List of sundial mottos

Kilbirnie Auld Kirk, Kilbirnie, Ayrshire, Scotland.

Sundials are often provided with a motto to reflect the sentiments of its maker or owner.

English mottos

• Come along and grow old with me; the best is yet to be.
• Let others tell of storms and showers, I tell of sunny morning hours.
• Life is but a shadow: the shadow of a bird on the wing.
• Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away.
• Self-dependent power can time defy, as rocks resist the billows and the sky.
• Be as true to each other as this dial is to the sun.
• Hours fly, Flowers die. New days, New ways, Pass by. Love stays.

Latin mottos

Time flies

• Tempus fugit. (Time flies.)
• Tempus breve est. (Time is short.)
• Ruit hora. (The hour is flowing away.)
• Tempus volat, hora fugit. (Time is on the wing, the hour flies.)
• Hora fugit, ne tardes. (The hour flies, don't be late.)

Make use of time

• Carpe diem (Seize the day.)
• Fugit hora - carpe diem. ( The hour flies — seize the day.)
• Festina lente. (Make haste, but slowly.)
• Utere non reditura. (Use the hour, it will not come again.)
• Utere, non numera. (Use the hours, don't count them.)
• Altera pars otio, pars ista labori. (Devote this hour to work, another to leisure.)

Human mortality

Pereunt et Imputantur, on St Buryan Church in Cornwall

• Vita fugit, sicut umbra (Life passes like the shadow.)
• Vita similis umbrae. (Life resembles a shadow.)
• Umbra sicut hominis vita. (A person's life is like a shadow.)
• Meam vide umbram, tuam videbis vitam. (Look at my shadow and you will see your life.)
• Memor esto brevis aevi. (Remember how short is life.)
• Ex iis unam cave. (Beware of one hour.)
• Una ex his erit tibi ultima. (One of these hours will be your last.)
• Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat. (All hours wound; the last one kills.)
• Serius est quam cogitas. (It's later than you think.)
• Sic labitur aetas. (Thus passes a lifetime.)
• Lente hora, celeriter anni. (An hour passes slowly, but the years go by quickly.)
• Ultima latet ut observentur omnes. (Our last hour is hidden from us, so that we watch them all.)
• Ver non semper viret. (Springtime does not last.)
• Sic vita fluit, dum stare videtur. (Life flows away as it seems to stay the same.)
• Pereunt et Imputantur. (The hours are consumed and will be charged to our account)

Transience

• Tempus edax rerum. (Time devours things.)
• Tempus vincit omnia. (Time conquers everything.)
• Vidi nihil permanere sub sole. (I have seen that nothing under the sun endures. — a quote from Ecclesiastes (Kohelet).

Virtue

• Omnes aequales sola virtute discrepantes. (All hours are the same — they are distinguished only by good deeds.)
• Dum tempus habemus operemur bonum. (While we have time, let us do good.)

Living

Villa Vizcaya

• Sol omnibus lucet. (The sun shines for everyone.)
• Sempre amicis hora (Always time for friends.)
• Amicis qualibet hora. (Any hour for my friends.)
• Vita in motu (Life is in motion.) - Houghton Hall Norfolk England - image here
• Vivere momento. (Remember to live.)
• Fruere hora. (Enjoy the hour.)
• Dona praesentis cape laetus horae. (Take the gifts of this hour.)
• Tempus omnia dabit. (Time will give everything.)
• Una dabit quod negat altera. (One hour will give what another has refused.)
• Post tenebras spero lucem. (I hope for light to follow darkness.)
• Sit fausta quae labitur. (May the hour be favorable.)

Humorous

• Horas non numero nisi serenas. (I count only the happy hours.)
• Nunc est bibendum (Now is the time to drink)
• Si sol deficit, respicit me nemo. (If the sun's gone, nobody looks at me.)
• Sine sole sileo. (Without the Sun I fall silent.)

Mottos in other languages

• Mach' es wie die Sonnenuhr: zähl' die heitren Stunden nur! (Do like a sundial and count only the sunny hours!)

Bibliography

• Earle AM (1971). Sundials and Roses of Yesterday. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle. ISBN 0-8048-0968-2, LCCN 74-142763.  Reprint of the 1902 book published by Macmillan (New York).
• Rohr RRJ (1996). Sundials: History, Theory, and Practice (translated by G. Godin ed.). New York: Dover. ISBN 0-486-29139-1.  Slightly amended reprint of the 1970 translation published by University of Toronto Press (Toronto). The original was published in 1965 under the title Les Cadrans solaires by Gauthier-Villars (Montrouge, France).
• Cadran Solaires. 32 bis Route de Montélimar, F26110 Nyons: Artissime. c1988.  Selections from the 1895 paper Raphaël BLANCHARD in Bulletin de la Société d'Etudes des Hautes-Alpes.

Further reading

• Boursier C (1936). 800 Devises de cadrans solaires. Paris: Unknown publisher. 
• Cross L (1915). the Book of Old Sundials (illustrated by W Hogg ed.). London: Foulis. 
• Mrs. Alfred Gatty (1900). The Book of Sun-Dials (4th ed., enlarged and edited by HKF Eden and E Lloyd ed.). London: George Bell. 
• Hyatt AH (1903). A Book of Sundial Mottoes. New York: Scott-Thaw. 
• Landon P (1904). Helio-tropes, or new Posies for Sundials. London: Methuen. 
• Leadbetter C (1773). Mechanick Dialling. London: Caslon.