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Locomotives Quotes

Browse 45 quotes about Locomotives.

Locomotives Quotes

“Art is the conscious making of numinous phenomena. Many objects are just objects - inert, merely utilitarian. Many events are inconsequential, too banal to add anything to our experience of life. This is unfortunate, as one cannot grow except by having one’s spirit greatly stirred; and the spirit cannot be greatly stirred by spiritless things. Much of our very life is dead. For primitive man, this was not so. He made his own possessions, and shaped and decorated them with the aim of making them not merely useful, but powerful. He tried to infuse his weapons with the nature of the tiger, his cooking pots with the life of growing things; and he succeeded. Appearance, material, history, context, rarity - perhaps rarity most of all - combine to create, magically, the quality of soul. But we modern demiurges are prolific copyists; we give few things souls of their own. Locomotives, with their close resemblance to beasts, may be the great exception; but in nearly all else with which today’s poor humans are filling the world, I see a quelling of the numinous, an ashening of the fire of life. We are making an inert world; we are building a cemetery. And on the tombs, to remind us of life, we lay wreaths of poetry and bouquets of painting. You expressed this very condition, when you said that art beautifies life. No longer integral, the numinous has become optional, a luxury - one of which you, my dear friend, are fond, however unconsciously. You adorn yourself with the same instincts as the primitive who puts a frightening mask of clay and feathers on his head, and you comport yourself in an uncommonly calculated way - as do I. We thus make numinous phenomena of ourselves. No mean trick - to make oneself a rarity, in this overpopulated age.”

ArtSoulSpiritPoetryHistoryObjectsPaintingAppearanceArtistsTombsMasksRarityMaterialContextLocomotivesCemeteriesIntegralGwynnNuminous PhenomenaAsheningBeth ConstanzinDemiurgesQuelling
Book:The Etched City
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“Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.”

MeanIndividualNationsSportsWonderEnglandTrainWesternTinyToysPassengersInsufficientIndignantLocomotives
Book:The World and the Parish: Willa Cather's Articles and Reviews, 1893-1902
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“In all these products, whether iron bridges, locomotives, automobiles, telescopes, cottages, airport-hangars, funicular railways, skyscrapers, or children's toys, the will towards a new style expresses itself. The similarity of these examples to the new creations in art consists in the same striving for clear, pure form which expresses truth in the objects.”

ChildrenArtFormClearStyleExampleCreationObjectsProductsPureStriveBridgesIronToysAirportsAutomobileSimilarityTelescopesCottagesRailwaySkyscraperLocomotives
Author:Theo van Doesburg
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“There are some people who don't conform to the signals. An ordinary well-regulated locomotive slows down or pulls up when it sees the red light hoisted against it. Perhaps I was born color blind. When I see the red signal -- I can't help forging ahead. And in the end, you know, that spells disaster.”

PeopleKnowsWellsI CanEndsHelpingLightBornColorOrdinaryRedBlindDisasterSpellsConformSignalsSlow DownPull UpsForgingRed LightsLocomotivesForging Ahead
Author:Agatha Christie
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“There is a great deal we never think of calling religion that is still fruit unto God, and garnered by Him in the harvest. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, patience, goodness. I affirm that if these fruits are found in any form, whether you show your patience as a woman nursing a fretful child, or as a man attending to the vexing detail of a business, or as a physician following the dark mazes of sickness, or as a mechanic fitting the joints and valves of a locomotive; being honest true besides, you bring forth truth unto God.”

IfsThinkingMenChildrenLongStillsShowsFormJoySpiritReligionSufferingFoundDarkDealsHonestCallingGoodnessFruitDetailsFollowingBeing HonestSicknessPhysiciansHarvestMechanicGentlenessJointsNursingFittingAttendingMazesLong SufferingValveLocomotivesFruits Of The Spirit
Author:Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
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“Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate victims to it ... swathed from their birth, seldom exert the locomotive faculty of body or mind; and, thus viewing every thing through one medium, and that a false one, they are unable to discern in what true merit and happiness consist.”

MindBodyBirthVictimPropertyMediumsMeritFacultyUnfortunateHereditaryLocomotives
Book:A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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“No man can be ideally successful until he has found his place. Like a locomotive he is strong on the track, but weak anywhere else.”

MenFoundStrongSuccessfulWeakTrackEnjoymentLocomotives
Book:An Iron Will, He Can Who Thinks He Can & Pushing To The Front (Wisdom & Empowerment Series): How to Achieve Self-Reliance Which Leads to Vigorous Self-Faith, Personal Growth & Success
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“Each in the most hidden sack kept the lost jewels of memory, intense love, secret nights and permanent kisses, the fragment of public or private happiness. A few, the wolves, collected thighs, other men loved the dawn scratching mountain ranges or ice floes, locomotives, numbers. For me happiness was to share singing, praising, cursing, crying with a thousand eyes. I ask forgiveness for my bad ways: my life had no use on earth.”

MenWayUseEyeEarthNightAsksLostMemoriesNumbersSecretShareCryThousandMountainKissingSingingPraiseIntenseIceRangePermanentDawnJewelsFragmentsThighsCursingAsking For ForgivenessIntense LoveLocomotivesMountain Ranges
Book:Still Another Day
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“Today we are aware as never before of the plurality of human life-styles and possibilities, while at the same time being tied, like in an old silent movie, to a runaway locomotive rushing headlong toward a very singular catastrophe”

HumansTodayStylePossibilitySilentHuman LifeTiedCatastropheRushingRunawayLife StyleLocomotivesSilent Movies
Book:Earth House Hold: Technical Notes & Queries to Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries
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“A conscious attempt to fall asleep is sure to produce insomnia, to try to be conscious of one's own digestion is a sure way to upset the stomach. Consciousness is a poison when we apply it to ourselves. Consciousness is a light directed outward. it's like the headlights on a locomotive—turn them inward and you'd have a crash.”

WayTryingLightTurnsFallConsciousnessProduceConsciousUpsetPoisonStomachCrashInwardInsomniaDigestionHeadlightsLocomotivesDoctor Zhivago
Author:Boris Pasternak
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“In me was shaping a yearning for a kind of consciousness, a mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed. Somewhere in the dead of the southern night my life had switched onto the wrong track and without my knowing it, the locomotive of my heart was rushing down a dangerously steep slope, heading for a collision, heedless of the warning red lights that blinked all about me, the sirens and the ells and the screams that filled the air.”

WayHeartKindSaidLightNightConsciousnessKnowingAirMy HeartRedFilledTrackSouthernWarningScreamYearningPenaltiesHeadingsRushingSlopesCollisionSteepSirensRed LightsLocomotivesElls
Book:Black Boy
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“We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.”

BodyEyeBeautifulBlackVisionGrowingShadowSkinsBlessedMadSeedsNakedGoldenEveningAccomplishmentSunsetDreadFormalBleakSunflowerLocomotivesGrime
Author:Allen Ginsberg
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“I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact," not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why.”

KnowsMenDoeFactsYoungMillionsYouthLonelyHungerYoung ManChestsMultitudesAmazedLocomotives
Book:Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings
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“We cannot see how the evidence afforded by the unquestioned progressive development of organised existence-crowned as it has been by the recent creation of the earth's greatest wonder, MAN, can be set aside, or its seemingly necessary result withheld for a moment. When Mr. Lyell finds, as a witty friend lately reported that there had been found, a silver-spoon in grauwacke, or a locomotive engine in mica-schist, then, but not sooner, shall we enrol ourselves disciples of the Cyclical Theory of Geological formations.”

MenHas BeensMomentsEarthScienceFoundResultsExistenceWonderProgressCreationTheoryDevelopmentEvidenceWittySilverProgressiveEnginesDiscipleFormationSpoonsGeologyOrganisedLocomotivesSilver Spoons
Author:George Julius Poulett Scrope
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“For the first time there was constructed with this machine [locomotive engine] a self-acting mechanism in which the interplay of forces took shape transparently enough to discern the connection between the heat generated and the motion produced. The great puzzle of the vital force was also immediately solved for the physiologist in that it became evident that it is more than a mere poetic comparison when one conceives of the coal as the food of the locomotive and the combustion as the basis for its life.”

LifeFirstsSelfEnoughScienceForceActingShapesFirst TimeConnectionsMachinesBasesMereHeatComparisonPoeticEnginesMechanismEvidentCoalPuzzlesCombustionLocomotives
Author:Carl Ludwig
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“It is sunlight in modified form which turns all the windmills and water wheels and the machinery which they drive. It is the energy derived from coal and petroleum (fossil sunlight) which propels our steam and gas engines, our locomotives and automobiles. ... Food is simply sunlight in cold storage.”

FormScienceTurnsEnergyWaterFoodColdWheelsGasEnginesSunlightCoalFossilsMachineryAutomobileSteamStoragePetroleumWindmillsLocomotives
Book:The New Dietetics, What to Eat and How
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“I am closest of all to happiness—although I won’t attempt to define just what it is—when I turn away from the window and am aware, with the edge of my consciousness, that a moment ago I was not here, there was simply the world outside the window, and something beautiful and incomprehensible, something which there is absolutely no need to ‘comprehend,’ existed for a few seconds instead of the usual swarm of thoughts, of which one, like a locomotive, pulls all the others after it, absorbs them all and calls itself ‘I’.”

WorldNeedsMomentsBeautifulTurnsConsciousnessWindowEdgesSecondsUsualClosestSomething BeautifulSwarmsLocomotives
Author:Victor Pelevin
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“The North can make a steam engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth - right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with.”

PeopleWarEarthSpiritCausesPowerfulFailingDoorsCarDeterminationPreparedBoundsShoesDeterminedCivil WarPairsMost PowerfulEnginesYardsSteamRushingAmerican Civil WarRailwayUnpreparedPair Of ShoesSteam EnginesLocomotives
Author:William Tecumseh Sherman
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“To tell the truth, in Pacific 231 I was on the trail of a very abstract and quite ideal concept, by giving the impression of a mathematical acceleration of rhythm, while the movement itself slowed . I first called this piece Mouvement symphonique. On reflection I found that a bit colorless. Suddenly, a rather romantic image crossed my mind, and when the work was finished, I wrote the title Pacific 231, which indicates a locomotive for heavy loads and high speeds (a type unfortunately disappeared, alas, and sacrificed to electric traction).”

GivingMindFirstsFoundBitsPiecesMovementTypeReflectionConceptsIdealsHeavyFinishedSpeedImpressionRhythmMathematicalTitlesAbstractTelling The TruthElectricLoadAlasTrailsPacificHigh SpeedAccelerationColorlessTractionLocomotivesHeavy Loads
Author:Arthur Honegger
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“Villages and woods, meadows and chateaux, pass across the moving scene, out of which the whistling of locomotives throws sharp notes. These faint, piercing sounds, together with the yelping and barking of dogs, are the only noises that reach one through the depths of the upper air. The human voice cannot mount up into these boundless solitudes. Human beings look like ants along the white lines that are highways; and the rows of houses look like children's playthings.”

HumansLooksChildrenTogetherMovingHouseSoundVoiceLinesHuman BeingsWhiteAirDogSceneSolitudeNotesDepthWoodsNoiseVillageHighwaysAntsBoundlessMeadowsBalloonsPiercingsWhistlingHuman VoiceLocomotives
Book:My Air-Ships
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“Phrenology taught us that the mind thinks by means of the brain, is liable to become fatigued by too long attention, as the locomotive muscles are by too much walking; and I therefore proposed to them to take a brief rest.”

ThinkingMindMeanLongAttentionBrainToo MuchTaughtWalkingMusclesLiableTaught UsLocomotivesPhrenology
Book:Notes on the United States of North America During a Phrenological Visit in 1838-39-40
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“Every age has its dreams, its symbols of romance. Past generations were moved by the graceful power of the great windjammers, by the distant whistle of locomotives pounding through the night, by the caravans leaving on the Golden Road to Samarkand, by quinqueremes of Nineveh from distant Ophir . . . Our grandchildren will likewise have their inspiration-among the equatorial stars. They will be able to look up at the night sky and watch the stately procession of the Ports of Earth-the strange new harbors where the ships of space make their planetfalls and their departures.”

LooksDreamInspirationAgeAbleEarthPastRomanceNightStarsSpaceWatchesGenerationsSkyStrangeFutureMovedLeavingShipsGoldenSymbolsLook UpPredictionsGrandchildrenHarborsPortDepartureNight SkyProcessionCaravansLocomotivesPast GenerationsSamarkand
Book:the Promise of Space
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