Propelled Quotes & Sayings

Propelled by freedom of faith, gender equality and economic justice for all, India will become a modern nation. Minor blemishes cannot cloak the fact that India is becoming such a modern nation: no faith is in danger in our country, and the continuing commitment to gender equality is one of the great narratives of our times. — Pranab Mukherjee

The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea. — Nikola Tesla

In the intoxication of falling, man was prone to believe himself propelled upward. — Hermann Broch

That's right.Forteen-year old boys have better taste than you.They think I'm hot." I licked my fingertip and stuck it on my butt. "Tsssss."
And with that,I propelled myself across the slope and skidded to a stop at one end of the trick rail. "Quick," I told the boys, "act like you think I'm hot."
Chloe cracked up.josh stared blankly at me.His friends blushed deep red,but they weren't claiming it.
"Thanks for your support," I told them. "Look without looking like your looking.Is Nick gone? — Jennifer Echols

I think about pinball, and how being a kid's like being shot up the firing lane and there's no veering left or right; or you're just sort of propelled. But once you clear the top, like when you're sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, suddenly there's a thousand different paths you can take, some amazing, others not. Tiny little differences in angles and speed'll totally alter what happens to you later, so a fraction of an inch to the right, and the ball'll just hit a pinger and a dinger and fly down between your flippers, no messing, a waste of 10 p. But a fraction to the left and it's action in the play zone, bumpers and kickers, ramps and slingshots and fame on the high-score table. — David Mitchell

There were times when he confronted his own image as a man confronts an empty valley, and the vision propelled him forward again to experience as despair compels us to extinction. Sometimes he was like a man in flight, but running toward the enemy, desperate to feel upon his vanishing body the blows that would prove his being; desperate to imprint upon his sad conformity the mark of real purpose, desperate perhaps, as Leclerc had hinted, to abdicate his conscience in order to discover God. — John Le Carre

look as if they had been plucked from the Palace of Versailles or a Jacobean mansion - that you were aboard a ship being propelled far into the bluest reaches of the ocean. — Erik Larson

We are propelled through life by the force of our desires. — Marty Rubin

When I entered the kitchen, the lid of the cookie jar flew off and a cookie flung itself at me. Luckily I caught the cookie in my hand and seconds later discovered that ghost-propelled chocolate chip cookies were still delicious. I wondered if we could find a way to implement and market ghost-propelled cookie jars. The convenience factor was off the charts. Want a cookie? "Ghost, cookie me!" A cookie would fly towards you, dripping with malice, and you could pluck it from the air to feed your face. — Dennis Liggio

The family endures because it offers the truth of mortality and immortality within the same group. The family endures because, better than the commune, kibbutz, or classroom, it seems to individualize and socialize its children, to make us feel at the same time unique and yet joined to all humanity, accepted as is and yet challenged to grow, loved unconditionally and yet propelled by greater expectations. Only in the family can so many extremes be reconciled and synthesized. Only in the family do we have a lifetime in which to do it. — Letty Cottin Pogrebin

The recognition that modern societies are no longer monolithic, that the
imaginary social space has mushroomed into a multitude of identities has
propelled us into a realization that we are in an era where interculturality,
transculturalism and the eventual prospect of identifying a cosmopolitan
citizenship can become a reality. However we still remain circumscribed by
our Little Italies, our China Towns etc., which beyond the pleasures of
experiencing culinary delights, nevertheless create a self illusion that we
have attained a level of cultural awareness of the other. — Donald Cuccioletta

She [Susanna] realized she was still hugging the wall. Pride propelled her two steps forward. As she advanced, something bleated at her, as though chastising her for trespassing. She stopped midstep and peered at it. "Did you know there's a lamb in here?"
"Never mind it. That's dinner."
She gave it a smile and a friendly pat. "Hullo, Dinner. Aren't you a sweet thing."
"It's not his name, it's his ... function. — Tessa Dare

No matter how fierce was the passion that gripped him, the fact is he was paralyzed, transfixed by the contemplation of his own past. Only something so momentous as to drive from his consciousness all thoughts of before and after could have propelled him forward. And with his eyes fixed on the past, he had no choice but to continue along its trajectory. — Soseki Natsume

The whole movement of an essay is propelled by a fundamentally human impulse to want to figure things out. — John D'Agata

She wanted his swollen length in her hand, in her mouth, in her c#nt. She writhed against him, bare feet slapping on the floor as he spun around and propelled her backward.
Her arse hit the door first. His hips ground against her second. He fucked her mouth with his tongue, plundering, taking, possessing. And all the while his hands raked her body. Under her shirt, over her ribs, capturing her breast. She moaned, the sound turning to a cry when he pulled her pyjama top over her head and tossed it aside. — Lexxie Couper

He, who fails to acknowledge and appreciate the real courage of our fathers, fails to appreciate the real lessons that the courage of our fathers teaches us today! The courage and the wisdom that propelled our fathers to move unrelentingly in their days must be nothing to us, but, a real reason for us to be more than courageous enough to do the undone distinctively in our days. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often - in fact, mostly - at the expense of everything else in my life. — Stan Getz

I clung tightly to Kwan's mane as he propelled his great serpent body through the cloud banks. The cockatrice's big green head dipped under the clouds, and I spotted an emerald island below, with dramatic peaks jutting up from the jungle. I asked the great cockatrice for the name of the isle, but he only laughed at me, saying that names changed faster than a century's wind. That didn't seem very fast to me, but I took his word for it. — Heather Heffner

I've never worked a day in my life. The joy of writing has propelled me from day to day and year to year. I want you to envy me, my joy. Get out of here tonight and say: 'Am I being joyful?' And if you've got a writer's block, you can cure it this evening by stopping whatever you're writing and doing something else. You picked the wrong subject. — Ray Bradbury

Especially she dreaded the isolation of the swimmer, amid propelled and splashing figures yet she was isolated, always one isolated in the water where thoughts await like froth on the surface of the water that smelled like chemicals. — Joyce Carol Oates

But leisure has little to do with one's happiness. To the contrary, I've found that the happiest people have found some cause and they stride through life propelled by a commitment. — Alan Loy McGinnis

Amos took a high-caliber automatic that fired self-propelled rounds, recoilless and designed for use in zero g. Old-fashioned slug throwers were more reliable, but in null gravity they were also maneuvering thrusters. — James S.A. Corey

They crashed into each other as if propelled by gravity, and he didn't know which one of them was the object and which the earth, only that they were colliding. The kiss was Lila pressed into a single gesture. Her brazen pride and her stubborn resolve, her recklessness and her daring and her hunger for freedom. It was all those things, and it took Kell's breath away. — V.E Schwab

Losses have propelled me to even bigger places, so I understand the importance of losing. You can never get complacent because a loss is always around the corner. It's in any game that you're in - a business game or whatever - you can't get complacent. — Venus Williams

Habit, in fact, was what propelled his life forward. Though he no longer believed in a perfect community, nor felt the warmth of chemistry between people. — Haruki Murakami

I wanted to say a certain thing to a certain man, a certain true thing that had crept into my head. I opened my head, at the place provided, and proceeded to pronounce the true thing that lay languishing there - that is, proceeded to propel that trueness, that felicitous trularity, from its place inside my head out into world life. The certain man stood waiting to receive it. His face reflected an eager accepting-ness. Everything was right. I propelled, using my mind, my mouth, all my muscles. I propelled. I propelled and propelled. I felt trularity inside my head moving slowly through the passage provided (stained like the caves of Lascaux with garlic, antihistamines, Berloiz, a history, a history) toward its debut on the world stage. Past my teeth, with their little brown sweaters knitted of gin and cigar smoke, toward its leap to critical scrutiny. Past my lips, with their tendency to flake away in cold weather - — Donald Barthelme

All of the things that have happened in my life have been self-propelled. I can't blame anybody else or point a finger at anybody. — Shia Labeouf

The light was grainy, dusty; it looked like the Milky Way had spread from the top of the sky all down the west, and the tented shapes of the mountains were huge and satin black against it, and the ridgeline trees made a filigree of onyx. The wind had increased but not cooled; the promise of full summer was in it. And when Dr. Barcroft turned from the west to look again at the house, he was hardly surprised to see that it had begun to turn like a wheel upon a vertical axle as the silhouettes of the dancers raced past window after window. It was as if their dancing, the female slide and shuffle, the masculine drum and thunder, propelled the house behind them; it had become a merry-go-round, turning steadily and stately as the music went just a little bit faster, just a little more, and he could tell there were furies in it, whirlwinds and cyclones and hurricanes that Quigley's fiddle barely held in check, that his calling could barely control. — Fred Chappell

I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow. — Neil Armstrong

No other species anywhere in the world had invented boredom. Perhaps it was boredom, not intelligence, that had propelled them up to the evolutionary ladder. — Terry Pratchett

Cruel and paradoxical though it undoubtedly is, the record shows that yje most succesful 20th century monarchs have been those who were not actually born to succeed. King George VI was 41 when the abdication of Edward VIII propelled him suddenly and unexpectedly to take up the crown; and Queen Elizabeth II spent her first decade with no inkling thay she herself might one day have to reign. Taken together, these examples suggest that the best preparation for the job of sovereign is not to be prepared for it at all, ir not to be too well prepared for it, or for too long. — David Cannadine

Butterflies are not insects,' Captain John Sterling said soberly. 'They are self-propelled flowers. — Robert A. Heinlein

Broadcasts from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange have propelled once-obscure financial journalists such as Maria Bartiromo to celebrity status and made CNBC to investors what ESPN is to sports fans. — Gary Weiss

If an aircraft is able to fly day and night without fuel, propelled only by solar energy, let no one claim that it is impossible to do the same thing for motor vehicles, heating and air-conditioning systems, and computers. This project voices our conviction that a pioneering spirit with political vision can together change society and bring about an end to fossil fuel dependency. — Bertrand Piccard

I became a feminist activist propelled in part by outrage and despair, and a stubborn determination to shape a life, and create a literature, that was not a lie. — Dorothy Allison

People have mentioned, 'Maybe you should try to be more sexy. Look at how this butt stuff propelled this person to the top of the chart; it's amazing!' And I'm like, 'What if I really want to sing something to people?' I speak my mind. I want to be that person people feel they can listen to. — Kiesza

The gear teeth of his mind, the cogs of the brain's machinery that propelled his thoughts, were grinding to a halt, too long forced to fight against the friction of agony without the aid of hope, the lubricant for the soul. — Dan Groat

I tried to sketch but couldn't. When I started to draw, the pencil moved by itself, propelled by something hideous that lived inside of me. — Ruta Sepetys

I was consumed by some kind of unholy, indignant rage that propelled me through the confrontation to its successful conclusion - and out the other side into the cool, calm lagoon of reflective dread known as the 'what the fuck have I just done?' feeling. — Nick Spalding

I don't think I was constructed to be monogamous. I don't think it's the nature of any man to be monogamous. Men are propelled by genetically ordained impulses over which they have no control to distribute their seed into as many females as possible. — Marlon Brando

Robert Whitehead built the first self-propelled torpedo. — Jeff Edwards

Thus I have come to think that the fourth commandment on sabbath is the most difficult and most urgent of the commandments in our society, because it summons us to intent and conduct that defies the most elemental requirements of a commodity-propelled society that specializes in control and entertainment, bread and circuses ... along with anxiety and violence. — Walter Brueggemann

Your life, sir, is propelled
By a dream of the fear of having nightmares; your love
Is the fear of being alone; your world's history
The fear of a possible leap by a possible antagonist
Out of a possible shadow, or a not-improbable
Skeleton out of your dead-certain cupboard. — Christopher Fry

Everything I had to give went to my children, and though I loved them and my husband utterly, the drudgery of the day-to-day made it seem as if not love but coffee, my Toyota and sheer logistics were what propelled me through life. — Marcia DeSanctis

Cultural conditioning is like bad software. Over and over it's diddled with and re-written so that it can just run on the next attempt. But there is cultural hardware, and it's that cultural hardware, otherwise known as authentic being, that we are propelled toward by the example of the shaman and the techniques of the shaman ... Shamanism therefore is a call to authenticity. — Terence McKenna

The feminization of America has made emotions sacrosanct while condemning as cold and unfeeling rigorous concepts such as duty andhonor. Propelled by incessant hosannas to woman's "finer" this and "softer" that, we make emotional decisions instead of ethical ones and then congratulate ourselves for having "heart. — Florence King

He propelled himself in and out of me, his hands and hips working in sync to fuck me, not fast, not slow, but hard and deep. — Anonymous

Tatiana lived for that evening hour with him that propelled her into her future and into the barely formed, painful feelings that she could neither express nor understand. Friends walking in the lucent dusk. There was nothing more she could have from him, and there was nothing more she wanted from him but that one hour at the end of her long day when her heart beat and her breath was short and she was happy. — Paullina Simons

Storytelling is at the heart of life ... In finding our own story, we assemble all the parts of ourselves. Whatever kind of mess we have made of it, we can somehow see the totality of who we are and recognize how our blunderings are related. We can own what we did and value who we are, not because of the outcome but because of the soul story that propelled us. — Marion Woodman

I was done with wrestling and I was teaching with competition behind me. It was that experience that gave me confidence and propelled me to fight. — Charlie Brenneman

I am self-propelled; fueled from within. I appreciate people's opinions, but I'm not attached to them. I learned a long time ago that if I give them the power to feed me, I also give them the power to starve me. — Steve Maraboli

Chemical cheating will be decisively routed when fans become properly repelled by it. They will recoil in disgust when they understand that athletes who are chemically propelled to victory do not merely overvalue winning, they misunderstand why winning is properly valued. — George F. Will

On December 17, 1903, on a windy North Carolina beach for just shy of one hundred seconds, the Wright brothers demonstrated that a heavier-than-air, self-propelled vehicle could fly. The moment was electric and its importance widely understood. Almost immediately, there was an explosion of interest in this newfound technology of manned flight, and a gaggle of innovators began to build upon it. — Lawrence Lessig

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking. — David Byrne

The two climbers looked at each other, a glance that bored all the way down to Medvetz's DNA - not desperate or pleading or frightened but resolved, almost at peace. Here were two men, united in their obsessive enterprise, their trajectories intersecting for just an instant, but an instant that contained some fundamental understanding: the long journey full of failures and setbacks, injuries and disfigurement and pain, propelled by a commitment beyond reason. Here were two men in this inhospitable place, the wind raking across the ridge, the shadows lengthening - one departing his life, the other walking back into it.
"God bless you," Medvetz murmured. "Good-bye."
And then he faced down the mountain and resumed lumbering along the route, toward Brice and Brett Merrell and Mogens Jensen and all the others waiting for him in the world below. — Nick Heil

Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts, which explains why so many writers who have run out of gas can keep coasting anyway, propelled on to the bestseller lists by the magic words AUTHOR OF on the covers of their books. — Stephen King

Sicarius stood behind them, not bothering to hide his face as the breeze rifled through his short blond hair. He hadn't drawn a weapon yet, and Amaranthe hurried to catch up, to keep him from doing so.
First one security man glanced over his shoulder and jumped, then the second emulated the move.
Sespian lifted a hand. "Don't hurt - "One of the men pointed to the side of Sicarius, cried, "Look, enforcers!" and hurled himself past Sespian and into the river. The second man squeaked, scuttled backward until his shoulders rammed against the railing, then grabbed it and also propelled himself into the water. His lantern caught and dropped to the deck instead of falling overboard. It clanked and highlighted a dubious puddle before tipping over and winking out. Amaranthe had forgotten how much Sicarius's reputation affected the average person. — Lindsay Buroker

She [my mother] was the force around which our world turned. My mother was propelled through the universe by the brute force of reason. She was the judge in all our arguments. One disapproving word from her was enough to send us off to hide in a corner, where we would cry and fantasize our own martyrdom. And yet. One kiss could restore us to princedom. Without her, our lives would dissolve into chaos. — Nicole Krauss

Watching the animals come and go, and feeling the land swell up to meet them and then feeling it grow still at their departure, I came to think of the migrations as breath, as the land breathing. In spring a great inhalation of light and animals. The long-bated breath of summer. And an exhalation that propelled them all south in the fall. — Barry Lopez

Hawk ignored my glare and I knew he was doing this when he got close, hooked me around the neck, yanked me to his side and propelled me to the table, head bent to my ear where he murmured, "See you're stressy and in a bad mood."
He lifted his head and I twisted my neck to look up at him and see he was grinning.
"Just curious, but do you know how much contract killers cost and and, incidentally, would you have a recommendation? — Kristen Ashley

I think Earl Scruggs playing propelled bluegrass and Bill Monroe's music to the level that - where we're all still talking about it. — Earl Scruggs

Earlier, I stepped on a squid that had propelled itself over the bulwarks! (Its eyes & beak reminded me of my father-in-law.) — David Mitchell

She raced for him, propelled by the strength of a thousand regrets. — Lisi Harrison

The idea that I could push the envelope using dedication and research and endless curiosity has propelled me in my life's work. — Randy Schekman

The dream is yours ... why are you asking others to validate or nourish it? Your journey must be self-propelled. It must be fueled from within. — Steve Maraboli

Each new poem is partly propelled by the formal energies of all the poems that have preceded it in the history of literature. — May Sarton

Before and after emancipation, the Negro, in self-defense, was propelled toward the white employer. The endowments of wealthy white men have developed great institutions of learning for the Negro, but the freedom of action on the part of these same universities has been curtailed in proportion as they are indebted to white philanthropies. — W.E.B. Du Bois

A desire to succeed in politics is propelled by these two seemingly contradictory forces, which frequently change places and sometimes coexist: to save others and to save oneself. — Madeleine M. Kunin

Type 94 Class, more commonly the Type 95 light tanks, and the general purpose medium Type 97s. A self-propelled gun based on the Type 97 was also encountered, and a further ageing medium, the Type 89B, was — Bryan Perrett

Propelled by fear or hatred, even a Jedi can pass beyond the constraints of the Order's teachings and discover power of a more profound sort. But no Jedi who arrives at that place, who has risen above his or her allegiance to peace and justice, who kills in anger or out of desire, can lay real claim to the dark side of the Force. Their attempts to convince themselves that they fell to the dark side, or that the dark side compelled their actions, are nothing more than pitiful rationalizations. That is why the Sith embrace the dark from the start, focusing on the acquistion of power. We make no excuses. The actions of a Sith begin from the self and flow outward. We stalk the Force like hunters, rather than surrender like prey to its enigmatic whims. — James Luceno

Congress remains in total denial as our liberties are rapidly fading before our eyes. The process is propelled by unwarranted fear and ignorance as to the true meaning of liberty. It is driven by economic myths, fallacies and irrational good intentions. — Ron Paul

Just as Hitler had predicted, it was rival empires more than indigenous nationalists who propelled the process of decolonization forward. — Niall Ferguson

He smirked and that was it. I propelled myself forward and into his arms, our mouths instantly locking in a frenzied kiss, my hands grasping his collar, his shirt, his hair, his anything. — Jennifer DeLucy

Butterflies are self propelled flowers. — Robert A. Heinlein

Reality is a perpetual process of
evolution, propelled by the fertile impact of antagonisms which are resolved each time into a superior
synthesis which, itself, creates its opposite and again causes history to advance. What Hegel affirmed
concerning reality advancing toward the spirit, Marx affirms concerning economy on the march toward
the classless society; everything is both itself and its opposite, and this contradiction compels it to become
something else. Capitalism, because it is bourgeois, reveals itself as revolutionary and prepares the way
for communism. — Albert Camus

On 11 September 2012 crowds of friendly locals in Kabul, Afghanistan, were chanting the usual 'Death to America' slogans. At the same time American flags were torched from London to Sydney. And in Benghazi, Libya, a group of 'spontaneous protesters' arrived at the US consulate with rocket-propelled grenades and savagely murdered the US ambassador. In Washington, members of the Obama administration were, as we have already seen, showing that they weren't taking any of this personally. It wasn't about them and it certainly wasn't about their ambassador, who had in fact been murdered by terrorists in a pre-planned attack. The administration was still claiming all this was caused by an excerpt from an amateur film which had been up on YouTube for weeks. — Douglas Murray

I believe I could have had a career in the music industry without 'X Factor,' but it was an amazing platform that propelled me to where I am now. — Leona Lewis

In the 18th century, James Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny, and Richard Arkwright pioneered the water-propelled spinning frame which led to the mass production of cotton. This was truly revolutionary. The cotton manufacturers created a whole new class of people - the urban proletariat. The structure of society itself would never be the same. — A. N. Wilson

So, you propel rocks at me! You'll be very sorry you ever propelled a rock at me, human. — Katherine Applegate

Mach-5, the speed at which stress can't keep up, is simply forward motion. But it has to be self- propelled. Note that people in cars are still stressed. — Jef Mallett

I feel like a lot of the portrayals of, in particular, younger minority ethnic characters on television, a lot of their dialogue, a lot of their characteristics, a lot of their personality in a writer's eyes, is kind of propelled through their ethnicity. — Corey Reynolds

Van Gogh is the best example of how a person can be on the right track, propelled by gut feeling and some kind of strange obsessive stubborn conviction, that no one seems to understand. — Jim Rowe

Propelled by nothing more than a drab sense of duty not to die if she didn't have to, Fire turned [...] — Kristin Cashore

I think there were some dubious feelings about it, that the first 'Scarface' would not be surpassed by the second 'Scarface.' We were wrong; it surpassed it. The acting talent, the cinematography - we were propelled into a real class action film. Long after I kick the bucket, it'll be played. — Robert Loggia

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. — M. Scott Peck

One of the fundamental discoveries I made about myself - early enough to make use of it - was that I am driven to seize life and to understand it. The motor that pushes me is propelled by more than scientific curiosity. — Craig Venter

I think there's an underlying insecurity to Bush with a rather classical genesis - namely his being the eldest son of a famous father. I think this has propelled his need to be distinctive, to do big things. — Robert Draper

I was lucky to wander into evolutionary theory, one of the most exciting and important of all scientific fields. I had never heard of it when I started at a rather tender age; I was simply awed by dinosaurs. I thought paleontologists spent their lives digging up bones and putting them together, never venturing beyond the momentous issue of what connects to what. Then I discovered evolutionary theory. Ever since then, the duality of natural history-richness in particularities and potential union in underlying explanation-has propelled me. — Stephen Jay Gould

My belief in why America has been doing so well up to now is that we have been propelled by our immigrants and our encouragement of technical innovation and, indeed, creativity across the board. — Howard Gardner

Champions are propelled by desire, not compelled by fear — Denis Waitley

But I never did escape from this plot-driven world into a more congenial, subtly probable, innerly propelled narrative of my own devising
didn't make it to the airport, ...
and that was because in the taxi I remembered a political cartoon I'd seen in the British papers when I was living in London during the Lebanon war, a detestable cartoon of a big-nosed Jew, his hands meekly opened out in front of him and his shoulders raised in a shrug as though to disavow responsibility, standing atop a pyramid of dead Arab bodies. Purportedly a caricature of Menachem Begin, then prime minister of Israel, the drawing was, in fact, a perfectly realistic, unequivocal depiction of a kike as classically represented in the Nazi press. The cartoon was what turned me around. Barely ten minutes out of Jerusalem, I told the driver to take me back to the King David Hotel. — Philip Roth

We had learned from the killing of a Reuters photographer on the balcony of the Palestine Hotel that a long lens could be mistaken for a rocket-propelled grenade. — Lynsey Addario

I have come to believe that we steer our individual spheres of being through the spectra of possible worlds via the choices we make, the acts we perform. Most people stick to known routes, and therefore cannot travel far. They live too modestly, and perhaps too privately. Only by being strange can we move, for strange acts cause us to be rejected by whatever normality we have offended, and to be propelled towards a normality that can better accommodate us. — K.J. Bishop

The Confessions of Catherine de Medici is a dramatic, epic novel of an all-too-human woman whose strength and passion propelled her into the center of grand events. Meticulously-researched, this engrossing novel offers a fresh portrait of a queen who has too often been portrayed as a villain. Bravo Mr. Gortner! — Sandra Gulland

When they'd gone the old man turned around to watch the sun's slow descent. The Boat of Millions of Years, he thought; the boat of the dying sungod Ra, tacking down the western sky to the source of the dark river that runs through the underworld from west to east, through the twelve hours of the night, at the far eastern end of which the boat will tomorrow reappear, bearing a once again youthful, newly reignited sun.
Or, he thought bitterly, removed from us by a distance the universe shouldn't even be able to encompass, it's a vast motionless globe of burning gas, around which this little ball of a planet rolls like a pellet of dung propelled by a kephera beetle.
Take your pick, he told himself as he started slowly down the hill ... But be willing to die for your choice. — Tim Powers

Whittle was an amazing chap. Tiny, stubborn, unstoppable - jet-propelled! It's amazing the impact his invention has had upon the world. — Adam Hart-Davis

I believe in previous lives and the Muse - and that books and music exist before they are written and that they are propelled into material being by their own imperative to be born, via the offices of those willing servants of discipline, imagination and inspiration whom we call artists. — Steven Pressfield

We have a long distance to travel,' said the Angel of Death to our friend Gil, as soon as they had left the Villa. 'I will order my chariot.' And he struck the ground with his foot.
A hollow rumbling, like that which precedes an earthquake, sounded under the ground. Presently there rose round the two friends an ash-colored cloud of vapor, in the midst of which appeared a species of ivory chariot, resembling the chariots we see in the bas-reliefs of antiquity.
A brief glance would have sufficed (we will not disguise the fact from out readers) to show that the chariot was not made of ivory, but solely and simply of human bones polished and joined together with exquisite skill, but retaining still their natural form.
The Angel of Death gave his hand to Gil and they ascended the chariot, which rose into the air like the balloons of the present day, but with the difference that it was propelled by the will of its occupants. ("The Friend of Death") — Pedro Antonio De Alarcon

It was the very rightness of the idea that made Nelson become a Juvey-cop to begin with. The knowledge that he would leave the world a cleaner, brighter place by dredging the dregs from the streets was what propelled him into the police academy. Eventually, though, his ideals were replaced by an abiding hatred for those marked for unwinding. They were all alike, these Unwinds; sucking valuable resources from those more deserving, and clinging to their pathetic individuality, rather than accepting peaceful division. — Neal Shusterman

The vision of a blood-washed Africa propelled me to go from Cape Town to Cairo and start Christ for all Nations. — Reinhard Bonnke