steam quotes

And the smell of the library was always the samethe musty odour of old clothes mixed with the keener scent of unwashed bodies, creating what the chief librarian had once described as 'the steam of the social soup'.

- Peter Ackroyd
  Chatterton, ch.5.

Alone in the hissing laboratory of his wishes, Mr Pugh minces among bad vats and jeroboams, tiptoes through spinneys of murdering herbs, agony dancing in his crucibles, and mixes especially for Mrs Pugh a venomous porridge unknown to toxicologists which will scald and viper through her until her ears fall off like figs, her toes grow big and black as balloons, and steam comes screaming out of her navel.

- Dylan Marlais Thomas
  Under MilkWood.

   That vessel in which the powers of steam are to be employed to work the engine, which is called the Cylinder in common fire engines, and which I call the SteamVessel, must, during the whole time the engine is at work, be kept ashot asthesteamthat entersit; first, by enclosing it ina case of wood, oranyother materialsthat transmit heat slowly; secondly, by surrounding it with steam or other heated bodies; and thirdly, by suffering neither water noranyother substance colder thansteam to enter and touch it during that time.

-James Watt
  Specification of patent, 5 Jan, for a new method of lessening the consumption of steam and fuel in fire engines.