Wind Mill Quotes

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When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. {Letter to John Adams, from Monticello, 15 August 1820}
Thomas Jefferson (Letters of Thomas Jefferson)
I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.
Henry David Thoreau
It's not enough to abolish abuse; custom must also be transformed. The mill was pulled down, but the wind still blows.
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
All you have done is to be different from other women and you have made a little success of it. This is unforgivable sin in any society. The mere fact that you have succeed to run the mill is an insult to everyman who hasn't succeed.
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind, Part 2 of 2)
There were oil wells everywhere. The soil had been abandoned to dust and lizards, and the backyard of every wind-blistered bungalow in town had thrown over ideas of shade or geraniums in favor of the whiskey promise in the mutter of those green grasshopper pumps...A dozen ravenous steel insects sucked at the shit-caked loam in the mile-square meatfield of empty pens where the beeves, when there were beeves, milled waiting for the knife. (125)
Katherine Dunn (Geek Love)
He thinks, ten years I have had my soul flattened and pressed till it’s not the thickness of paper. Henry has ground and ground me in the mill of his desires, and now I am fined down to dust I am no more use to him, I am powder in the wind. Princes hate those to whom they have incurred debts.
Hilary Mantel (The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3))
The park is high. And as out of a house I step out of its glimmering half-light into openness and evening. Into the wind, the same wind that the clouds feel, the bright rivers and the turning mills that stand slowly grinding at the sky's edge. Now I too am a thing held in its hand, the smallest thing under the sky. --Look: Is that one sky?: Blissfully lucid blue, into which ever purer clouds throng, and under it all white in endless changes, and over it that huge, thin-spun gray, pulsing warmly as on red underpaint, and over everything this silent radiance of a setting sun. Miraculous structure, moved within itself and upheld by itself, shaping figures, giant wings, faults and high mountain ridges before the first star and suddenly, there: a gate into such distances as perhaps only birds know...
Rainer Maria Rilke (The Book of Images)
He smelled the odor of the pine boughs under him, the piney smell of the crushed needles and the sharper odor of the resinous sap from the cut limbs. ... This is the smell I love. This and fresh-cut clover, the crushed sage as you ride after cattle, wood-smoke and the burning leaves of autumn. That must be the odor of nostalgia, the smell of the smoke from the piles of raked leaves burning in the streets in the fall in Missoula. Which would you rather smell? Sweet grass the Indians used in their baskets? Smoked leather? The odor of the ground in the spring after rain? The smell of the sea as you walk through the gorse on a headland in Galicia? Or the wind from the land as you come in toward Cuba in the dark? That was the odor of cactus flowers, mimosa and the sea-grape shrubs. Or would you rather smell frying bacon in the morning when you are hungry? Or coffee in the morning? Or a Jonathan apple as you bit into it? Or a cider mill in the grinding, or bread fresh from the oven?
Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls)
To wipe out abuse is not enough; you have to change people's whole outlook. The mill is no longer standing, but the wind's still there, blowing away.
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer; the wind is still there.
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
It was an old hunter in camp and the hunter shared tobacco with him and told him of the buffalo and the stands he'd made against them, laid up in a sag on some rise with the dead animals scattered over the grounds and the herd beginning to mill and the riflebarrel so hot the wiping patches sizzled in the bore and the animals by the thousands and the tens of thousands and the hides pegged out over actual square miles of ground the teams of skinners spelling one another around the clock and the shooting and shooting weeks and months till the bore shot slick and the stock shot loose at the tang and their shoulders were yellow and blue to the elbow and the tandem wagons groaned away over the prairie twenty and twenty-two ox teams and the flint hides by the hundred ton and the meat rotting on the ground and the air whining with flies and the buzzards and ravens and the night a horror of snarling and feeding with the wolves half-crazed and wallowing in the carrion. I seen Studebaker wagons with six and eight ox teams headed out for the grounds not hauling a thing but lead. Just pure galena. Tons of it. On this ground alone between the Arkansas River and the Concho there were eight million carcasses for that's how many hides reached the railhead. Two years ago we pulled out from Griffin for a last hunt. We ransacked the country. Six weeks. Finally found a herd of eight animals and we killed them and come in. They're gone. Ever one of them that God ever made is gone as if they'd never been at all. The ragged sparks blew down the wind. The prairie about them lay silent. Beyond the fire it was cold and the night was clear and the stars were falling. The old hunter pulled his blanket about him. I wonder if there's other worlds like this, he said. Or if this is the only one.
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
Mystic The air is a mill of hooks - Questions without answer, Glittering and drunk as flies Whose kiss stings unbearably In the fetid wombs of black air under pines in summer. I remember The dead smell of sun on wood cabins, The stiffness of sails, the long salt winding sheets. Once one has seen God, what is the remedy? Once one has been seized up Without a part left over, Not a toe, not a finger, and used, Used utterly, in the sun’s conflagrations, the stains That lengthen from ancient cathedrals What is the remedy? The pill of the Communion tablet, The walking beside still water? Memory? Or picking up the bright pieces of Christ in the faces of rodents, The tame flower- nibblers, the ones Whose hopes are so low they are comfortable - The humpback in his small, washed cottage Under the spokes of the clematis. Is there no great love, only tenderness? Does the sea Remember the walker upon it? Meaning leaks from the molecules. The chimneys of the city breathe, the window sweats, The children leap in their cots. The sun blooms, it is a geranium. The heart has not stopped.
Sylvia Plath (The Collected Poems)
FIDDLER JONES The earth keeps some vibration going There in your heart, and that is you. And if the people find you can fiddle, Why, fiddle you must, for all your life. What do you see, a harvest of clover? Or a meadow to walk through to the river? The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands For beeves hereafter ready for the market; Or else you hear the rustle of skirts. Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove. To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth; They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy Stepping it off, to Toor-a-Loor. How could I till my forty acres Not to speak of getting more, With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos Stirred in my brain by crows and robins And the creak of a will-mill – only these? And I never started to plow in my life That some one did not stop in the road And take me away to a dance or picnic. I ended up with forty acres; I ended up with a broken fiddle – And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, And not a single regret.
Edgar Lee Masters (Spoon River Anthology)
The principal reason for this limited mastery of materials was the energy constraint: for millennia our abilities to extract, process, and transport biomaterials and minerals were limited by the capacities of animate prime movers (human and animal muscles) aided by simple mechanical devices and by only slowly improving capabilities of the three ancient mechanical prime movers: sails, water wheels, and wind mills. Only the conversion of the chemical energy in fossil fuels to the inexpensive and universally deployable kinetic energy of mechanical prime movers (first by external combustion of coal to power steam engines, later by internal combustion of liquids and gases to energize gasoline and Diesel engines and, later still, gas turbines) brought a fundamental change and ushered in the second, rapidly ascending, phase of material consumption, an era further accelerated by generation of electricity and by the rise of commercial chemical syntheses producing an enormous variety of compounds ranging from fertilizers to plastics and drugs.
Vaclav Smil (Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization)
He sleeps the deep, dreamless sleep of the very young, while outside the river of wind blows over Tarker’s Mills, washing out October
Stephen King (Cycle of the Werewolf)
Down the Woodstock Road towards them an elderly, abnormally thin man was pedalling, his thin white hair streaming in the wind and sheer desperation in his eyes. Immediately behind him, running for their lives, came Scylla and Charybdis; behind them, a milling, shouting rout of undergraduates, with Mr Adrian Barnaby (on a bicycle) well in the van; behind them, the junior proctor, the University Marshal, and two bullers, packed into a small Austin car and looking very elect, severe and ineffectual; and last of all, faint but pursuing, lumbered the ungainly form of Mr Hoskins.
Edmund Crispin (The Moving Toyshop (Gervase Fen, #3))
The wind had kept up its sullen howl. The late-afternoon sun continued to shine in through the window, laying a blanket of bright gold over the woman and her almost-baby. The old clock on the kitchen wall still clicked its minutes with fussy punctuality. A life had come and gone and nature had not paused a second for it. The machine of time and space grinds on, and people are fed through it like grist through the mill.
M.L. Stedman (The Light Between Oceans)
Did I write to you about the storm I watched not long ago? The sea was yellowish, especially close to the shore. On the horizon a streak of light and above it immensely large dark grey clouds, from which one could see the rain coming down in slanting streaks. The wind blew the dust from the little white path among the rocks into the sea and shook the hawthorn bushes in bloom and the wallflowers that grow on the rocks. To the right, fields of young green corn and in the distance the town, which, with it’s towers, mills, slate roofs, Gothic-style houses and the harbour below, between two jetties sticking out into the sea, looked like the towns Albert Durer used to etch.
Vincent van Gogh
This afternoon, being on Fair Haven Hill, I heard the sound of a saw, and soon after from the Cliff saw two men sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty rods off. I resolved to watch it till it fell, the last of a dozen or more which were left when the forest was cut and for fifteen years have waved in solitary majesty over the sprout-land. I saw them like beavers or insects gnawing at the trunk of this noble tree, the diminutive manikins with their cross-cut saw which could scarcely span it. It towered up a hundred feet as I afterward found by measurement, one of the tallest probably in the township and straight as an arrow, but slanting a little toward the hillside, its top seen against the frozen river and the hills of Conantum. I watch closely to see when it begins to move. Now the sawers stop, and with an axe open it a little on the side toward which it leans, that it may break the faster. And now their saw goes again. Now surely it is going; it is inclined one quarter of the quadrant, and, breathless, I expect its crashing fall. But no, I was mistaken; it has not moved an inch; it stands at the same angle as at first. It is fifteen minutes yet to its fall. Still its branches wave in the wind, as it were destined to stand for a century, and the wind soughs through its needles as of yore; it is still a forest tree, the most majestic tree that waves over Musketaquid. The silvery sheen of the sunlight is reflected from its needles; it still affords an inaccessible crotch for the squirrel’s nest; not a lichen has forsaken its mast-like stem, its raking mast,—the hill is the hulk. Now, now’s the moment! The manikins at its base are fleeing from their crime. They have dropped the guilty saw and axe. How slowly and majestic it starts! as it were only swayed by a summer breeze, and would return without a sigh to its location in the air. And now it fans the hillside with its fall, and it lies down to its bed in the valley, from which it is never to rise, as softly as a feather, folding its green mantle about it like a warrior, as if, tired of standing, it embraced the earth with silent joy, returning its elements to the dust again. But hark! there you only saw, but did not hear. There now comes up a deafening crash to these rocks , advertising you that even trees do not die without a groan. It rushes to embrace the earth, and mingle its elements with the dust. And now all is still once more and forever, both to eye and ear. I went down and measured it. It was about four feet in diameter where it was sawed, about one hundred feet long. Before I had reached it the axemen had already divested it of its branches. Its gracefully spreading top was a perfect wreck on the hillside as if it had been made of glass, and the tender cones of one year’s growth upon its summit appealed in vain and too late to the mercy of the chopper. Already he has measured it with his axe, and marked off the mill-logs it will make. And the space it occupied in upper air is vacant for the next two centuries. It is lumber. He has laid waste the air. When the fish hawk in the spring revisits the banks of the Musketaquid, he will circle in vain to find his accustomed perch, and the hen-hawk will mourn for the pines lofty enough to protect her brood. A plant which it has taken two centuries to perfect, rising by slow stages into the heavens, has this afternoon ceased to exist. Its sapling top had expanded to this January thaw as the forerunner of summers to come. Why does not the village bell sound a knell? I hear no knell tolled. I see no procession of mourners in the streets, or the woodland aisles. The squirrel has leaped to another tree; the hawk has circled further off, and has now settled upon a new eyrie, but the woodman is preparing [to] lay his axe at the root of that also.
Henry David Thoreau (The Journal, 1837-1861)
A congeries of motives prevents us from blowing up our spinning mills and reviving the distaff. Gandhi had a try at this sort of revolution: he was as simple-minded as a child trying to empty the sea on to the sand with the aid of a tea-cup.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Wind, Sand And Stars (Harvest Book))
Alas! The work was incomplete, I admit: we demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas. To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer; the wind is still there.
Victor Hugo (Complete Works of Victor Hugo)
sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly presence—nobles of great power all of them; but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
With the money my mother earned from selling cakes, my father cut a deal with Mangochi and bought one pail of maize. My mother took it to the mill, saved half the flour for us, and used the rest for more cakes. We did this every day, taking enough to eat and selling the rest. It was enough to provide our one blob of nsima each night, along with some pumpkin leaves. It was practically nothing, yet knowing it would be there somehow made the hunger less painful. "As long as we can stay in business," my father said, "we'll make it through. Our profit is that we live.
William Kamkwamba (The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope)
He thinks, ten years I have had my soul flattened and pressed till is not the thickness of paper. Henry has ground and ground me in the mill of his desires, and now I am fined down to dust I am no more use to him, I am powder in the wind. Princes hate those to whom they have incurred debts.
Hilary Mantel (The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3))
How could the wind be so strong, so far inland, that cyclists coming into the town in the late afternoon looked more like sailors in peril? This was on the way into Cambridge, up Mill Road past the cemetery and the workhouse. On the open ground to the left the willow-trees had been blown, driven and cracked until their branches gave way and lay about the drenched grass, jerking convulsively and trailing cataracts of twigs. The cows had gone mad, tossing up the silvery weeping leaves which were suddenly, quite contrary to all their exper- ience, everywhere within reach. Their horns were festooned with willow boughs. Not being able to see properly, they tripped and fell. Two or three of them were wallowing on their backs, idiotically, exhibiting vast pale bellies intended by nature to be always hidden. They were still munching. A scene of disorder, tree-tops on the earth, legs in the air, in a university city devoted to logic and reason.
Penelope Fitzgerald (The Gate of Angels)
Si je cherche dans mes souvenirs ceux qui m'ont laissé un goût durable, si je fais le bilan des heures qui ont compté, à coup sûr je retrouve celles que nulle fortune ne m'eût procurées. On n'achète pas l'amitié d'un Mermoz, d'un compagnon que les épreuves vécues ensemble ont lié à nous pour toujours. Cette nuit de vol et ses cent mille étoiles, cette sérénité, cette souveraineté de quelques heures, l'argent ne les achète pas. Cet aspect neuf du monde après l'étape difficile, ces arbres, ces fleurs, ces femmes, ces sourires fraîchement colorés par la vie qui vient de nous être rendue à l'aube, ce concert de petites choses qui nous récompensent, l'argent ne les achète pas.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Wind, Sand and Stars)
Summer days in the valley were the closest thing I had to religion. The shattered-glass water in the creek, the abundance of the mill, running like the wind was carrying me against an earth full of bones. It was awe and repentance, holy baptism washing the soles of my dirty feet. It was daydreaming that felt real for survival. It was all sacred ritual, inadvertent and weightless as grace.
Raechel Anne Jolie (Rust Belt Femme)
All you’ve done is to be different from other women and you’ve made a little success at it. As I’ve told you before, that is the one unforgivable sin in any society. Be different and be damned! Scarlett, the mere fact that you’ve made a success of your mill is an insult to every man who hasn’t succeeded. Remember, a well-bred female’s place is in the home and she should know nothing about this busy, brutal world.
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
We will be making pancakes. Oh, not for now, of course. But for later, we have crêpes aux mille trous, and harira soup, with lemons and dates. At Ramadan, everyone fasts, but we think about food all the time; we buy food, we prepare food, we offer food to our neighbors, we even dream of food- that is, if this wind allows us to sleep. I will bring some Moroccan sweets; some macaroons, and gazelle's horns, and almond meringues, and chebakia.
Joanne Harris (Peaches for Father Francis (Chocolat, #3))
Wind rips through the crags a thousand feet above, nothing moving in this godforsaken town, and the mule skinner knows that something is wrong. Two miles south stands Bartholomew Packer’s mine, the Godsend, a twenty-stamp mill that should be filling this box canyon with the thudding racket of the rock crushers pulverizing ore. The sound of the stamps in operation is the sound of money being made, and only two things will stop them—Christmas and tragedy.
Blake Crouch (Abandon)
Where is she? Living or dead, where is she? If, as he folds the handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an enchanted power to bring before him the place where she found it and the night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child, would he descry her there? On the waste where the brick-kilns are burning with a pale blue flare, where the straw-roofs of the wretched huts in which the bricks are made are being scattered by the wind, where the clay and water are hard frozen and the mill in which the gaunt blind horse goes round all day looks like an instrument of human torture—traversing this deserted, blighted spot there is a lonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all companionship. It is the figure of a woman, too; but it is miserably dressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall and out at the great door of the Dedlock mansion.
Charles Dickens (Bleak House)
Rainwater purls from cloud to roof to eave. Werner presses his forehead to the window of the dormer and peers through the drops, the roof below just one among a cluster of wet rooftops, hemmed in by the vast walls of the cokery and smelter and gasworks, the winding tower silhouetted against the sky, mine and mill running on and on, acre after acre, beyond his range of sight, to the villages, the cities, the ever-quickening, ever-expanding machine that is Germany. And a million men ready to set down their lives for it.
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
So far as Louis XVI. was concerned, I said `no.' I did not think that I had the right to kill a man; but I felt it my duty to exterminate evil. I voted the end of the tyrant, that is to say, the end of prostitution for woman, the end of slavery for man, the end of night for the child. In voting for the Republic, I voted for that. I voted for fraternity, concord, the dawn. I have aided in the overthrow of prejudices and errors. The crumbling away of prejudices and errors causes light. We have caused the fall of the old world, and the old world, that vase of miseries, has become, through its upsetting upon the human race, an urn of joy." "Mixed joy," said the Bishop. "You may say troubled joy, and to-day, after that fatal return of the past, which is called 1814, joy which has disappeared! Alas! The work was incomplete, I admit: we demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas. To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer; the wind is still there." "You have demolished. It may be of use to demolish, but I distrust a demolition complicated with wrath." "Right has its wrath, Bishop; and the wrath of right is an element of progress. In any case, and in spite of whatever may be said, the French Revolution is the most important step of the human race since the advent of Christ. Incomplete, it may be, but sublime. It set free all the unknown social quantities; it softened spirits, it calmed, appeased, enlightened; it caused the waves of civilization to flow over the earth. It was a good thing. The French Revolution is the consecration of humanity.
Victor Hugo (Fantine: Les Misérables #1)
Vellum” is another name for skin—at one point, philosophy was bound up in the stuff. I reached down to pick up James’s first edition of Samuel Clarke’s A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, published in 1705, and gently fingered its cold white surface as if it were a sacred relic. The term “philosophical corpus” had never made sense until now. I turned the book over. Tenderly. It was a little body: skin wrapped around something beautiful and inexplicable. Putting it under my arm, I turned to the back corners of the library. Tucked away on one of the back shelves was Josiah Royce’s library: Descartes, Spinoza, Fichte, Mill, Dilthey, Lotze, Tarde, Boole. These books were filled with marginalia. I took a quick look at one of Royce’s jottings—something written in Greek about God and strife—but then grabbed the books that I could carry. I would think about marginalia later. This wasn’t just any set of books. It was the bridge between European and American philosophy. That afternoon at dusk I had the unshakable sense that I was missing the most important part of West Wind, and over the course of three years I saw that this premonition was more correct than I could have known. Instead
John Kaag (American Philosophy: A Love Story)
For suddenly, just as the men tried to cross, a fatal bird-sign flashed before their eyes, an eagle flying high on the left across their front and clutching a monstrous bloody serpent in both talons, still alive, still struggling-it had not lost its fight, writhing back to strike it fanged the chest of its captor right beside the throat-and agonized by the bites the eagle flung it away to earth, dashed it down amidst the milling fighters, loosed a shriek and the bird veered off along the gusting wind. The Trojans shuddered to see the serpent glistening, wriggling at their feet, a sign from storming Zeus.
Homer (Iliad)
The Netherlands capital of Amsterdam amsterdam cruise is a thriving metropolis and one from the world's popular cities. If you are planning a trip to the metropolis, but are unclear about what you should do presently there, why not possess a little fun and spend time learning about how it's stereotypically known for? How come they put on clogs? When was the wind mill first utilised there? In addition, be sure to include all your feels on your journey and taste the phenomenal cheeses along with smell the stunning tulips. It's really recommended that you stay in a city motel, Amsterdam is quite spread out and residing in hotels close to the city-centre allows for the easiest access to public transportation. Beyond the clichés So that you can know precisely why a stereotype exists it usually is important to discover its source. Clogs: The Dutch have already been wearing solid wood shoes, as well as "Klompen" as they are referred to, for approximately 700 years. They were originally made out of a timber sole along with a leather top or band tacked for the wood. Nevertheless, the shoes had been eventually created completely from wood to safeguard the whole base. Wooden shoe wearers state the shoes are usually warm during the cold months and cool during the warm months. The first guild associated with clog designers dates back to a number exceeding 1570 in Holland. When making blockages, both shoes of a set must be created from the same kind of timber, even the same side of a tree, in order that the wood will certainly shrink in the same charge. While most blocks today are produced by equipment, a few shoemakers are left and they normally set up store in vacationer areas near any city hotel. Amsterdam also offers a clog-making museum, Klompenmakerij De Zaanse Schans, that highlights your shoe's history and significance. Windmills: The first windmills have been demonstrated to have existed in Netherlands from about the year 1200. Today, there are eight leftover windmills in the capital. The most effective to visit is De Gooyer, which has been built in 1725 over the Nieuwevaart Canal. Their location in the east involving city's downtown area signifies it is readily available from any metropolis hotel. Amsterdam enjoys its beer and it actually has a brewery right on the doorstep to the wind generator. So if you are enjoying a historic site it's also possible to enjoy a scrumptious ice-cold beer - what more would you ask for? Mozerella: It's impossible to vacation to Amsterdam without sampling several of its wonderful cheeses. In accordance with the locals, probably the most flavourful cheeses are available at the Wegewijs Emporium. With over 50 international cheese and A hundred domestic parmesan cheesse, you will surely have a wide-variety to pick from.
Step Into the Stereotypes of Amsterdam
Beneath a necessity thus almighty, what is artificial in man's life seems insignificant. He seems to take his task so minutely from intimations of Nature, that his works become as it were hers, and he is no longer free. But if we work within this limit, she yields us all her strength. All powerful action is performed by bringing the forces of nature to bear upon our objects. We do not grind corn or lift the loom by our own strength, but we build a mill in such position as to set the north wind to play upon our instrument, or the elastic force of steam, or the ebb and flow of the sea. So in our handiwork, we do few things by muscular force, but we place ourselves in such attitudes as to bring the force of gravity, that is, the weight of the planet, to bear upon the spade or the axe we wield. In short, in all our operations we seek not to use our own, but to bring a quite infinite force to bear.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Society and Solitude)
I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that some one may convey an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone—but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.
Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
To make a fresh start, the first thing I had to do was get rid of my stack of manuscript paper and my fountain pen. As long as they were sitting in front of me, what I was doing felt like “literature.” In their place, I pulled out my old Olivetti typewriter from the closet. Then, as an experiment, I decided to write the opening of my novel in English. Since I was willing to try anything, I figured, why not give that a shot? Needless to say, my ability in English composition didn’t amount to much. My vocabulary was severely limited, as was my command of English syntax. I could only write in simple, short sentences. Which meant that, however complex and numerous the thoughts running around my head, I couldn’t even attempt to set them down as they came to me. The language had to be simple, my ideas expressed in an easy-to-understand way, the descriptions stripped of all extraneous fat, the form made compact, everything arranged to fit a container of limited size. The result was a rough, uncultivated kind of prose. As I struggled to express myself in that fashion, however, step by step, a distinctive rhythm began to take shape. Since I was born and raised in Japan, the vocabulary and patterns of the Japanese language had filled the system that was me to bursting, like a barn crammed with livestock. When I sought to put my thoughts and feelings into words, those animals began to mill about, and the system crashed.
Haruki Murakami (Wind/Pinball: Two Novels)
I sucked on a blade of grass and watched the millwheel turn. I was lying on my stomach on the stream's opposite bank, my head propped in my hands. There was a tiny rainbow in the mist above the froth and boil at the foot of the waterfall, and an occasional droplet found its way to me. The steady splashing and the sound of the wheel drowned out all other noises in the wood. The mill was deserted today, and I contemplated it because I had not seen its like in ages. Watching the wheel and listening to the water were more than just relaxing. It was somewhat hypnotic. … My head nodding with each creak of the wheel, I forced everything else from my mind and set about remembering the necessary texture of the sand, its coloration, the temperature, the winds, the touch of salt in the air, the clouds... I slept then and I dreamed, but not of the place that I sought. I regarded a big roulette wheel, and we were all of us on it-my brothers, my sisters, myself, and others whom I knew or had known-rising and falling, each with his allotted section. We were all shouting for it to stop for us and wailing as we passed the top and headed down once more. The wheel had begun to slow and I was on the rise. A fair-haired youth hung upside down before me, shouting pleas and warnings that were drowned in the cacophony of voices. His face darkened, writhed, became a horrible thing to behold, and I slashed at the cord that bound his ankle and he fell from sight. The wheel slowed even more as I neared the top, and I saw Lorraine then. She was gesturing, beckoning frantically, and calling my name. I leaned toward her, seeing her clearly, wanting her, wanting to help her. But as the wheel continued its turning she passed from my sight. “Corwin!” I tried to ignore her cry, for I was almost to the top. It came again, but I tensed myself and prepared to spring upward. If it did not stop for me, I was going to try gimmicking the damned thing, even though falling off would mean my total ruin. I readied myself for the leap. Another click... “Corwin!” It receded, returned, faded, and I was looking toward the water wheel again with my name echoing in my ears and mingling, merging, fading into the sound of the stream. … It plunged for over a thousand feet: a mighty cataract that smote the gray river like an anvil. The currents were rapid and strong, bearing bubbles and flecks of foam a great distance before they finally dissolved. Across from us, perhaps half a mile distant, partly screened by rainbow and mist, like an island slapped by a Titan, a gigantic wheel slowly rotated, ponderous and gleaming. High overhead, enormous birds rode like drifting crucifixes the currents of the air. We stood there for a fairly long while. Conversation was impossible, which was just as well. After a time, when she turned from it to look at me, narrow-eyed, speculative, I nodded and gestured with my eyes toward the wood. Turning then, we made our way back in the direction from which we had come. Our return was the same process in reverse, and I managed it with greater ease. When conversation became possible once more, Dara still kept her silence, apparently realizing by then that I was a part of the process of change going on around us. It was not until we stood beside our own stream once more, watching the small mill wheel in its turning, that she spoke.
Roger Zelazny (The Great Book of Amber (The Chronicles of Amber, #1-10))
All that was long ago, and a mill does not turn upon water that is past, nor does a ship sail with the winds of yesterday.
Louis L'Amour (Rivers West: A Novel (The Talon and Chantry series Book 8))
In September the new socialist government made its ultimate intentions clear: there would be no more inventories. Instead, my family was informed its rice mills were being permanently “borrowed” by the government and the government’s own employees would be brought in to work them. My family was left with no alternative but to walk away and leave behind everything they had worked for.
Vinh Chung (Where the Wind Leads: A Refugee Family's Miraculous Story of Loss, Rescue, and Redemption)
Second, I was brilliant. Not just your run-of-the mill brilliance either. I was extraordinarily brilliant.
Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
We soar the skies Free to a certain extent, As long as we stay hidden From prying human eyes. Our scales differ in color Our defensive weapons, Tails, horns, talons and all, Are never the same. We are one with nature We blend in with nature The wind helps us soar high in the heavens While the earth grant us healing strength in our hour of need. We are one with the world We are the guardians of our kin When evil conspire to maim and hurt We are protectors of this human race. As majestic animals of fairytales We share our beings with great men They walk in honor and the grace of Fate, Fate that we cannot deny.
Julia Mills (Her Dragon To Slay (Dragon Guards, #1))
Regardless of whether you think the industrial era has been good or bad, three profoundly fundamental shifts underlie this revolution. The first is that industrialists harnessed new sources of energy, primarily to produce things. Preindustrial people occasionally used wind or water to generate power, but they mostly relied on muscles—human and animal—to generate force. Industrial pioneers such as James Watt (who invented the modern steam engine) figured out how to transform energy from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas into steam, electricity, and other kinds of power to run machines. The first of these machines were designed to make textiles, but within decades others were invented to make iron, mill wood, plow fields, transport things, and do just about everything else one can manufacture and sell (including beer)7. A second major component of the Industrial Revolution was a reorganization of economies and social institutions. As industrialization gathered steam, capitalism, in which individuals compete to produce goods and services for profit, became the world’s dominant economic system, spurring the development of further industrialization and social change. As workers changed their locus of activity from the farm to factories and companies, more people had to work together even as they needed to perform more specialized activities. Factories required more coordination and regulation. In
Daniel E. Lieberman (The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease)
Turning to the northwest I see the much nearer fires on the hill, like a dwarfish volcano. Vigorous figures mill about the blazes, their shadows hopping and hobnobbing, like island natives beside a night-painted ocean. I might’ve been able to catch the sounds of their carnivalesque revelling if there weren’t so much music and mad gaiety behind me. Far beyond the hill, the forest ends at the grey northern stretch of moorland with its dead whip of gritty roadway, down which I had seen the Night Hounds. Now, hooded figures trundle the same gloomy way. I wonder, are those druidic forms en route to the fire-capped hilltop? It seems a long way to go. Further north, past that winding road, the watching mountains tower, nigh-entirely disguised against the sky, one ebon peak protruding sharply, resembling an unapproachable pyramid or similar conical fortress. It must be some falsifying angle of light and shadow from the sky which has accentuated that dome in such a way - I well knew that those mountains should seem far smoother, more gentle, not nearly so sharp and craggy as that peak now appeared.
Avalon Brantley (The House of Silence)
lanes. The mill wheel on the horizon turning its daily grind as chimneys breathed tendrils of smoke into the Wiltshire sky and smartly attired gentlemen played cricket on the Barley Field. Nothing now. Not even the distant din of agricultural equipment ploughing the fields. Just silence. Heavy. Oppressive. I glimpsed something then, a quick movement at the very edge of my field of vision. There were enough trees in the churchyard; it might easily have been a branch stirring on the wind . . . I looked to the great elm tree at the far end of the churchyard and saw, in the shadow cast by its overhanging branches, an ornate memorial stone fashioned from smooth white marble in the shape of a lamb. On either side of the lamb were two stone urns. Something told me there was only one family in Imber who could have afforded such a monument. With weather-worn angels looming on all sides of me, I crossed the churchyard to examine the impressive monument, and wasn’t surprised to find I was right. IN LOVING MEMORY OF PIERRE HOWISON HARTWELL APRIL 1925 – OCTOBER 1930
Neil Spring (The Lost Village (The Ghost Hunters, #2))
One thing about living in a town with a mill, you wanted to be on the right side of the wind. But it always seemed like he was downwind, no matter where he stood.
Nathan Hystad (The Other Place (The Glass, #1))
The slide changed to a picture of Kattan walking down a narrow cobblestone street, head down and collar up against what appeared to be a stiff wind. “This was taken yesterday in southern Spain. Granada to be precise.
Kyle Mills (Total Power (Mitch Rapp, #19))
There's a subdivision near us called Mill Run. By a stroke of good luck, the planners decided to line the streets with silver maples instead of those trees from the pit of Gehenna known as Bradford pears. (Bradford pears, by the way, are an abomination. I'm not using that word flippantly. They were engineered in the 1960s and because they cross-pollinate with every other kind of pear tree, their prolific offspring is destroying forests faster than kudzu. I think of them as a tree version of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. They're preferred by developers because they're cheap, they grow fast, and they produce malodorous but pretty white flowers in the spring, which happens to be when most home sales happen. But after the developers leave, the trees require regular pruning, a gust of wind can split them in half, and they're producing an inhospitable forest of non-native offspring that's riddled with thorns. Left unchecked, they'll soon overtake all the lovely oaks, maples, sycamores, and ashes that are native to our part of the world. Take my word for it: they're awful. If you have one in your yard, for goodness sake, cut it down and spend $25 on a maple at Lowe’s.
Jeffrey W. Barbeau (God and Wonder: Theology, Imagination, and the Arts)
LOVE IS THE MASTER Love is the One who masters all things; I am mastered totally by Love. By my passion of love for Love I have ground sweet as sugar. O furious Wind, I am only a straw before you; How could I know where I will be blown next? Whoever claims to have made a pact with Destiny Reveals himself a liar and a fool; What is any of us but a straw in a storm? How could anyone make a pact with a hurricane? God is working everywhere his massive Resurrection; How can we pretend to act on our own? In the hand of Love I am like a cat in a sack; Sometimes Love hoists me into the air, Sometimes Love flings me into the air, Love swings me round and round His head; I have no peace, in this world or any other. The lovers of God have fallen in a furious river; They have surrendered themselves to Love's commands. Like mill wheels they turn, day and night, day and night, Constantly turning and turning, and crying out.
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
What, you can’t fight?” I asked.       “Not now, Osari!” she said.         “Not now? When? You better knock on that door and get your fucking purse back! What the hell is wrong with you? You let this nigga dog you out in front of his baby mama like that? A handicap-ass nigga at that! I could’ve gotten a DUI driving over here! I fell asleep behind the wheel twice! You better do something!” I said to her.        “Like what?” she snapped.       “So you one of those bitches that runs their mouth but can’t fight? You better start wind-milling with your eyes closed or something!” I fussed.
Natavia (A Bittersweet Hood Dilemma 2: A Naptown Love Story)
IT IS NO ACCIDENT that “wheels of industry” is such a cliché description of a manufacturing economy, since the application of force in the form of rotational motion is by far the most important component of useful work. In late eighteenth-century Britain, the wheels that mattered most were the ones turning the mills that ground the nation’s grain, and the ones that spun the nation’s cloth. Most of them used water; some used wind. None used steam.
William Rosen (The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention)
Flomaton suddenly felt like ancient history. Blooming honeysuckle mingled with a stink from the belching paper mill you could taste in the back of your throat. I tripped on a pair of tree roots diving in and out of the sandy ground like barky sea serpents. Luckily, I didn’t fall or drop the bags. From where I stood, I could see the railroad tracks curving around the bend of pine trees on Muscogee. When I was a boy, Grandpa would take me here to watch trains carry cargo to the paper mill. I remembered him holding my hand as they rumbled by. As I got older, watching trains was no longer fun. My imagination craved make-believe, and the yard was a creative playground for Tyler and me. We used to lay tracks, build forts and secret outposts, and raise all kinds of holy hell with our own version of World War II as the backdrop. And this beautiful oak tree I’d climbed many times as a child. Spanish moss covered most of the branches now. Hattie once told me the gray draping mosses in these trees were memorials for lost and forgotten souls, as if all the nearby dead in unmarked graves had heaved themselves into the branches for the wind to remember. Hattie called them Graveyard Trees.
D.B. Patterson (Perdido River Bastard)
wonder what city the ‘Son of David’ is going to enter in triumph to claim his universal kingship? Why, Jerusalem of course, where he will claim the holy temple and demand eternal priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek. And there you have it. The Messiah as prophet, priest and king. But why wait? Let us go there right now.” The wind whipped up around Jesus. Sand got in his eyes. He closed them tight and stood up from the ground. When he opened his eyes, he found himself standing at the pinnacle of the holy temple in Jerusalem with Belial beside him smiling. Beneath this roof, the holy of holies resided, where the cherubim images guarded the ark of the covenant, the very royal throne and footstool of Yahweh Elohim on earth. And that throne room was a shadow, a mirror of reality of Yahweh’s true throne room in the heavens above the waters. Thus, the saying, “On earth as it is in heaven.” It was a good sixty feet drop to the bottom of this temple. He could see the priests going about their daily sacrifices in the court below. Beyond, in the women’s courtyard and in the outer court of the Gentiles, Jews were milling about engaging in temple duties, completely unaware of these two observers peering down from the golden trimmed roof. Belial’s previous sarcasm turned smooth and testy.
Brian Godawa (Jesus Triumphant (Chronicles of the Nephilim, #8))
Shamash the Sun God as He set, they dug a well, from which they filled their water-skins with fresh water. And then did Gilgamesh ascend to the mountain peak, where he poured out upon the ground an enchanted circle of milled flour as an offering, and uttered these words in supplication, “O Mountain, bring unto me a dream, that I may receive a favorable sign from Shamash.” And it befell that Enkidu built for Gilgamesh a dwelling for the God of Dreams. Unto this dwelling did Enkidu affix a door, that the wind might not enter therein. Then did Enkidu bid Gilgamesh to lie upon the ground, so he could pour about him an enchanted circle of milled flour to cause Gilgamesh to dream. And then did Enkidu betake himself to lie upon the threshold of the dwelling. In the night, Gilgamesh sat with his chin upon his knee. And, then, sleep came to him, as it does to all men. In
Gerald J. Davis (Gilgamesh: The New Translation)
Near my house, groups of men were digging up the chikhawo roots of banana trees so they could boil them like cassava. Some dug up other roots and tubers, even the grass from the roadside, and milled them into flour. Others resorted to eating the seeds from government starter packs, scrubbing off the pink and green insecticide that kept off the weevils. But it was impossible to get all the poison off, and many suffered from vomiting and diarrhea, which only made them weaker. Plus, having now eaten their seeds, they had nothing left to plant.
William Kamkwamba (The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope)
After the storm there will always be calm - once the winds of change have subsided
Gavin Mills
To discover someone was ordinary always struck Mills as a kind of betrayal. Whenever a man Mills presumed was gay turned out to be straight, the aura about him crumbled, the clues reassembling into the most indistinctive brand of human being—normal, hiding nothing, a mind like a weather vane that moved with the prevailing winds.
Christopher Bollen (Orient)
I wanted to burn, to hurt, to shatter into a million tiny pieces riding violent winds of flame and ruin.
Lia Mills (Fallen)
Inside the maize mill, the owners no longer had any use for a broom. The hungry people kept the floors cleaner than a wet mop. At the beginning of the month, the mill was packed full of those waiting for fallen scraps. The crowd would part long enough to allow women to pass with their pails of grain. As the machine rumbled and spit a white cloud of flour into the pails, the multitude of old people, women, and children watched intently with eyes dancing like butterflies. Once the pail was pulled away, they themselves on hands and knees and scooped the floor clean. Afterward, old women would rattle their walking sticks up inside the grinder as if ringing a bell, collecting the loose flour that drifted to the floor.
William Kamkwamba (The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope)
Wyatt!” She ran to meet him. “Wyatt! Please wait!” A sudden gust of wind dislodged her hat and sent it tumbling down the platform. The long pink ribbons lifted, dancing wildly in the warm wind. The movement caught his eye. He saw her then, and he stopped dead still, an incredulous smile spreading over his face. She waited, not daring to breathe, until Wyatt dropped everything and ran toward her, arms outstretched. The wind caught his hat too and sent it rolling along the platform until it came to rest beside hers. He lifted her into his arms and spun her around. She laughed out loud, her face tipped to the bright summer sky. Wyatt set her on her feet and kissed her thoroughly, oblivious to the handful of passengers still milling about the platform. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back for all she was worth, pouring into it all of her love and gratitude and hope. He smiled down at her. “You’re really here!” “Yes.” “No more doubts?” “None.” She hooked her arm through his and smiled up at him through a blur of happy tears. “Buy me a ticket?” “Just like that?” “Mariah will send my things.” She grinned, imagining her friend’s shock at such impulsiveness. But she didn’t want to wait another second to start her future with Wyatt. “It’s fine with me, darlin’, but our friends would never forgive us if we deprived them of a wedding . . . and the chance to say ‘I told you so.’ ” She heaved a mock sigh. “I suppose you’re right. There’s no hope for it, then. I reckon we’ll have to hold a wedding.” He wrapped one arm tightly around her waist. “You’re ready to be a rancher’s wife?” “Just try to stop me.” He grinned. “No thank you. I’ve seen what happens when you make up your mind to do something.
Dorothy Love (Beyond All Measure (Hickory Ridge, #1))
The frantic storm continued to rage around the house as I moved down the gloomy gallery. The sound of the wind and rain were joined by the crashing of the mill wheels, turning monotonously yet faster than usual. It sounded like the beating heart of the house.
Yukito Ayatsuji (The Mill House Murders (House Murders, #2))
Love is only for the brave,” he said. “Frankly, I recommend you stay away from it. You are too soft to endure love for very long.” I disagreed with him, explaining that I had been in love numerous times in my life, and knew the pain and the ecstasy of the feelings. “That’s not love, that’s romance,” he said. “Love is like a mill,” he explained, “Love grinds you down. It cracks you open and breaks you out of your shell, so you no longer recognize who you are. You become like a fine dust that can be blown away by the wind if you are not careful. Love then mixes you with a dash of spring water and pummels you, kneads you, and then places you on a hot stone by the fire to bake, so that you can become like the corn bread in the sacred feast of the Inti Raymi.” “I’ve experienced that,” I mentioned to Don Manuel. I was thinking of my recent divorce, and how painful that had been. I had felt the heat of the fire and been singed by the flames. “You know little about love,” he said. “You are like a kernel of corn that got too close to the fire and exploded, like a canchita” (popcorn).
Alberto Villoldo (The Heart of the Shaman: Stories and Practices of the Luminous Warrior)
The motors of the Flying Express diminished to a low purr and the hull sank gradually until it hit the water, moving forward in the manner of an ordinary boat. Through the loudspeaker boomed the voice of the pilot: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to dock at Providence! Watch your step going ashore.” The Hardys and their friends filed onto the dock, and walked up into the quaint town with its gray-shingled houses. Souvenir shops and seafood restaurants lined the main street. Tourists milled around and mingled with the denizens of the Cape Cutlass artists’ colony—good-looking girls in slacks with wind-blown hair and suntanned men wearing beards and sandals.
Franklin W. Dixon (Mystery of the Flying Express (Hardy Boys, #20))
August Naab’S oasis was an oval valley, level as a floor, green with leaf and white with blossom, enclosed by a circle of colossal cliffs of vivid vermilion hue. At its western curve the Colorado River split the red walls from north to south. When the wind was west a sullen roar, remote as of some far-off driving mill, filled the valley; when it was east a dreamy hollow hum, a somnolent song, murmured through the cottonwoods; when no wind stirred, silence reigned, a silence not of serene plain or mountain fastness, but shut in, compressed, strange, and breathless. Safe from the storms of the elements as well as of the world was this Garden of Eschtah.
Zane Grey (The Heritage of the Desert)
The book, The Wind Mill as a Prime Mover, would later be used as a working reference by the Wright brothers as they built their first aircraft.
Salvatore Basile (Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything)
A deep, booming chime echoed through the square. It throbbed in the stones under my feet. Children cried, covering their ears. And I started screaming as I ran. ‘Marcel!’ I screamed, knowing it was useless. The crowd was too loud, and my voice was breathless with exertion. All the same and all, I couldn't stop screaming. The clock tolled again. I ran past a nude young girl child in her mother's arms as her hair was almost white in the dazzling sunlight. A circle of tall men, all wearing red blazers, called out warnings as I barreled through them. The clock tolled again and again. On the other side of the men in blazers, there was a break in the throng, space between the sightseers who milled aimlessly around me. My eyes peered over the vast dark narrow passage to the right of the wide square edifice under the tower. I couldn't see the street level there were still too many kids and teens in the way. The clock tolled again, and the rings cried out. Part: 2 Thrashed Just like me, this is not here anymore… It was hard to see now, more than ever. Without the kids, teens, and tweens, to break the wind, it whipped at my face and burned my eyes. -And- I for one at that moment could not be one hundred present certain if that was the reason behind my tears, or if I was crying in defeat as the clock hands rounded the face again, and the bell grew hazier. A big family of ten stood nearest to the alley's opening. The two girls wore blue dresses, with matching ribbons tying their dark hair back. The father wasn't small or big. It seemed like I could see something bright in the shadows, just over his shoulder. I rushed toward them, trying to see past the stinging tears. The clock hands spun, and the littlest girl clamped her fingers around one of the boy's long fingers.
Marcel Ray Duriez
His laugh was like the sound of trees bending in the wind, the bubbling of a river where the mill wheel spins. All the tension in Janner’s neck and face eased away, and he laughed too. Leeli giggled.
Andrew Peterson (North! or Be Eaten)
XVII. Thinking, Tangling Shadows" Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude. You are far away too, oh farther than anyone. Thinking, freeing birds, dissolving images, burying lamps. Belfry of fogs, how far away, up there! Stifling laments, milling shadowy hopes, taciturn miller, night falls on you face downward, far from the city. You presence is foreign, as strange to me as a thing. I think, I explore great tracts of my life before you. My life before anyone, my harsh life. The shout facing the sea, among the rocks, running free, mad, in the sea-spray. The sad rage, the shout, the solitude of the sea. Headlong, violent, stretched towards the sky. You, woman, what were you there, what ray, what vane of that immense fan? You were as far as you are now. Fire in the forest! Burn in blue crosses. Burn, burn, flame up, sparkle in trees of light. It collapses, crackling. Fire. Fire. And my soul dances, seared with curls of fire. Who calls? What silence peopled with echoes? Hour of nostalgia, hour of happiness, hour of solitude, hour that is mine from among them all! Hunting horn through which the wind passes singing. Such a passion of weeping tied to my bedy. Shaking of all the roots, attack of all the waves! My soul wandered, happy, sad, unending. Thinking, burying lamps in the deep solitude. Who are you, who are you?
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
Windmills put the wind to work. Similarly, you can set up an anger mill, which will put your an- ger to work, drawing the living waters of compas- sion and creativity from the depths of your heart to help all those around you.
Eknath Easwaran (Renewal: A Little Book of Courage and Hope (Pocket Wisdom, 1))