Gears Going Quotes & Sayings

Each civilization may choose one of two roads to travel, that is, either fret itself to death, or pet itself to death. And in the course of doing one or the other, it eats its way into the Universe, turning cinders and flinders of stars into toilet seats, pegs, gears, cigarette holders and pillowcases, and it does this because, unable to fathom the Universe, it seeks to change that Fathomlessness into Something Fathomable. — Stanislaw Lem

We disparage reason.
But all the time it's what we're most concerned with.
There's will as motor and there's will as brakes.
Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear. — Robert Frost

Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and esthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars. With the Model T, part of the concept of private property disappeared. Pliers ceased to be privately owned and a tire pump belonged to the last man who had picked it up. Most of the babies of the period were conceived in Model T Fords and not a few were born in them. The theory of the Anglo Saxon home became so warped that it never quite recovered. — John Steinbeck

The gears of God don't turn unless all the pieces fit right. — Lauren Oliver

I always like to think that I make movies that are like Nirvana songs. They have a slow verse and then they pop into high gear and then they go back into slow and then they pop into high gear again. — James Gunn

But, really, such an uprooting is instinctual. Time to rebel. Internal gears began to grind, propelling you forward - then you invent the reasons. My — Frances Mayes

As long as 'Pearl Harbor' stays in the past, it's perfect; when it wretchedly changes gears in the late going, it becomes the wrong kind of same old story: Hollywood stupidity and callowness, writ large across the sky. — Stephen Hunter

Men can shift gears from romantic to practical - and so can the bitch. — Sherry Argov

The Buddha resides as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain. — Robert M. Pirsig

Anyway, it's like with bikes,' said the first speaker authoritatively. 'I thought I was going to get this bike with seven gears and one of them razorblade saddles and purple paint and everything, and they gave me this light blue one. With a basket. A girl's bike.'
'Well. You're a girl,' said one of the others.
'That's sexism, that is. Going around giving people girly presents just because they're a girl. — Terry Pratchett

It's hard either way, at home or on the bus, I think the hardest thing probably for me is going one second from being mom to right out on the stage and having to be that person too. It's hard to switch gears. — Lee Ann Womack

God I hear you giving me an earfull but I'm gonna cruise in 5th gear until I'm near you. — Joe Budden

There are moments in time when the axis of the universe shifts, when life as you knew it is irrevocably altered. When the hiss and grind of the gears fell silent, some deeply rooted instinctive part of me knew this was one of those moments. — Jennifer Silverwood

Humankind is now caught up, as though in a train of gears, at the heart of a continually accelerating vortex of self-totalization. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

He had stood there looking around him, hunting someone, and had not found whoever it was and turned to go; but in turning, he caught sight of Emily and paused and looked at her again, and then frowned and went on out. She had not actually been introduced to him for another week. But now it seemed to her that at his entrance
swinging through the library door, carrying a single book in his hand (his fingers fine-textured and brown, his shirtcuffs so perfectly white)
her life had suddenly bee set in motion. Everything had started up, as if complicated wheels and gears had finally connected, and had raced along in a blur from then on. It was only now, in this slowed-down room, that she had a chance to examine what had happened — Anne Tyler

His existence had always been comfortable, he had always held a clear picture of himself, his duties, and his place in a world. He saw that world as a place so full of turning gears he had no hope of comprehending how things fit together, so why even try?
Now things were different, however. Now he wasn't just looking out from inside of the clockwork. Instead, he was actually seeing the final motion of the escapement - the ticking hands of the clock itself.
And it was a doomsday clock.
Both his feline and human instincts told him to let it be. It was not his problem, or his place to interfere. If the living world was destined to fall, let it happen, let it pass into history once and for all. Who was he to try to save it?
But on the other hand, if the living world were lost, then there would never again be great cats to furjack ... and couldn't it be that hearing the actual ticking of the clock gave one the responsibility to stop it? — Neal Shusterman

Annabeth hadn't seen much of Buford during the trip. He mostly stayed in the engine room. (Leo insisted that Buford had a secret crush on the engine.) He was a three-legged table with a mahogany top. His bronze base had several drawers, spinning gears, and a set of steam vents. Buford was toting a bag like a mail sack tied to one of his legs. He clattered to the helm and made a sound like a train whistle. — Rick Riordan

I get more excited about like, "How nice is the piano?" or "How does the room sound?" I don't really see the gear so much anymore. — Jonathan Meiburg

Under the horizon, under the bowl of the earth, giant wheels have started turning, monstrous conveyer belts are winding, toothed gears are pulling the sun down and the moon up. The day is tired, it has folded its white wings, flies west-ward, big, in loose clothes, it waves a sleeve, releases stars, blesses the people walking on the chilling earth: good-bye, good-bye, I'll come again tomorrow. — Tatyana Tolstoya

Competence is the creed of the technocrat who makes sure the gears mesh but doesn't for a second understand the magic of the machine. — George H. W. Bush

Anyway, back to the crush. Sorry to shift gears so fast, but we both know why we're here. I mean, if I wanted to discuss the existential angst of motherhood I'd be writing in a journal. Diaries are for the down and dirty, the stuff you don't want people to ever find out about you. Journals are the things you leave open around the house, hoping a literary agent will wander in, read it and declare you the next genius of your age. — Lani Diane Rich

Richard Leacock and I ran into a guy who knew how to carve up a camera, and we had him carve one up for us. We had him chop it down and change the gears from metal to plastic, which would cut down on the sound it made when it was running. — Robert Drew

When the truly great people discover that they have been deceived by the signposts along the road of life, they just shift gears and keep going. — Nido R. Qubein

We think is happening in the brain, the way I like to think about it is, it's almost like, you're brain is going through all these stages of sleep and it's developing in children so fast that it's almost like you're shifting gears in a car. And at some point, you actually stall out a little bit, and that's kind of what happens during a night terror. — Shelby Harris

Someday all the wilds will be razed, and we will be left with a concrete landscape, a land of pretty houses and trim gardens and planned parks and forests, and a world that works as smoothly as a clock, neatly wound: a world of metal and gears, and people going tick-tick-tick to their deaths. — Lauren Oliver

I've found that life is just too short to be anything other than positive. When something isn't going the way you want it to, then you have to switch gears and make a change, — Melody Anne

All the books helped him in some way or another. Quenton Cassidy was not enthusiastically going about the heady business of breaking world records or capturing some coveted prize; such ideas would have been laughable to him in the bland grind of his daily lifestyle. He was merely trying to slip into a lifestyle that he could live with, strenuous but not unendurable by any means, out of which if the corpuscles and the capillaries and the electrolytes were properly aligned in their own mysterious configurations, he might do even better what he had already done quite well. He was trying to switch gears; at least that is how he thought of it. And though it was a somewhat frightful thing to contemplate for very long, he was really pulling out all the stops. After this he would have no excuses, ever again. — John L. Parker Jr.

I had what I would consider a normal upbringing and, which to me, a normal American up - upbringing for an American male child almost gears you towards going into the military. — Peter P. Mahoney

We'll try and be very aggressive, we'll try and speed up and change gears, and we'll see who's going to win. — Rafael Nadal

You can always add something to a bike, but you come to a point where you can't take anything away and that's a fixed gear bike — Graeme Obree

A tailwind, on the other hand, is one of the most beautiful experiences you can have on a bike. There's no wind in my ears, so I hear everything around me. The chain purrs sweetly as it pulls the gears under the coaxing of my legs. The soft hiss of my tires on the smooth hard pavement, the sound of little critters scurrying in the desert around me as I pass. Smells aren't as big a deal out here in the dry desert, but even the smells are more accessible in a tailwind, since I'm moving through air at a slower relative speed, and the smells linger around my face long enough to register and enjoy them.
Relative progress, speed, sights, smells, sounds. It all goes together to create a gestalt for the ride that's pure sweetness, and I never want it to end.
Hozho. — Neil M. Hanson

Gear-shifting is thus a phenomenon of a higher logical type than giving gas, and it would be patently nonsensical to talk about the mechanics of complex gears in the language of the thermodynamics of fuel supply. — Paul Watzlawick

The camp suddenly felt light-years away, as distant as Earth used to look from the Colony. "You make me feel legitimately crazy. You know that, right?" Wells whispered, running his hand down her back. "Why? Because I'm seducing you in a tree?" "Because no matter what else is going on, being with you makes me perfectly happy. It's crazy, switching gears that fast." Wells ran his hand along her cheek. "You're like a drug." Sasha smiled. "I think you need to work on your compliments, space boy." "I've — Kass Morgan

In Haida's brain there must have been a kind of high-speed circuit built to match the pace of his thoughts, requiring him to occasionally engage his gears, to let his mind race for fixed periods of time. If he didn't - if he kept on running in low gear to keep pace with Tsukuru's reduced speed - Haida's mental infrastructure would overheat and start to malfunction. Or at least, Tsukuru got that impression. — Haruki Murakami

The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain, or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha - which is to demean oneself. — Robert M. Pirsig

I've been into gear for a long time, but I never saw myself as a producer because I didn't have the patience to finish things in a professional way. — Jamie Woon

I was not using the gears I usually do for time trials - it was either hard [gear] to pedal, or really low [gear] to pedal; [that] was something special of today. — Fabian Cancellara

Maintaining the thinnest facade of a functioning family that tries to act as others do - plan ahead, drive somewhere, go on holiday, relax - is beyond us. We are smashed. Insecurity jams the gears on every action. Each time we are toppled. I feel a fool over and over again for trying. — Marion Coutts

For the burglar, every building is infinite, endlessly weaving back into itself through meshed gears made of fire escapes and secondary stairways, window frames and screened-in porches, pet doors and ventilation shafts, everything interpenetrating, everything mixed together in a fantastic knot. Rooms and halls coil together like dragons inside of dragons or snakes eating their own tails, rooms opening onto every other room in the city. For the burglar, doors are everywhere. Where we see locks and alarms, they see M. C. Escher. — Geoff Manaugh

All the ingenuity, all the high-tech gear, all the jury-rigging sometimes the sea would rip it all away until there was only you, the Creator, and His mercy. — Abby Sunderland

Create a Chocolate Factory There may be as many different types of playrooms as there are families, but every one of them should have the following design element: lots of choices. A place for drawing. A place for painting. Musical instruments. A wardrobe hanging with costumes. Blocks. Picture books. Tubes and gears. Anything where a child can be safely let loose, joyously free to explore whatever catches her fancy. Did you see the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? If so, you may have been filled with wonder at the chocolate plant, complete with trees, lawns, and waterfalls - a totally explorable, nonlinear ecology. That's what I mean. I am focusing on artistic pursuits because kids who are trained in the arts — John Medina

I like to work on a number of things simultaneously. If you're working on a variety of projects and if you get stuck on one of them, you can move to another without grinding your gears indefinitely. — Eric Maskin

Ours has been an expansionist society, but that narrative must change as we run out of places to expand into. But our culture is like a cart stuck in the same old rut that has been leading us in one direction. The longer we've been using a path, the deeper the ruts get, the harder it is to escape them. We've been moving ever Westward, but there's only so far we can go in that direction before we fall into the ocean. It's a direction that we cannot continue on forever, but the breaking of those ruts will require a major rupture. The old narrative is dying, and it will be quite a crushing of gears before things are re-adjusted. A shared story is needed for a civilization to endure. — James Rozoff

February
Boris Pasternak
It's February. Get ink. Weep.
Write the heart out about it, sing
Another song of February
While raucous slush burns black with spring.
Six grivnas* for a buggy ride
Past booming bells, on screaming gears,
Out to a place where drizzles fall
Louder than any ink or tears
Where like a flock of charcoal pears,
A thousand blackbirds, ripped awry
From trees to puddles, knock dry grief
Into the deep end of the eye.
A thaw patch blackens underfoot.
The wind is gutted with a scream.
True verses are the most haphazard,
Rhyming the heart out on a theme.
*Grivna: a unit of currency. — Boris Pasternak

In most cases, strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin. A strength in one situation is a weakness in another, yet often the person can't switch gears. It's a very subtle thing to talk about strengths and weaknesses because almost always they're the same thing. — Steve Jobs

Then a sound came. It was like the grinding of gears on a colossal ship engine. The sound was like mountains of iron scraping and rubbing against each other, forced together by some godlike impulse. Uselessly, I covered my ears. It went on and on, and I felt as though I would never again know peace. My senses were consumed by the light and heat and sound, their power interrupted only by the tactile sensation of my heart pounding against my chest. It will be very difficult for you to really grasp what happened next. I warn you that my description will inevitably fall far from conveying the astonishing sight I witnessed. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to convey some sense of what happened. — Alec Merta

I'm very into the military and police stuff. Gear and technical gear is something that's changing every day and every day you're trying to be on the cutting edge and improve your stuff more and more because your life depends on it. And so, the guns and the gears are changing constantly. — Steven Seagal

Let's gear our advertising to sell goods, but let's recognize also that advertising has a broad social responsibility. — Leo Burnett

She could have dropped you both off. whar's the worst she can do? cry hysterically?"
the gears on the ute get stuck at the lights and will pushes tom's hand out of the way and and shoves it into the correct gear.
"it wasn't her" he mutters after a moment.
"sorry?" tom says.
"she didn't cry"
"then what?"
it's too quiet except for the quiet for the crap engine sounding like a lawn mower.
"i cried"
luca bursts out laughing beside will.
"yeah, well i did" will says. "And it's not the thing you want to do in front of a bunch on engineers. — Melina Marchetta

Very often, when tides start turning, great gears start shifting, and gusting winds start blowing at the onset of a really wonderful dream's alignment with your present life, there is commotion, unpredictability, even turmoil.
So, hey, let's always assume that's the case whenever you experience commotion, unpredictability, even turmoil. K?
Let not your senses deceive, for even as the tempest may howl, just beyond it lies a serenity that could not otherwise find you. The storm before the calm, if you will. — Mike Dooley

Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter - for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect. — Stanislaw Lem

This, of course, is the big dance of capitalism: how to keep morality from gumming up the gears of profit, how to convince people to make bad decisions without seeing them as bad. — Steve Almond