Timed Quotes & Sayings

Well timed silence has more eloquence than speech. — Martin Farquhar Tupper

Luck is not as random as you think.
Before that lottery ticket won the jackpot, someone had to buy it. — Vera Nazarian

The great longing of an unquiet heart is to possess constantly and consciously the loved one, or, failing that, to be able to plunge the loved one, when a time of absence intervenes, into a dreamless sleep timed to last unbroken until the day they meet again. — Albert Camus

Karma can be an ill-timed mistress who always calls when your Mother-in-law is the first to answer the phone ... . and it would be a completely sad story had it not been so surreally hilarious. — Josh Stern

The course of a life can be changed with some well timed, lovingly asked, honestly answered questions. — Lesley Sears

It's now come out just before his record-breaking 100-meter dash, gold medalist Usain Bolt ate at McDonald's. Apparently he timed his meal so when the race started he would have exactly 9.63 seconds to get to a toilet. — Conan O'Brien

Not even a cat was out. The rain surged down with a steady drone. It meant to harm New York and everyone there. The gutters could not contain it. Long ago they had despaired of the job and surrendered. But the rain paid no attention to them ... New York people never lived in houses or even in burrows. They inhabited cells in stone cliffs. They timed the cooking of their eggs by the nearest traffic light. If the light went wrong, so did the eggs ... — Barbara Newhall Follett

These are things that only dogs and women understand because we tap into the pain directly, we connect to pain directly from its source, and so it is at once brilliant and brutal and clear, like white-hot metal spraying out of a fire hose, we can appreciate the aesthetic while taking the worst of it straight in the face. Men, on the other hand, are all filters and deflectors and timed release. — Garth Stein

When I thought of the ways I preferred to die, I wanted to be a hundred years old and surrounded by generations of adoring descendants. Though a hair dryer and an ill-timed fall into a tub was far more likely. I never considered deer or drunk drivers. — Molly Harper

The revolution is built on three simple facts. (1) Every human movement, thought, or feeling is a precisely timed electric signal traveling through a chain of neurons - a circuit of nerve fibers. (2) Myelin is the insulation that wraps these nerve fibers and increases signal strength, speed, and accuracy. (3) The more we fire a particular circuit, the more myelin optimizes that circuit, and the stronger, faster, and more fluent our movements and thoughts become. — Daniel Coyle

Walking out of an A level paper isn't funny."
"It's not that I'm laughing at."
"So what is it?"
"No one ever tells you when you're doing all that course work and revision and timed essays and study skills that it's an option."
"But it isn't an option."
"It is, because I just took it. — Rosamund Lupton

When you watch an audience watching my movies, you realize that nobody laughs at the same time. Some people enjoy a beat, and then another group of people are laughing at a sight gag, and then someone laughs where nobody laughs before. They're not timed like a comedy. You're not supposed to laugh at every joke. You decide. — Quentin Dupieux

If he failed the first time he took his driver's licence test, it was mainly because he started an argument with the examiner in an ill-timed effort to prove that nothing could be more humiliating to a rational creature than being required to encourage the development of a base conditional reflex by stopping at a red light when there was not an earthly soul around, heeled or wheeled. He was more circumspect the next time, and passed ... — Vladimir Nabokov

He who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius or a hero. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

Then come at once and pause for breath
In chasing wealth. Remembering death
And death's dark fires, mix, while you may,
Method and madness, work and play.
Folly is sweet, well-timed. — Horace

The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy its victim. — Sun Tzu

I think the West needs to get away from the habit of regarding the regime's nuclear tests and ballistic launches as isolated provocations timed to generate maximum attention. — Brian Reynolds Myers

Biology designed the dance. Terror timed it. Dictated the rhythm with which their bodies answered each other. As though they already knew that for each tremor of pleasure they would pay with an equal measure of pain. As though they knew that how far they went would be measured against how far they would be taken. — Arundhati Roy

We do believe in setting goals. We live by goals. In athletics we always have a goal. When we go to school, we have the goal of graduation and degrees. Our total existence is goal-oriented. We must have goals to make progress, encouraged by keeping records ... as the swimmer or the jumper or the runner does ... Progress is easier when it is timed, checked, and measured ... Goals are good. Laboring with a distant aim sets the mind in a higher key and puts us at our best. Goals should always be made to a point that will make us reach and strain. — Spencer W. Kimball

Just as Manda Lewis's impressions of the world had been informed by her reading
leading her to expect balls, duels, and conveniently timed thunderstorms out of life
so, too, had mine; but what I expected was intellectual commerce between equals. — Marie Brennan

I have waited a very long time to be able to have inappropriately timed discussions about the status of our relationship with you. I don't intend to let my own stupidity take this opportunity away from me. — Seanan McGuire

When lifting, I'm always with a trainer because the thing that makes a difference is that last 20% in your training, and he very scientifically looks after my food as well, because when I'm going for a 'shirt off' shot, everything changes the month before, and I'm timed down to the day. — Hugh Jackman

I timed my previous wife's pregnancy to the moment to have my son born on Bob Dylan's 50th birthday. There is no bigger Bob Dylan fan than me. You don't just time the day and impregnate your wife to get your kid to be born on Bob Dylan's 50th birthday. — Charlie Trotter

Nothing is more ill-timed than an ill-timed laugh. — Martial

The modern world was not alive to the tremendous Reality that encompassed it. We were surrounded by an immeasurable abyss of darkness and splendor. We built our empires on a pellet of dust revolving around a ball of fire in unfathomable space. Life, that Sphynx, with the human face and the body of a brute, asked us new riddles every hour. Matter itself was dissolving under the scrutiny of Science; and yet, in our daily lives, we were becoming a race of somnambulists, whose very breathing, in train and bus and car, was timed to the movement of the wheels; and the more perfectly, and even alertly, we clicked through our automatic affairs on the surface of things, the more complete was our insensibility to the utterly inscrutable mystery that anything should be in existence at all. — Alfred Noyes

Liberality consists less in giving a great deal than in gifts well-timed. — Jean De La Bruyere

I don't need to touch a woman to possess her; I can reel in souls with a simple look, a light touch, a well-timed smile. It's not magic. This, this is simple biology. — C.M. Stunich

I got where I am by a combination of guile, street smarts, and perfectly timed assassinations," VanderVoort says. "If you can't out think 'em, out maneuver 'em, or intimidate 'em then be sure to put a bullet between their eyebrows. — Jake Bible

He treats his body like it's made of fireworks, each one timed to the beat. Is he dancing alone or dancing with everyone in the room? Here's the secret: It doesn't matter. — David Levithan

Stache's attack was perfectly timed, thanks to his veteran-pirate grasp tactics - and a big piece if luck. — Dave Barry

I once dressed up, very badly timed as Steve Irwin's daughter. And I didn't realize he had passed because I hadn't been following the news. I love Bindi Irwin, just the timing was in poor taste. — Alysia Reiner

We, as women, have this slight flaw. Yes, admitting it, we are flawed with a faultless memory in regards to the good and bad in men...Stored within our memory banks is every loving gesture and sugar coated word, thoughtful moments, places, arguments, indiscretions, lies all catalogued, timed and dated...The list, for us, is endless...
It is not our fault...You give us so much to remember... — Virginia Alison

Think not silence the wisdom of fools; but, if rightly timed, the honor of wise men, who have not the infirmity, but the virtue of taciturnity. — Thomas Browne

The well-timed question is more impacting than an answer. — Mary Anne Radmacher

Mr. Greer timed all our speeches with an oven timer. Things were nothing at Tribeca Alternative, considered one of Manhattan's finest prep schools, if not high tech. — Meg Cabot

A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others. — Thomas Jefferson

A man is not entitled to be called a father merely because he once had a well-timed spasm of the loins. — Lisa Kleypas

She ran and didn't slow until she came to a hallway that terminated in a multipaned window of thick, old-fashioned glass. Her breath rasped in her throat, but the dizziness and nausea eased enough that she stood steadier on her feet. She heard again the gentle ringing of metal sliding against metal. Musty air rose up with the same smell of leather and dust, an acrid undertone beneath. She whipped her head toward the end of the hall. At first she didn't see anything. The light shifted and swirled, and the swordsman materialized from the shadows. Gold and red emblazoned his tunic in a chevron against a cobalt background. The sword was back in its scabbard, strapped across his back. He was tall, with broad shoulders and dark hair, and he looked like Sebastian. Timed to the wind stirring the ivy outside, he vanished through the wall. — Carolyn Jewel

Is something wrong?" Ivey asked. Lillian picked up a file, stared at it, and put it back down. "You could say that. This morning I found an orderly and a nurse in a closet, and they weren't looking for supplies. Dr. Harrison has taken an ill-timed vacation, since his wife threatened that if he didn't come along she'd go by herself and not come back. So I'm short staffed again. And then there's this desk. Who ever heard of a desk without drawers? It's beautiful, but why do I feel like I'm Uhura on Star Trek? I'd like to strangle the designer. — Heatherly Bell

She saw only that he was quiet and onubtrusive, and she liked him for it. He did not disturb the wretchedness of her mind by ill-timed conversation. — Jane Austen

I beg people not to accept the seasonal ritual of well-timed charity on Christmas Eve. It's blasphemy. — Jonathan Kozol

It all started with a badly timed bald joke! — Colin Mochrie

He stopped the flyers
And by his rare example made the coward
Turn terror into sport. As weeds before
A vessel under sail, so men obeyed
And fell below his stem. His sword, Death's stamp,
Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot
He was a thing of blood, whose every motion
Was timed with dying cries. Alone he entered
The mortal gate o' th' city, which he painted
With shunless destiny; aidless came off
And with a sudden reinforcement struck
Corioles like a planet. Now all's his,
When by and by the dim of war gan pierce
His ready sense; then straight his doubled spirit
Requickened what in flesh was fatigate,
And to the battle came he, where he did
Run reeking o'er the lives of men as if
'Twere a perpetual spoil; and till we called
Both field and city ours, he never stood
To ease his breast with panting. — William Shakespeare

Stories of all lengths and depths come from different parts of the cave. For a novel, you must lay in mental, physical and spiritual provision as for a siege or for a time of hectic explosions, while a short story is, or can be, a steady, timed flame like the lighting of a blow lamp on a building site full of dry tinder. — Jane Gardam

Never underestimate the power of one well-timed compliment. It has the power to change a person's entire perspective on life. It has the potential to change a person's plotline for eternity. The right word at the right time can be the catalyst for someone else's miracle. — Mark Batterson

Basically, I composed the musical structure in one pass. The rest was editing and small adjustments. And when the play was read by actors with the music, the sequence timed-out perfectly. — Jeff Britting

The pain had no ebb or flow. It was a constant ever-increasing knell in my chest, timed to the beating of my broken heart. — Mary Lindsey

I am not the kind of designer who is racing to the finish line, so while collaborations are important for our growth, each and every one has to be strategic and well-timed with what we have going on internally. — Prabal Gurung

During one of his uncannily well-timed impromptu visits to my restaurant, Union Square Cafe, Pat Cetta taught me how to manage people. Pat was the owner of a storied New York City steakhouse called Sparks, and by that time, he was an old pro at running a fine restaurant. — Danny Meyer

There are no accidents in Nature. Every motion of the constantly shifting bodies in the world is timed to the occasion for some definite, fore-ordered end. The flowers blossom in obedience to the same law that marks the course of constellations, and the song of a bird is the echo of a universal symphony. Nature is one, and to me the greatest delight of observation and study is to discover new unities in this all-embracing and eternal harmony. — John Muir

What is both surprising and delightful is that the spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the game ... There is no reason why the field should not try to put the batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed disparagements of his wife's fidelity and his mother's respectability. — George Bernard Shaw

As she did, someone else poked his head in. Rafe.
"Maya?" He looked at the other two, then me. "Can we talk?"
"Rather not."
He lowered his voice. "Please?"
"Later," I said. "Just not tonight. Okay?"
He nodded and retreated.
"Sorry about that," I said when he was gone. "Inconveniently timed relationship angst."
"Relationship?" Chloe looked from me to the now-empty doorway. "You and Rafe? Oh, I thought ... " She trailed off and shook her head. "Never mind. So you were saying - "
"I thought you were with Daniel," Derek cut in.
Chloe gave him a look as I inwardly flinched. — Kelley Armstrong

You will also be called upon to provide well-timed distractions. Get the whole country arguing about sex education or gays in the military, and Americans will stop paying attention to all the things they should fear. — Kirsten Miller

A letter is never ill-timed; it never interrupts. Instead it waits for us to find the opportune minute, the quiet moment to savor the message. There is an element of timelessness about letter writing ... — Lois Wyse

THE BASIC UNIT of writing practice is the timed exercise. — Natalie Goldberg

Oh, and they said I have ADD, too." He lit a cigarette, his first of the day, and took a long, grateful drag. "But listen mate, I once sucked a geezer for twenty minutes to get him off. The clock was just over his shoulder and I timed it. Attention deficit?" He blew out a plume of smoke. "I don't think so. — S.A. Reid

Visual tonics such as 'timed creativity' need to be introduced to refresh and refurbish the muse. — Robert Genn

All the light switches in the hallways were timed to go off after ten or fifteen seconds, presumably as an economy measure. This wasn't so bad if your room was next to the elevator, but if it was very far down the hall, and hotel hallways in Paris tend to wander around like an old man with Alzheimer's, you would generally proceed the last furlong in total blackness, feeling your way along the walls with flattened palms, and invariably colliding scrotally with the corner of a nineteenth-century oak table put there, evidently, for that purpose. — Bill Bryson

I'm a big fan of 'Glee.' I think it's really smart. And I think it's well-timed. But you can't not be surprised at the reception this show's received. It's really something else. — Cory Monteith

Silence, when correctly timed, can speak multitudes of words to a person, without any extra effort on your part. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Absurdly, I haven't yet got around to saying that football is a wonderful sport, but of course it is. Goals have a rarity value that points and runs and sets do not, and so there will always be that thrill, the thrill of seeing someone do something that can only be done three or four times in a whole game if you are lucky, not at all if you are not. And I love the pace of it, its lack of formula; and I love the way that small men can destroy big men ... in a way that they can't in other contact sports, and the way that t he best team does not necessarily win. And there's the athleticism ... , and the way that strength and intelligence have to combine. It allows players to look beautiful and balletic in a way that some sports do not: a perfectly-timed diving header, or a perfectly-struck volley, allow the body to achieve a poise and grace that some sportsmen can never exhibit. — Nick Hornby

As I rock down the hall I am flung from my path- snatched and grabbed. Before I can even utter a word, a large palm is covering my mouth. In less than five seconds I am inside a pitch black room, pushed face first into a cold metal door, and I hear the lock snick into place. A heavy weight presses at my back. I didn't even have time to panic. It was a well-timed attack.
My mind flashes to another time and place, another hand on my mouth. I breathe though the panic that tries to overcome me.
I allow my senses to put me at ease. He's just softly breathing near my ear. His body is relaxed. The way he holds me feels more playful than threatening.
"Let me guess ... the Boss," I say to the heavy weight at my back. My tone is a mix of amused annoyance. — Erica Chilson

There are times in life that you don't have to waste time at all, and there are times in life where delay saves time, purpose and life. In all things we do we must not forget this one thing: our lives have been timed! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Life depends on time and he who least values time and what to really do with his time will get to the end of the time in his lifetime only to ponder over the times he had in his life! Remember always; your lifetime: your life has been timed! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

One of the stunning realities of the Christian life is that in a world where everything is in some state of decay, God's mercies never grow old. They never run out. They never are ill timed. They never dry up. They never grow weak. They never get weary. They never fail to meet the need. They never disappoint. They never, ever fail, because they really are new every morning. — Paul David Tripp

The firmest purpose of a woman's heart to well-timed, artful flattery may yield. — George Lillo

Are you sure about this?" Rowan asked.
"No," Lily shouted over the whipping wind. Her voice came out choked as it tried to get around her stomach, which was now lodged in her throat. "But it's the only way."
Rowan looked over the side, his face serene as he timed it. Lily saw his willstone pulse as every sense in him sharpened, and he pulled her tightly against his body and launched them off the drake's neck into thin air.
Lily shrieked uncontrollably, clutching at Rowan desperately as they fell. — Josephine Angelini

I'm having inappropriately timed thoughts right about now, I told her. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

A man of the best parts and greatest learning, if he does not know the world by his own experience and observation, will be very absurd, and consequently very unwelcome in company. He may say very good things; but they will be probably so ill-timed, misplaced, or improperly addressed, that he had much better hold his tongue. — Lord Chesterfield

In the fifth grade I discovered something I could do better than the other kids. One day, the teacher set up a bunch of chairs, and she had everyone run to the chairs and back while she timed us. I had the fastest time in the whole school! — Caitlyn Jenner

Once in a while dancing is immaculate, a perfection: you understand why raves exist: when you've timed the drinks correctly and they lift your mood and your energy, the songs are ones you all know, and you look around at the girls, their happy lost faces, their beautiful bare stomachs, their jangly long earrings, something limbic, their skin just damp with sweat to the touch, the whole thing ... — Charles Finch

The sky was clear
remarkably clear
and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse. — Thomas Hardy

Most often, our water is shut off because of some reconstruction project, either in our village or in the next one over. A hole is dug, a pipe is replaced, and within a few hours things are back to normal. The mystery is that it's so perfectly timed to my schedule. That is to say that the tap dries up at the exact moment I roll out of bed, which is usually between 10:00 and 10:30. For me this is early, but for Hugh and most of our neighbors it's something closer to midday. What they do at 6:00 a.m. is anyone's guess. I only know that they're incredibly self-righteous about it and talk about the dawn as if it's a personal reward, bestowed on account of their great virtue. — David Sedaris

At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place, predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers. Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play. For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order. — Frank Herbert

Remember folks stop lights timed for 35 mph are also timed for 70 mph. — Jim Samuels

We have still not answered the question of when an experiment might be justifiable. It will not do to say "Never!" Putting morality in such black-and-white terms is appealing, because it eliminates the need to think about particular cases; but in extreme circumstances, such absolutist answers always break down. Torturing a human being is almost always wrong, but it is not absolutely wrong. If torture were the only way in which we could discover the location of a nuclear bomb hidden in a New York City basement and timed to go off within the hour, then torture would be justifiable. — Peter Singer

You have ten minutes," he told me. "Ten minutes to think about what you did wrong and how bad you feel right now. Are you ready?"

He'd actually clicked a button on his watch and timed me, and for those ten minutes I brooded and sulked and wallowed in humiliation. I remembered the errors I'd made on the field and corrected them in my head. I imagined punching every player on the opposing team square in the mouth. And then Dad told me my time was up.

"There. It's over now," he said. "Now you look forward and figure out how you're going to get better. — Elle Kennedy

We wish to continue in following up the legacy of the Second Vatican Council whose wise regulations have still to be led to their fulfilment, being careful that a push, generous perhaps, but unduly timed, does not detract from the content and meaning of the council, and on the other hand being careful and reined and timid efforts do not slow up the magnificent drive of renewal and of life. — Pope John Paul I

The animals you say were 'sent' for man's free use and nutriment. Pray, then, inform me, and be candid, why came they aeons before man did, to spend long centuries on earth. Awaiting their devourer's birth? Those ill-timed chattels, sent from heaven, were, sure, the maddest gift e'er given - 'sent' for man's use (can man believe it?) when there was no man to receive it! — Henry Stephens Salt

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech. — Martin Farquhar Tupper

It angers me that a timed, planned and paid smearing campaign is run against me in the press. — Beny Steinmetz

Thinking the loss of a loved one was unfortunate, ill timed, sad, or an accident is to miss the gift. — Mike Dooley

What a dolt my father sends me for weaponry," Paul intoned. "This doltish Gurney Halleck has forgotten the first lesson for a fighting man armed and shielded." Paul snapped the force button at his waist, felt the crinkled-skin tingling of the defensive field at his forehead and down his back, heard external sounds take on characteristic shield-filtered flatness. "In shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack," Paul said. "Attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the attack sinister. The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow kindjal!" Paul snapped up the rapier, feinted fast and whipped it back for a slow thrust timed to enter a shield's mindless defenses. — Frank Herbert

A novelist is similar to a triathlete. Train hard every day. You will be timed and measured. Budget to promote, grow, and be without fear. — Caroline Gerardo

In any case, if the reader would have a correct idea of the mood of these exiles, we must conjure up once more those dreary evenings, sifting down through a haze of dust and golden light upon the treeless streets filled with teeming crowds of men and women. For, characteristically, the sound that rose towards the terraces still bathed in the last glow of daylight, now that the noises of vehicles and motors
the sole voice of cities in ordinary times
had ceased, was but one vast rumour of low voices and incessant footfalls, the drumming of innumerable soles timed to the eerie whistling of the plague in the sultry air above, the sound of a huge concourse of people marking time, a never-ending, stifling drone that, gradually swelling, filled the town from end to end, and evening after evening gave its truest, mournfullest expression to the blind endurance which had ousted love from all our hearts. — Albert Camus

They're definitely going to declare war tomorrow. In the morning. It's probably timed so that the nation can get down on its collective knees in church and pray for deliverance.' 'Oh, yes, war is always so Christian, isn't it? — Kate Atkinson

10. In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack - the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers. 11. The direct and the indirect lead on to each other in turn. It is like moving in a circle - you never come to an end. Who can exhaust the possibilities of their combination? 12. The onset of troops is like the rush of a torrent which will even roll stones along in its course. 13. The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy its victim. [The Chinese here is tricky and a certain key word in — Sun Tzu

He's planted dirty bombs all over the place, but he won't tell anyone where they are. He has all of us held hostage by fear. If he dies and can't reset the timers every few hours at random intervals that he alone knows the schedule to, they'll go off, and we all go bye-bye in a nasty way. No one knows how he has them wired or timed or anything. He has lost his mind. Completely. Totally. Fully. I can't even talk to him anymore. He just stares at me with these beady, creepy eyes through that garish mask that gives me the jumping heebies." Caillen — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The timed email bombs of the 2016 presidential campaign were also a powerful form of disinformation. Words written in one situation make sense only in that context. The very act of removing them from their historical moment and dropping them in another is an act of falsification. What is worse, when media followed the email bombs as if they were news, they betrayed their own mission. — Timothy Snyder

If I'm at home for the weekend - and that is almost never - I tend to get twitchy at about eight o'clock in the evening because my body clock is timed to go on stage. I don't know what to do with myself. — Jimmy Carr

When love's well-timed 'tis not a fault to love;
The strong, the brave, the virtuous, and the wise,
Sink in the soft captivity together. — Joseph Addison

Dr. John, throughout his whole life, was a man of luck - a man of success. And why? Because he had the eye to see his opportunity, the heart to prompt to well-timed action, the nerve to consummate a perfect work. And no tyrant-passion dragged him back; no enthusiasms, no foibles encumbered his way. — Charlotte Bronte

Mama has such cleverly timed headaches I wonder if she has any at all. — A.E. Moseley

There is no natural phenomenon that is comparable with the sudden and apparently accidentally timed development of science, except perhaps the condensation of a super-saturated gas or the explosion of some unpredictable explosives. — Eugene Wigner

There is something about the ritual of the race - putting on the number, lining up, being timed - that brings out the best in us. — Grete Waitz

Gregory smiled a little, holding up an empty syringe. "I'm afraid you don't have all that much choice in the matter. I added a little something to your IV line. We'll see you in a few hours."
"What - ?" My eyes widened. "You bastard."
"My parents were married."
"You could have ... could have asked me ... " My voice was already slowing down. I didn't know whether it was psychosomatic or just very well timed, but either way, I was pissed. — Mira Grant

You might think that, by now, people would have become accustomed to the idea of natural catastrophes. We live on a planet that is still cooling and which has fissures and faults in its crust; this much is accepted even by those who think that the globe is only six thousand years old, as well as by those who believe that the earth was "designed" to be this way. Even in such a case, it is to be expected that earthquakes will occur and that, if they occur under the seabed, tidal waves will occur also. Yet two sorts of error are still absolutely commonplace. The first of these is the idiotic belief that seismic events are somehow "timed" to express the will of God. Thus, reasoning back from the effect, people will seriously attempt to guess what sin or which profanity led to the verdict of the tectonic plates. The second error, common even among humanists, is to borrow the same fallacy for satirical purposes and to employ it to disprove a benign deity. — Christopher Hitchens

Speech as known to us was unnecessary. A fragment of a sentence amounted almost to a long-winded redundancy. A gesture, a grunt, the curve of a facial line
even a significantly timed pause yielded informational juice. — Isaac Asimov

Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression. — Mark Helprin

Once (Stan) Musial timed your fastball, your infielders were in jeopardy. — Warren Spahn