dealt With the impact of roundhouse kicks from black belts that attack the microphone like cyclones or typhoons I represent from midnight to high noon. — GZA

Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?
Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.
And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am?
The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life
A deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you,
Death and the strong force of fate are waiting.
There will come a dawn or sunset or high noon
When a man will take my life in battle too
flinging a spear perhaps
Or whipping a deadly arrow off his bow. — Homer

I really did not expect any Grace to answer, for the laugh was as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard; and, but that it was high noon, and that no circumstances of ghostliness accompanied the curious cachination; but that neither scene nor season favoured fear, I should have been superstitiously afraid. However, the event showed me I was a fool for entertaining a sense even of surprise. — Charlotte Bronte

I take a sun bath and listen to the hours, formulating, and disintegrating under the pines, and smell the resiny hardihood of the high noon hours. The world is lost in a blue haze of distances, and the immediate sleeps in a thin and finite sun. — Zelda Fitzgerald

It is high time Americans grew accustomed to our traditions. — James Rollins

Filled with a new sense of purpose, I downed half my coffee at one draught. It was good, strong stuff, the kind that Louis L'Amour used to say could float a horseshoe. Nobody ever drank weak coffee in his books. It was probably why they were so anxious to shoot people at high noon. — Kevin Hearne

In 30 minutes, at high noon, more than 200 civilians are killed. Zionism carries out a massacre in the city of Lydda. — Ari Shavit

David Halberstam quoted Lyndon Johnson saying of a staffer: I want him to kiss my ass in Macy's window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses. — David Halberstam

Being this close to him was like sitting under a hotness heat lamp. In the desert. At high noon. — Avery Flynn

Secrets hidden at the heart of midnight are simply waiting to be dragged to the light, as, on some unlucky high noon, they always are. But secrets shrouded in the glare of candor are bound to defeat even the most determined and agile inspector for the light is always changing and proves that the eye cannot be trusted. — James Baldwin

For in Mexico, ladies and gentlemen, it's always high noon and what glows is fuchsia and what's dead is dead and no feather-dusters. — Henry Miller

The Americans fished on, not hoping for much anymore, perhaps for a miracle, searching for small things to be happy about, because they were Americans and this was what their upbringings had taught them to do. They found a brief happiness, for example, in the potato chips that came to their rooms on expensive china and in the genuinely hopeful way the hotel girl asked if they'd had any luck. They took pleasure in their morning calls to the Lufthansa man, his wriggly explanations for the canceled flights to Norway. They smiled at the way a church had been built so the setting sun hit it high and perfect and orange, and the way they could follow the river to a park where miniskirted women lay in the grass with headphones clamped over their ears, and even at the way the little student-girls came filing down at noon behind their English-teaching beauty to call them fools. — Anthony Doerr

Reservations and cloth napkins are really minor pinnacles in the high sierra of the New York lunch. The zenith, the Mount Whitney of lunches, the noon meal at which all local lines of force converge [is] the Bar Room of the Four Seasons. — Raymond Sokolov

Then, when people saw you strolling around at high noon holding your rosary beads, they'd think, 'Well, that can't be a vampire. — Jeaniene Frost

New York is where it is going to begin, I think. You can see it coming. The insect experts have learned how it works with locusts. Until locust population reaches a certain density, they all act like any grasshoppers. When the critical point is reached, they turn savage and swarm, and try to eat the world. We're nearing a critical point. One day soon two strangers will bump into each other at high noon in the middle of New York. But this time they won't snarl and go on. They will stop and stare and then leap at each others — John D. MacDonald

Fluorescent lights on the ceiling lit up the white Formica top of her desk like an operating table, white-sand beach at high noon, French fries under the heat lamp at McDonald's. — Dennis Vickers

the sound of a barrel organ rising from the deepest golden vein of the day; two or three bars of a chorus, played on a distant piano over and over again, melting in the sun on the white pavement, lost in the fire of high noon. — Bruno Schulz

And aye, beside her stalks her amarous knight!
Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn,
And thro' those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn,
His hindward charms glean an unearthly white,
Ah! thus thro' broken clouds at night's high Noon
Peeps in fair fragments forth the full-orb'd harvest-moon! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge