Ringing Quotes & Sayings

The experts are right, he thought. Venice is sinking. The whole city is slowly dying. One day the tourists will travel here by boat to peer down into the waters, and they will see pillars and columns and marble far, far beneath them, slime and mud uncovering for brief moments a lost underworld of stone. Their heels made a ringing sound on the pavement and the rain splashed from the gutterings above. A fine ending to an evening that had started with brave hope, with innocence. ("Don't Look Now") — Daphne Du Maurier

After one last kiss, she stepped away, wrapping his jacket tightly around her. "I'm keeping the coat."
"Okay."
"I'm going to wear it to bed."
"Okay."
"With nothing on underneath it."
Winking, she slipped inside, leaving him on the porch with that mental image ringing through his head. — J.M. Darhower

The Working Song
by Breton Braley

Oh, we're sick to death of the style of song
That's only a sort of a simpering song,
A kissy song and a sissy song
Or a weepy, creepy, whimpering song.
So give us a lift of a lusty song,
A boisterous, bubbling, boiling song,
Or a smashing song and a dashing song,
Oh, give us the tang of a toiling song,
The chanty loud of the working crowd,
The thunderous thrall of a toiling song!

Ay, sing us a joyous daring song,
Not a moaning, groaning, fretting song,
But a ringing song, and a swinging song,
A rigorous, vigorous, sweating song.
We have had enough of the gypsy song,
Which is only a lazy, shirking song,
So toughen your throat to a rougher note
And give us the tune of a working song,
A tune of strife and the joy of life,
The beat and throb of a working song! — Berton Braley

I never thought people actually woke up the way I did that morning. I always figured it was hyperbole and massive overcompensation to say that you woke up grinning, woke up in a state of contentment and excitement for the smallest things. Even while I was in love formerly, it seemed more like a comfortable thing rather than a giddy, overwhelming happiness. Realize, then, that I had never been joined in a mutual state of infatuation with someone else. My infatuations tended to be unrequited, accompanied by a sense of muted sadness. I sat up at 7:00a.m. without even waiting for the alarm, and kept still there, smiling, looking at nothing and going over yesterday's conversations, the fevered symphony of emotion ringing forever in my ears.
I fell back and actually laughed to myself, reaching for my glasses to slide them on as I stretched out my back comfortably in a lazy, half-waking state.
You are in love. — Vee Hoffman

Just then, my phone started ringing. The ring must have been damaged by the water as well, so now it had a high, keening note - kind of the sound I imagine a mermaid might make if you punched her in the face. — Maureen Johnson

Entirely incidentally, a little-known fact about Shakespeare is that his father moved to Stratford-upon-Avon from a nearby village shortly before his son's birth. Had he not done so, the Bard of Avon would instead be known as the rather less ringing Bard of Snitterfield. — Bill Bryson

I am the man who comes and goes between the bar and the telephone booth. Or, rather:that man is called 'I' and you know nothing else about him, just as this station is called only 'station' and beyond it there exists nothing except the unanswered signal of a telephone ringing in a dark room of a distant city. — Italo Calvino

At night, the boy and the girl lie curled around each other in the belly of the ship. He holds her tight when she wakes from another nightmare, her teeth chattering, her ears ringing with the terrified screams of the men and women she left behind on the broken skiff, her limbs trembling with remembered power. "It's all right," he whispers in the darkness. "It's all right." She wants to believe him, but she's afraid to close her eyes. The — Leigh Bardugo

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

He asks, "how hard would it be to go a week without Google? Or, to up the ante, without Facebook, Amazon, Skype, Twitter, Apple, eBay, and Google?"33 Wu is putting his finger on a disquieting new reality - that the new communication medium a younger generation gravitated to because of its promise of openness, transparency, and deep social collaboration masks another persona more concerned with ringing up profit by advancing a networked Commons. — Jeremy Rifkin

Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed ... .To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! — Samuel Beckett

Are we running away from home?" I asked, giving voice to the question that had been on my mind for two days, ever since the lady at the Wok On restaurant asked where we were from and my mother lied.
My mother had laughed. I couldn't see her face, but her laugh I could always conjure - rich, ringing, like bells calling you to a wedding. "No, silly goose. You can't run away from home. It's not home if you want to run away from it." She paused to brush a strand of hair from my face. "You can only run away from a house. Home is something you run toward. — Michele Jaffe

The shadows of the tombstones in the graveyard stretched out long and violet, and the sound of the flies buzzed in my ears, louder than the ringing of the shots that still came - were coming closer - to the frail barrier of the dead. — Diana Gabaldon

I know who you are. He stared into the darkness and wished those words away. Instead, they hung about him, unsaid and yet still ringing in his ears. She didn't think he was his father. He wanted her to know who he was. And he wanted to know her back. — Courtney Milan

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

I went to the beauty salon today and got spruced up," Grandma said. "Ever since Mildred Frick called me a slut my phone hasn't stopped ringing. I got two dates for the weekend."
"It might not be such a good thing to have men calling you because they think you're a slut," I said. "They're only going to be after one thing."
"I hope that's true. I don't want to find out I went blond and bought all them thongs for nothing. — Janet Evanovich

The bells were ringing again, high in the scudding sunlight in bright disorderly tatters of sound. — William Faulkner

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

Got a problem." "I can't fix your personality, sorry." Lassiter laughed, the sound ringing through the house like church bells. "No. I like myself just as I am, thank you." "Can't help your delusional nature, either. — J.R. Ward

And over the pond are sailing Two swans all white as snow; Sweet voices mysteriously wailing Pierce through me as onward they go. They sail along, and a ringing Sweet melody rises on high; And when the swans begin singing, They presently must die. — Heinrich Heine

Perry was leaning into my mother as he listened to what she said. They talked so close. He only leaned closer, his hands on the table, his leg touching hers.
"It's so risky," my mother said. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because I'm human being. Because we're all human beings."
My mother closed her eyes and winced. Maybe her hearing aid was ringing and bothering her, but as I watched her turn down the volume, I wanted to tell her right then that she couldn't quiet all those outside voices forever. — Margaret McMullan

the future wasn't something you planned for; it was something that just happened, like your car spinning out on some black ice and hitting a snowbank, or the telephone ringing with bad news in the middle of the night. — Wendy Lawless

I ask of you your lives," Elend said, voice echoing, "and your courage. I ask of you your faith, and your honor - your strength, and your compassion. For today, I lead you to die. I will not ask you to welcome this event. I will not insult you by calling it well, or just, or even glorious. But I will say this.
"Each moment you fight is a gift to those in this cavern. Each second we fight is a second longer that thousands of people can draw breath. Each stroke of the sword, each koloss felled, each breath earned is a victory! It is a person protected for a moment longer, a life extended, an enemy frustrated!"
There was a brief pause.
"In the end, they will kill us," Elend said, voice loud, ringing in the cavern. "But first, they shall fear us! — Brandon Sanderson

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

You wouldn't believe that I still have the bikers with the caps to the side at my door, ringing the doorbell. — Tina Turner

He needed me to do what sons do for their fathers: bear witness that they're substantial, that they're not hollow, not ringing absences. That they count for something when little else seems to. — Richard Ford

I was the only kid at Camp Don Bosco who would admit he was an alter boy back home, so I served two masses a day all summer. But I loved the cassock and surplice, ringing the bells, lighting the candles - it was like being a glamrock roadie for God. — Rob Sheffield

Can I ask who you are, sir?"
"Yeah, I expect so," said Strike, walking past him and ringing the doorbell. Anstis's dinner invitation notwithstanding, he was not feeling sympathetic to the police just now. "Should be just about within your capabilities. — Robert Galbraith

I get fed up with all this nonsense of ringing people up and lighting cigarettes and answering the doorbell that passes for action in so many modern plays. — Graham Greene

Our bells are worn threadbare with ringing for victories — Horace Walpole

And so, as quietly as he had lived, he slipped out of town, leaving only a note behind:
Well, that's that. I'm off, and if you don't believe I'm leaving, just count the days I'm gone. When you hear the phone not ringing, it'll be me that's not calling. Goodbye, old girl, and good luck.
Yours truly,
Earl Adcock
P.S. I'm not deaf. — Fannie Flagg

He let himself into the house and sat down with his back against the door, where the tiles were cool on his legs and he tried to hear, as he had earlier imagined, every single thing that his wife was not doing in their home on this Sunday night. He could hardly keep track of it all, she was so busy being absent. She was not pouring water into a glass or a pitcher. She was not kicking his shoes out of the hall. She was not switching the laundry into the dryer. She was not opening the screen door and going outside barefoot and calling for him to come look at the sunset. She was not putting lotion on her elbows or flattening the newspaper or picking up the ringing telephone, which would go on calling out the absence of Petra in nine-ring sequences dozens of times every day. — Ramona Ausubel

As soon as I suspect a fine effect is being achieved by accident I lose interest. I am not interested ... in unskilled labor ... The scientific actor is an even worker. Any one may achieve on some rare occasion an outburst of genuine feeling, a gesture of imperishable beauty, a ringing accent of truth; but your scientific actor knows how he did it. He can repeat it again and again and again. He can be depended on. — Minnie Maddern Fiske

His cell phone rang, one of those extremely annoying songs that cell phone owners are so in love with because for some reason they can't tolerate a plain old-fashioned ring. — Catherine Gilbert Murdock

N-no-o, all that excitement, it wouldn't reach us,' Timosha spoke gloomily. 'We're like the sunken city of Kitezh, living at the bottom of the lake. We do not hear a thing, and the water over us is muddy and sleepy. And on the surface, way above - why, everything's in flames, and the alarms are ringing.' ("A Provincial Tale") — Yevgeny Zamyatin

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

the front seat with his alarm again ringing furiously. "Are you all right?" shouted Milo. "Umphh," grunted Tock. "Sorry to get carried away, but I think you get the point." As they drove along, Tock continued to explain the importance of time, quoting the old philosophers and poets and illustrating each point with gestures that brought him perilously close to tumbling headlong from the speeding automobile. — Norton Juster

The whole trouble with a folk song is that once you have played it through there is nothing much you can do except play it over again and play it rather louder. Most Russian music, indeed, consists in ringing changes on this device, skilfully disguised though the fact may be. — Constant Lambert

I've found that if you have two films that don't perform well it doesn't matter that you've had a bunch of successful ones. The phone stops ringing, and after Deadly Blessing and Swamp Thing that's what happened. — Wes Craven

Why can I never go back to bed? Who's is the voice ringing in my head? Where is the sense in these desperate dreams? Why should I wake when I'm half past dead? — Emilie Autumn

There are no trifles in the moral universe of God. Speak me a word to-day; ? it shall go ringing on through the ages. — William Morley Punshon

All I know is that my life is filled with little pockets of silence. When I put a record on the turntable, for example, there's a little interval-between the time the needle touches down on the record and the time the music actually starts-during which my heart refuses to beat. All I know is that between the rings of the telephone, between the touch of a button and the sound of the radio coming on, between the dimming of the lights at the cinema and the start of the film, between the lightning and the thunder, between the shout and the echo, between the lifting of a baton and the opening bars of a symphony, between the dropping of a stone and the plunk that comes back from the bottom of a well, between the ringing of the doorbell and the barking of the dogs I sometimes catch myself, involuntarily, listening for the sound of my mother's voice, still waiting for the tape to begin. — Robert Hellenga

I loved taking off. In my own house, I seemed to be often looking for a place to hide - sometimes from the children but more often from the jobs to be done and the phone ringing and the sociability of the neighborhood. I wanted to hide so that I could get busy at my real work, which was a sort of wooing of distant parts of myself. — Alice Munro

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

Even as he took firm and reassuring command of the federal government, Johnson began to recast the civil rights struggle from a legal question to a ringing moral issue.* With a credibility that no northerner could claim, Johnson took his case for equal rights directly to the South. — Nick Kotz

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

To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter. — P.T. Barnum

Hail to St. Aegolius Our Alma Mater. Hail, our song we raise in praise of thee Long in the memory of every loyal owl Thy splendid banner emblazoned be. Now to thy golden talons Homage we're bringing. Guiding symbol of our hopes and fears Hark to the cries of eternal praises ringing Long may we triumph in the coming years. - The Owls of St. Aegolius — Kathryn Lasky

My advice to the reader approaching a poem is to make the mind still and blank. Let the poem speak. This charged quiet mimics the blank space ringing the printed poem, the nothing out of which something takes shape. — Camille Paglia

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

Home.
Home was BAMA, the Sprawl, the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis.
Program a map to display frequency of data exchange, every thousand megabytes a single pixel on a very large screen. Manhattan and Atlanta burn solid white. Then they start to pulse, the rate of traffic threatening to overload your simulation. Your map is about to go nova. Cool it down. Up your scale. Each pixel a million megabytes. At a hundred million megabytes per second, you begin to make out certain blocks in midtown Manhattan, outlines of hundred-year-old industrial parks ringing the old core of Atlanta ... — William Gibson

It wasn't not being famous any more, or even not being a recording artist. It was having nobody who needed me, no phones ringing, nothing to do. Because I'm still too young to do nothing. I was only 24 when all that happened. Now, at 40, I feel I've got more to give than I ever have. — Gary Barlow

You zapped your own brain?"
"And it didn't do me any harm apart from the dizziness and the vomiting spells and the weirdly persistent ringing in my ears. Also the blackouts and the moodswings and the creeping paranoia. Apart from that, zero side effects, if you don't count numb fingertips. Which I don't."
"Because he also lost the ability to count," said Donegan.
"That was temporary," snapped Gracious. — Derek Landy

Potter,' she said in ringing tones, 'I will assist you to become an Auror if it is the last thing I do! If I have to coach you nightly, I will make sure you achieve the required results!'
'The Minister for Magic will never employ Harry Potter!' said Umbridge, her voice rising furiously.
'There may well be a new Minister for Magic by the time Potter is ready to join!' shouted Professor McGonagall.
'Aha!' shrieked Professor Umbridge, pointing a stubby finger at McGonagall. 'Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Of course! That's what you want, isn't it, Minerva McGonagall? You want Cornelius Fudge replace by Albus Dumbledore! You think you'll be where I am, don't you: Senior Undersecretary to the Minister and Headmistress to boot!'
'You are raving,' said Professor McGonagall, superbly disdainful. — J.K. Rowling

Bootleggers quake in fear of me ringing them on a Sunday afternoon. I call after dinner, usually. — Peter Hook

I think my first impression (of Bix Beiderbecke) was the lasting one. I remember very clearly thinking, 'Where, what planet, did this guy come from? Is he from outer space?' I'd never heard anything like the way he played-not in Chicago, no place. The tone-he had this wonderful, ringing cornet tone. He could have played in a symphony orchestra with that tone. But also the intervals he played, the figures-whatever the hell he did. There was a refinement about his playing. You know, in those days I played a little trumpet, and I could play all the solos from his records, by heart. — Benny Goodman

I was a vampire, and ... someone was trying to call me?
When my parents had said that not even death could pry me from my mobile phone, I'd thought they were joking. I wriggled around in the narrow coffin until I could reach the ringing handset. — Helen Keeble

Bells ringing with no sound
Laughter with no voice
Happiness lost without being found
Making love with no noise — T. Grassan

When the sun was fully up, the gunslinger moved on west. He would find another horse eventually, or a mule, but for now he was content to walk. All that day he was haunted by a ringing, singing sound in his ears, a sound like bells. Several times he stopped and looked around, sure he would see a dark following shape flowing over the ground, chasing after as the shadows of our best and worst memories chase after, but no shape was ever there. He was alone in the low hill country west of Eluria. Quite alone. — Stephen King

If you've got love in your heart, whatever you do from that moment out is likely to be right. If you've got that one true note ringing inside you, then whatever you do is going to be OK. — Ken Kesey

What I have now are good problems of trying to decide and what I really want to do is good work next. My phone's ringing a lot more and I've got nine lines so when it doesn't ring, it's very frustrating. — Bob Saget

She seems to give a respectful credence to the statement that "God is love"only to hurry on to explore with real interest the possibility that "God is wrath." She can read from the book of Revelation with a ringing conviction in her voice that can make the creation seem only a stage setting for the triumphant thunderation of end. — Wendell Berry

Migraine attacks are often preceded by visual disturbances, weakness, dizziness, ringing in the ears, and other symptoms. Many patients report that they can avert a migraine attack by smoking a joint at the first warning of onset. Others take a small dosage daily to ward off attacks. Patients say inhaled marijuana is preferable to oral preparations such as Marinol in such situations, because quick treatment is necessary. (There is no evidence that CBD or other non-THC cannabinoids are helpful against migraines.) — Dale Gieringer

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

This isn't the first time I've used this, and the test subject showed no signs of impaired cognitive ability."
"Who was the test subject?" asked Aurora.
"I test everything out on myself before taking it into the field."
She stared at him. "You zapped your own brain?"
"And it didn't do me any harm apart from the dizziness and the vomiting spells and the weirdly persistent ringing in my ears. Also the blackouts and the mood swings and the creeping paranoia. Apart from that, zero side effects, if you don't count the numb fingertips. Which I don't. — Derek Landy

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

I'm an early bird, partly because I like to have some quiet time and partly because by 9am emails begin arriving, the phone starts ringing and I have dragons to kill of one sort or another. — Andrew Motion

When the phone started ringing too many times, I had to take it back to what I can handle. I take my chances on a job or a person as opposed to a situation. I don't like to have a situation placed over my head. — Bill Murray

There, alone in the sterile room, sitting on a pink vinyl chair that boasts many cracks in its once nice upholster, you wait. You think to yourself , who would have thought I would be ringing in the New Year by urinating into a cup to see if I have chlamydia? — Amanda Steele

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

Inside your head you hear
a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you're washing up
in a stranger's bathroom,
standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes away
from the dirtiest thing you know.
All the rooms of the castle except this one, says someone, and suddenly
darkness,
suddenly only darkness.
In the living room, in the broken yard,
in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airport
bathroom's gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy of
unnatural light,
my hands looking weird, my face weird, my feet too far away. — Richard Siken

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

The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up - flaked up, with rose-water snow. — Herman Melville

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

Read your work aloud, if you can, if you aren't too embarrassed by the sound of your voice ringing out when you are alone in a room. Chances are that the sentence you can hardly pronounce without stumbling is a sentence that needs to be reworked to make it smoother and more fluent. A poet once told me that he was reading a draft of a new poem aloud to himself when a thief broke into his Manhattan loft. Instantly surmising that he had entered the dwelling of a madman, the thief turned and ran without taking anything, and without harming the poet. So it maybe that reading your work aloud will not only improve its quality but save your life in the process. — Francine Prose

Were you going to tell me you usually kiss your one-night trollops in private?
He laughed. The free-ringing sound held a spark of pure pleasure, unforced and rich with surprise. — Janny Wurts

How much did he charge you?" he asked, intending to add that amount to her allowance.
"Originally he wanted $1,000 whether he finds news of Robert or not. But I offered to pay him twice his fee if he's successful."
"And if he isn't?"
"Oh, in that case I didn't think it was fair that he receive anything," she said. "I persuaded him I was right."
Ian's shout of laughter was still ringing in the hall when they entered the drawing room to greet the Townsendes. — Judith McNaught

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

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

Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened,
like winter, which even now is passing.
For beneath the winter is a winter so endless
that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.

Be forever dead in Eurydice, and climb back singing.
Climb praising as you return to connection.
Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient,
be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings.

Be. And, at the same time, know what it is not to be.
The emptiness inside you allows you to vibrate
in full resonance with your world. Use it for once.

To all that has run its course, and to the vast unsayable
numbers of beings abounding in Nature,
add yourself gladly, and cancel the cost. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Connie, have you been trying to call me?" No Archie. "Well, my phone has not been ringing all day, and I thought it might have been you. — Lawrence Sanders

Sometimes you can hear the wire, hear it reaching out across the miles; whining with its own weight, crying from the cold, panting at the distance, humming with the phantom sounds of someone else's conversation. You cannot always hear it - only sometimes; when the night is deep and the room is dark and the sound of the phone's ringing has come slicing through uneasy sleep. — David Bradley

This message was repeated down the line until it was ringing in every guard's ears. Shots fired and nobody knew from where or by whom. And since none of the guards had guns, that meant one of the prisoners must. Maybe more than one. Now things, already serious, morphed — David Baldacci

There is no greater picture than that of 10,000 smiling children. No brighter music than their clear-ringing laughter. That I, with my small amusements, have created such precious art is my life's proudest achievement. — P.T. Barnum

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

People with children and people with their own business always pick up a ringing phone. — Jeffery Deaver

Charles. Oh, your voices, your voices. Why don't the voices come to me? I am king, not you!

Joan. They do come to you, but you do not hear them. You have not sat in the field in the evening listening for them. When the angelus rings, you cross yourself and have done with it. But if you prayed from your heart and listened to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they stopped ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do. — George Bernard Shaw

Every spring in the wet meadows and ditches I hear a little shrilling chorus which sounds for all the world like an endlessly reiterated "We're here, we're here, we're here." And so they are, as frogs, of course. Confident little fellows. I suspect that to some greater ear than ours, man's optimistic pronouncements about his role and destiny may make a similar little ringing sound that travels a small way out into the night. It is only its nearness that is offensive. From the heights of a mountain, or a marsh at evening, it blends, not too badly, with all the other sleepy voices that, in croaks or chirrups, are saying the same thing. — Loren Eiseley

Let the warning of the tyrants of the past be recognized for it shall be the same one ringing out when the tyrants of the present are unleashed. — Sai Marie Johnson

There's always fear. There's always fear. Always fear. Anyone who says they are not afraid is lying to you. Because this can all change tomorrow. I could say something dumb today and be in the news for it tomorrow. And maybe the phone stops ringing. You're always afraid of losing what you have. Regardless of success or anything, you're always afraid. — Donald Faison

He turned to face the assembled clansmen, raised his arms and greeted them with a ringing shout. "Tulach Ard!" "Tulach Ard!" the clansmen gave back in a roar. The woman next to me shivered. There was a short speech next, given in Gaelic. This was greeted with periodic roars of approval, and then the oath-taking proper commenced. — Diana Gabaldon

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

During these weeks there was a quality about Miss Amelia that many people noticed. She laughed often, with a deep ringing laugh, and her whistling had a sassy, tunefull trickery. She was forever trying out her strength, lifting up heavy objects or poking her tough biceps with her finger. — Carson McCullers

Rooks were cawing somewhere, and bells were ringing, and from the oxpens the steady beat of a gas engine announced the ascent of the evening Royal Mail zeppelin for London. — Philip Pullman

I knew Quintessentially was a success when my father, who does a lot of business in Beirut, introduced himself to somebody and they said, 'Oh, do you know Ben Elliot? I'd really like to meet him.' I remember him ringing me up, really annoyed. — Ben Elliot

Does it take more guts to stand here the rest of my life ringing up a zero? — Arthur Miller

You reach a point in your career when the weeks turn into a month or more of the phone not ringing. — Sam J. Jones

I came home at dusk with my ears ringing from the quiet. — Tim Winton