Talk:List of sundial mottos

Possible motto
Noticed today that MAKE HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES, has 24 characters (excl. spaces), potential use as motto? ( there being 24 half-hours on clockfaces). Maybe someone knows origin of this saying, to add to article. Also, a line recalled from a poetry reading (Cockatoo Island Festival 2005), TIME~THEMEASUREOFMOTIONWITHRESPECTTOBEFORE&AFTER (48 char.) or tweek to fit.( can't recall name of person who wrote this).SignedJohnsonL623 (talk) 02:12, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

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Is "motto" the correct term?
Is motto the correct term?

I read all the listed (short) sentences better as maxims, expressing a general moral rule, especially a philosophical maxim (normally subject to questionning), and often intentially biased by the author vision of truth, but not really a statement of belief by the author influencing his own actions.

Instead the displayed sentences are more or less influencing others, those that will read them and memoize them easily to influence their actions as if it had a moral value.

This opposes to mottos used by nations, laws, organizations, or religions, that are firmly affirmed as a rule applicable to anyone, at any time and in any place, including those having a form of power and institutionalizing them as a strong rule of action built by experience of a large number of people forming a common society with shared values (accepted voluntarily by them before they are instituted).

In fact true mottos on sundials are rare (there may be some, for example, "In God we trust" if it's displayed on a public monument or building in the US, but just reproducing a constitutional sentence). No such sentences appear in the list, they are just questionable evidence based on apparent illusion (may be the protected shadow of the sundial can be thought as well as an illusion, even if it is easily observed by many). They're not even really aphorisms, sometimes they are just popular proverbs just to exhibit some past popualr culture, as a way to revigorate unity. Note of these sentences show any form of respect, readers are merely treated like animals, or subjects of an self-proclaimed authority.

Most of these sentences on sundials are questionable, they translate an illusion of what should be perceived by readers as an unquestionable evidence (and attempting to bypass this stated rule would lead to disorder or chaos, supposed to be bad and unproductful, destructive rather than constructive: they jsut state what is a currently perceived universal state of things, even if they should still be adapted to different points of observation): putting these sentences on a sundial, whose role is to fix the order of time and regulate actions throughout the day, as a way to force the acceptation of these rules, because we observe something tangible and reproducible at all times, when in fact the sentence itself does not have this quality (and their formulation are enough fuzzy to continue having their apparent quality of truth).

Such use of sundials as physical support for these sentences gives them the illusion of correct order of everything: you can find lot of sentences that are in fact not universal, not constant over time, epochs, classes of populations. So these mottos are in reality maxims stated bythir authors with a frozen and biased vision of the real world. verdy_p (talk) 20:09, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Is this original research or have you a reference. Dial furniture has a long history. Right or wrong mottoes have been called mottoes for over a century- Waugh ISBN 0486229475 discusses them in 1973, and in footnote on p124 refers to Alfred H Hyatt- A book of sundial mottoes, published New York 1903.ClemRutter (talk) 22:40, 22 April 2021 (UTC)