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Railway Quotes

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Railway Quotes

“তখন আমি বেশ তরুণ ছিলুম আমি সবে ষোলো বছরের হবো হয়তো কিন্তু ছেলেবেলার স্মৃতি মুছে গিয়েছিল যেখানে জন্মেছিলুম সেখান থেকে ৪৮,০০০ মাইল দূরে আমি ছিলুম মসকোতে, তিনঘণ্টির হাজার মিনার আর সাতটা রেলস্টেশান আর ওই হাজার আর তিন মিনার আর সাতটা রেলস্টেশান আমার জন্যে যথেষ্ট ছিল না কারণ আমি ছিলুম গরমমেজাজ আর পাগল তরুণ আমার হৃদয় ইফিসিয়াসের মন্দির কিংবা মসকোর রেড স্কোয়ারের মতন ছিল তপ্ত সূর্যাস্তের সময়ে আর আমার দুই চোখ ওই পুরোনো রাস্তা-ধরে চলার সময়ে জ্বলজ্বল করতো আর আমি আগেই এমন খারাপ কবি ছিলুম যে আমি জানতুম না তা কেমন করে নিজের সঙ্গে বয়ে নিয়ে যাই”

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Author:Blaise Cendrars
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“Conversations were struck up between strangers, regular diners as well as infrequent customers, as if united by a sense of gratitude at the sheer unlikeliness of it all - a high achievement of industrial civilisation that deserved to remain for everyone, but which has now gone the way of the airship and the ocean liner. Much of the nostalgia concerning railways is partial, even false; not this. [On British railway dining cars]”

HistoryNostalgiaCivilisationTransportDiningRailwayCatering
Book:The Railways: Nation, Network and People
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“And yet on that bench at Jacobacci, I was glad I had left everyone else behind. Although this was a town with a main street and a railway station, and people with dogs and electric lights it was near enough to the end of the earth to give me the impression that I was a solitary explorer in a strange land. That illusion (which was an illusion in the South Pole and at the headwaters of the Nile) was enough of a satisfaction to me to make me want to go forward.”

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Book:The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas
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“It would be difficult to find a man still on the early side of his thirties who had acquired wealth and power at the speed that Tom Severin had. He'd started as a mechanical engineer designing engines, then progressed to railway bridges, and had eventually built his own railway line, all with the apparent ease of a boy playing leapfrog. Severin could be generous and considerate, but his better qualities were unanchored by anything resembling a conscience.”

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Book:Devil's Daughter
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“The emergency services had not yet been organized. Rosine could go where she wished. Her high heels made her stumble in the darkness, over the stones, the frozen clods of soil, over the tussocks of grass, the countless obstacles of the rough earth. She was shivering with cold and thought she might be about to faint away amid the sinister din of the disaster. A fearful chaos was becoming apparent. Rude forms stood erect, the silhouette of a heap of rails. Lanterns, miserable yellow stars, circulated hither and thither. There were even household oil-lamps to be seen, with which the wind dealt harshly. And, all the time, people were running ...”

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Book:Hands of Orlac
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“For many country folk, the railway was Paris. Its gleaming tracks brought tales of success, prosperity and realised dreams to the provinces, qualities with which the capital was increasingly seen as synonymous. For a countrywoman like Madeleine, short on money and luck, overworked, and whose future appeared only to offer more of the same, those dazzling steel tracks represented a chance. All at once, resignation turned to hope. Suddenly, Madeleine could see clearly. If she stayed in Bessines, her future was mapped out – and it was bleak. But if she boarded the train to Paris, anything was possible – perhaps even happiness. Jeanne and Widow Guimbaud were horrified when, not five years after Marie-Clémentine’s birth, Madeleine announced that her mind was made up: she was going to start a new life in Paris.”

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Book:Renoir's Dancer: The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon
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“The law of 11 June 1842 establishing the French railroad system was passed in the same year as a train accident killed forty persons on the short line to Versailles. The controversial new legislation provided government guarantees to private investors, as well as state aid for the construction of a rail network radiating out from Paris. The law of 11 June also sparked a railway boom that attracted investors and was popular with the public. A second railway bill was passed in 1846, promising additional expansion. The father of the teenage artist Gustave Dore, for example, was a state- trained and -paid civil engineer assigned to survey the route of a future line between Lyon and Geneva. (...) ...during the 1840s writers such as George Sand began to predict that the commercial impact of the railroad would quickly destroy the local customs and traditions that still regulated the culture of most of rural France.”

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Book:The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
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“Vernet received his commission for this project in 1838, a year in which concessions for the construction of railroads were a subject of passionate debate, and many of the deputies were carried away by visions of the glorious future this new invention would usher in, typical of which was the speech of the director of bridges and railroads in which he proclaimed that, after the invention of the printing press, railroads represented the greatest advance in the history of civilization. In response to this enthusiasm Vernet broke traditional rules of decorum in his enormous mural, combining classical figures and traditional allegorical emblems with products of the industrial revolution. In one section of his mural composition, usually entitled Le Génie de la Science (The genius of Science), a nude allegorical figure is seated in the foreground, one hand on an air pump, the other on an anvil, while a modern steam locomotive is driven toward a railroad tunnel in the background (see Figure 2-2). If Vernet had been limited to one symbol to characterize the social and economic reality of the July Monarchy, it is doubtful that he could have found a better one.”

RailwayTrainsHorace Vernet
Book:The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
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“The image of the locomotive and these signs of industry were closely linked, of course, in that construction of the railroad lines lowered transportation costs, stimulated economic growth, and led to the development of modern coal, iron, and engineering industries. It should be noted, however, that while progressive industrialization may have been a defining characteristic of economic life during the July Monarchy, few painters actually dealt with this aspect of contemporary reality in a direct way. This points up the fact that while Vernet’s mural may have been most representative of its time, it was not typical of the art of his contemporaries. This should caution us against making easy generalizations about the relations between art and society, or believing that art necessarily reflects its social context in a direct and unmediated way.”

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Book:The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
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“It is perhaps not superfluous to point out here that throughout the 1830s and 1840s travel was still for the most part an activity for the rich or the adventurous. Most transportation on the European continent was by ship or mail coach, and it was time-consuming, expensive, and uncomfortable. Not until the emergence of the train did travel become an activity for the middle and lower middle class. Yet the railroads were still in their infancy under the July Monarchy. The first passenger railway was not built until 1837, and by 1840 only 433 kilometers of rail had been laid down. Then railroad building picked up speed; by 1848, 1,592 kilometers of rail lines were in use while 2,144 more were under construction. The railroads were to encourage yet a new kind of travel publication, the railroad guide or itinerary, which described and illustrated (in wood engravings or lithographs) the major sights along a particular line. However, this new type of publication, though it originated during the July Monarchy, did not become widespread until the Second Empire.”

RailwayTrainsRailroad Guide
Book:The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
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“Failure seems to be regarded as the one unpardonable crime, success as the all-redeeming virtue, the acquisition of wealth as the single worthy aim of life. Ten years ago such revelations as these of the Erie Railway would have sent a shudder through the community, and would have placed a stigma on every man who had had to do them. Now they merely incite others to surpass by yet bolder outrages and more corrupt combinations.”

MenYearsSeemsCommunityWealthVirtueCrimeTenYears AgoAimWorthyEvery ManCombinationRevelationsOutrageAcquisitionStigmaRailwayRedeemingAim Of Life
Author:Charles Francis Adams, Sr.
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“I can't quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who ... believe it to be the solution to most of this world's problems.”

MenWorldBelieveWellsI CanProblemNumbersHeardShareStreetsThis WorldBattleEqualSolutionsAskingCornersStrangerGreat MenStationsDislikeDriftingAsking QuestionsAversionRailwayStreet CornersRailway Station
Book:The Benchley Roundup
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“Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Sometimes the room would fill like a railway station at rush hour and I would be expected to cure widespread boredom”

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Author:Tahir Shah
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“Persons who clamor for governmental control of American railways should visit Germany, and above all Russia, to see how such control results. In Germany its defects are evident enough; people are made to travel in carriages which our main lines would not think of using, and with a lack of conveniences which with us would provoke a revolt; but the most amazing thing about this administration in Russia is to see how, after all this vast expenditure, the whole atmosphere of the country seems to paralyze energy.”

PeopleThinkingShouldPersonsMadeCountryEnoughWholeSeemsEnergyLinesResultsRussiaAdministrationAtmosphereGermanyProvokingEvidentDefectsConvenienceRevoltAmazing ThingsMost AmazingExpendituresCarriagesRailwayClamor
Book:AUTOBIOGRAPHY of ANDREW DICKSON WHITE volume 1
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“Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies - unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand - unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.”

MadeActionLawCompanyFailingSpecialCircumstancesDemandTrainRateAverageVarietyEnterpriseUnusualRequirementsEmergenciesPassengersHabitualRailwayPrivate EnterpriseLumberShopkeepers
Book:Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative
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“In railway halls, on pavements near the traffic, They beg, their eyes made big by empty staring And only measuring Time , like the blank clock. No, I shall weave no tracery of pen-ornament To make them birds upon my singing tree: Time merely drives these lives which do not live As tides push rotten stuff along the shore.”

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Book:New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender
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“Nationalisation...does not in itself engender greater equality, more jobs in the regions, higher investment or industrial democracy. The public knows this perfectly well, and so do the workers who have suffered from pit closures, steel redundancies and the run-down of the railways. It is idiotic to try to bamboozle them.”

KnowsTryingWellsDoeRunningJobsDemocracyGreaterHigherInvestmentWorkersRegionsSteelPitsClosureIdioticRailwayRedundancyBamboozle
Author:Anthony Crosland
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“I was born in a very poor family. I used to sell tea in a railway coach as a child. My mother used to wash utensils and do lowly household work in the houses of others to earn a livelihood. I have seen poverty very closely. I have lived in poverty.I decided that I would not live for myself but would live for others.”

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Author:Narendra Modi
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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.”

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Author:Theo van Doesburg
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“What, then, do they want a government for? Not to regulate commerce; not to educate the people; not to teach religion, not to administer charity; not to make roads and railways; but simply to defend the natural rights of man -- to protect person and property -- to prevent the aggressions of the powerful upon the weak -- in a word, to administer justice. This is the natural, the original, office of a government. It was not intended to do less: it ought not to be allowed to do more.”

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Book:The Man versus the State: Great Essays
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“Now, to tell my story--if not as it ought to be told, at least as I can tell it,--I must go back sixteen years, to the days when Whitbury boasted of forty coaches per diem, instead of one railway, and set forth how in its southern suburb, there stood two pleasant house side by side, with their gardens sloping down to the Whit, and parted from each other only by the high brick fruit-wall, through which there used to be a door of communication; for the two occupiers were fast friends.”

IfsYearsI CanTwoBookStoriesUsedHouseSidesDoorsCommunicationWallOughtGardenFruitCoachesUsed To BePleasantFortySouthernBricksSuburbsSixteenRailway
Book:Two years ago ... Third edition
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“one reason we haven't any national art is because we have too much magnificence. All our capacity for admiration is used up on the splendor of palace-like railway stations and hotels. Our national tympanum is so deafened by that blare of sumptuousness that we have no ears for the still, small voice of beauty.”

ArtStillsReasonUsedVoiceBeautyUnited StatesToo MuchHavensArt IsCapacityEarsHotelStationsAdmirationPalacesSplendorRailwayMagnificenceSmall VoiceRailway Station
Book:The Bent Twig
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“It is only comparatively primitive machinery that affords a stimulus, and there is already a faint period touch about Pacific 231 and Le Pas d'Acier. One feels...that Prokofieff should have written ballets about the spinning jenny and the Luddite riots; that Honegger should have been there to celebrate the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway and the death of Huskisson with a "Symphonie Triomphale et Funèbre".”

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Author:Constant Lambert
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