"I once read somewhere that a hermit who was watching his hour-glass without praying, heard noises that split his eardrums. He suddenly heard the catastrophe of time, in the hour-glass. The tick tock of our watches is so mechanically jerky that we no longer have ears subtle enough to hear the passage of time"
- Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962)

Source: Bachelard, Gaston. 1994. The Poetics of Space. Page 164. Bacon press: Boston.