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motion quotes

  •    Merit and good works is the end of man's motion, and conscience of the same is the accomplishment of man's rest.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Essays, no.11,'Of Great Place'.

  • Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the shadow.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      'The Hollow Men'.

  • The aimof everyartist istoarrest motion, which islife, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

    -William Harrison Faulkner
      Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

  •    It is this backward motion toward the source, Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in. The tribute of the current to the source.

    - Robert Lee Frost
      'West-Running Brook'.

  • The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here todayin next week tomorrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumpedalways somebody else's horizon!

    - Kenneth Grahame
       Toad rhapsodizes about the motor car. The Wind in the Willows, ch.2.

  • At worst, one is in motion; and at best, Reaching no absolute, in which to rest, One is always nearer by not keeping still.

    -Thom(sonWilliam) Gunn
      'On the Move'.

  • To be no more; sad cure; for who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion?

    -John Milton
      Belial. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.146^51.

  • There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.

    -Vladimir Nabokov
      The Gift, ch.1.

  • Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus illud a viribus impressis cogitur statum suum mutare. Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon.

    - Sir Isaac Newton
      First Law of Motion. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (translated by Andrew Motte,1729).

  • Mutationem motus proportionalem esse vi motrici impressae et fieri secundum lineam rectam qua vis illa imprimitur. The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.

    - Sir Isaac Newton
      Second Law of Motion. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (translated by Andrew Motte,1729).

  • Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move, And when this dust falls to the urn In that state I came, return.

    - Henry Vaughan
      Silex Scintillans,'The Retreat'.

  • Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest And passage through these looms God ordered motion, but ordained no rest.

    - Henry Vaughan
      Silex Scintillans,'Man'.

  •    A strange manner of battle, where one side works by constant motion and ceaseless charges, while the other can but endure passivelyas it standsfixed tothesod.The Norman arrow and sword worked on: in the English ranks the only movement was the dropping of the dead: the living stood motionless.

    -William of Poitiers   11c.
    c.1071 Of theBattle of Hastings,14 Oct1066. Gesta Guillelmi ducis Normannorum et regis Anglorum (edited by R Foreville,1952).

  • A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course With rocks, and stones and trees.

    -William Wordsworth
      'A slumber did my spirit seal', complete poem (published 1800).

  • Wisdom and Spirit of the universe! Thou soul, that art the eternity of thought, And giv'st to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion.

    -William Wordsworth
      'Influenceof NaturalObjects', l.1^4 (publishedinTheFriend 28 Dec1809).

  • When we had given our bodies to the wind, And all the shadowy banks on either side Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still The rapid line of motion, then at once Have I, reclining back upon my heels, Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs Wheeled by meeven as if the earth had rolled With visible motion her diurnal round!

    -William Wordsworth
      'Influence of Natural Objects', l.53^60 (published in The Friend 28 Dec1809).

  • It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea: Listen! the mighty being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thundereverlastingly.

    -William Wordsworth
      'It is a beauteous evening calm and free', l.1^8 (published 1807).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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