Literary Clock: Timely Quote
Classic books tell the time
Free · In‑App Purchases
Over 13,000 passages from 6,000 books, each naming a time. At 4:53, a character in a Maurice Baring play says it's seven minutes to five. What does your minute say?
Open the app at 10:38 and you might get Dickens. In The Old Curiosity Shop, a landlord looks up at the clock and promises the stew will be done "at twenty-two minutes before eleven." A minute later it's someone else, in some other book, telling you it's 10:39.
That's the whole idea. Timely Quote is a clock that tells the time with lines from real books.
Where the quotes come from
Every passage comes from Project Gutenberg, the free library of public-domain books. There are more than 13,000 of them from over 6,000 books, and they aren't all novels. You'll get Jules Verne (Phileas Fogg is, unsurprisingly, always checking his watch) and P. G. Wodehouse. You'll also get Darwin timing how fast plants move, an admiral's account of the Grand Fleet, Victorian travel diaries, and every so often a page of the Warren Commission report. It turns out old books mention the time a lot.
A few minutes of the day haven't turned up in any book yet. There are 34 of them, if you're counting. If you land on one, you get an apology and a line from Douglas Adams instead. I'm still looking.
What you can do
Pull down to get a different quote for the same minute. Most minutes have several.
Turn on auto refresh in Settings and the quote changes on the minute, every minute, while you have the app open.
Long-press a quote, or tap the ••• button, to share it, copy it, or open the book it came from on Project Gutenberg. There you can read the whole thing for free.
Pick light, dark, or whatever your phone is set to.
The small print
There's no account, no ads, and nothing about you leaves your phone. The app is free and there's nothing to unlock. If it makes you smile, there's a tip jar in Settings. Tips are completely optional and don't change anything in the app.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
• Leave an optional tip from the new Tip Jar in Settings to support the app. Tips don't unlock anything.
• Rate Timely Quote on the App Store straight from Settings.
• Discover thousands of new literary passages, now drawn from more than 6,100 books.
• Fixed an issue where refreshing quickly could bring back the same quote.
• The space between a quote and its author now grows with your preferred text size.
• VoiceOver and Voice Control can now find the quote actions button by name.
• Get help by email and read the privacy policy on our website, both linked from Settings.
The developer, Mikael Hultgren, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Mikael Hultgren
- Size
- 19 MB
- Category
- Books
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 26.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 26.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 26.0 or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 26.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- Large Tip $4.99
- Medium Tip $2.99
- Small Tip $0.99
- Copyright
- © 2026 Artsoftheinsane