Thermometer Quotes & Sayings

The early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles o popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I'm in a caregiver's relationship with my body, a perpetual internal gauging of wellness. My spine is Hogarth's thermometer. I ascend and descend its rungs a hundred times a day, reading the mercury level. The same dis-ease speaks many languages. If you block one mouth, another will speak. The symptoms represent differently, and as I get older, my translation changes. The prescription changes. Must be vigilant. Must be my best nurse. — Jalina Mhyana

The problem of individual differences and group differences would not be made to disappear by abolishing tests. One cannot treat a fever by throwing away the thermometer. — Arthur Jensen

Men are seldom underrated; the mercury in a man finds its true level in the eyes of the world just as certainly as it does in the glass of a thermometer. — Josh Billings

More and more the world resembles an entomologist's dream. The earth is moving out of its orbit, the axis has shifted; from the north the snow blows down in huge knife-blue drifts. A new ice age is setting in, the transverse sutures are closing up and everywhere throughout the corn belt the fetal world is dying, turning to dead mastoid. Inch by inch the deltas are drying out and the river beds are smooth as glass. A new day is dawning, a metallurgical day, when the earth shall clink with showers of bright yellow ore. As the thermometer drops, the form of the world grows blurred; osmosis there still is, and here and there articulation, but at the periphery the veins are all varicose, at the periphery the light waves bend and the sun bleeds like a broken rectum. — Henry Miller

Slush is frozen over. People say that winter lasts forever, but it's because they obsess over the thermometer. North in the mountains, the maple syrup is trickling. Brave geese punch through the thin ice left on the lake. Underground, pale seeds roll over in their sleep. Starting to get restless. Starting to dream green. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Each man's private conscience ought to be a nice little self-registering thermometer: he ought to carry his moral code incorruptibly and explicitly within himself, and not care what the world thinks. The mass of human beings, however, are not made that way; and many people have been saved from crime or sin by the simple dislike of doing things they would not like to confess ... — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Most people who have encountered mercury have done so after breaking a mercury thermometer. And many of us who saw the liquid balls of mercury scatter across a floor or countertop considered the element the most beautiful on the periodic table. — Sam Kean

Jared?" "Hm?" "You're pretty fucking sick, right?" The thermometer said 103 degrees. "Naw. Need sleep." "Good, so you're at death's door, and you can't run away when I tell you something." "What?" "I think we're in love." "Yup. I'm out of here." Not a muscle twitched. "Good. I love you. I'm pissed at you. If you ever do blow again, I will break up with you, but I love you." "Love you too." "No more drugs." "'Kay." "Promise." "Promise. — Amy Lane

I didn't mind staying home from school and medicating myself with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. Being sick always gave me another chance to break an old-fashioned mercury thermometer, too. — Sam Kean

There is no thermometer for wants! — Phyllis Bottome

When I was a girl I loved fevers and flus and the muzzy feeling of a head cold, all these states carrying with them the special accoutrements of illness, the thermometer with its lovely line of red mercury, the coolness of ice chips pressed to a sweaty forehead, and best of all, a distant mother coming to your bedside with tea. — Lauren Slater

O, my Jesus, I understand well that, just as illness is measured with a thermometer and a high fever tells us of the seriousness of the illness; so also, in the spiritual life, suffering is the thermometer which measures the love of God in a soul. — Mary Faustina Kowalska

The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents. — Salvador Dali

I have the thermometer in my mouth and I am listening to it all the time. — William Whitelaw

Friends are the thermometer by which we may judge the temperature of our fortunes. — Marguerite Gardiner, Countess Of Blessington

Cicadas, buckling and unbuckling their stomach muscles, yield the sound of someone sharpening scissors. Fall field crickets, the thermometer hounds, add high-pitched tinkling chirps to the jazz, and their call quickens with warm weather, slows again with cool. — Diane Ackerman

A patient suffering with cancer of the throat was informed of a new X-ray machine that would cure his condition. This man could neither read nor write, nor was he informed about any of the instruments or procedures of medical practice. When he first sat down in the doctor's office and received into his mouth a thermometer with which the doctor sought to take his temperature, he believed he was undergoing X-ray treatment. The doctor, alert to the practices of psychology, recognized this, and after leaving the thermometer in the patient's mouth for ten minutes, excused him and told him to return in two days. Three weeks of treatment with a thermometer cured this patient's cancerous condition! Obviously, it wasn't the thermometer that did it. It was Faith! — Uell S. Andersen

Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult. — Napoleon Bonaparte

I know of no better thermometer to your spiritual temperature than this, the measure of the intensity of your prayer. — Charles Spurgeon

Certainly something had happened to me during the night. Or after months of tension I had arrived at the edge of some precipice and now I was falling, as in a dream slowly, even as I continued to hold the thermometer in my hand, een as I stood with the soles of my slippers on the floor, even as I felt myself solidly contained by the expectant looks of my children. It was the fault of the torture that my husband had inflicted. But enough, I had to tear the pain from memory, I had to sandpaper away the scratches that were damaging my brain. — Elena Ferrante

I wake up feverish, sore, uncomfortable.
Is it sickness or is it heartbreak?
I can't tell.
The thermometer says I'm normal, but I'm clearly not. — David Levithan

Give yourself-not just your time-to prayer. Remember that prayer is not an appendix to your life and your work, it is your life your real, spiritual life-and your work. Prayer is the thermometer of your soul. — Joel R. Beeke

At first it had slashed up the little silk pockets of her purse. Then she found part of an old thermometer container that slipped over the head of the scalpel, capping it like a fountain pen. It was this cap she removed when the soldier moved into the seat beside her and stretched his arm along the armrest they were (absurdly) meant to share. — John Irving

Think of your moods as a thermometer that takes the temperature of your life, if you just want to be happy all the time, it's like wanting to break your thermometer. — Robert Biswas-Diener

Who among you today is doing the most for your Master's kingdom? I will tell you. Lend me a spiritual thermometer by which I may try the heat of your heart, and I will tell you the amount of your success. — Charles Spurgeon

You can be like a thermometer, just reflecting the world around you. Or you can be a thermostat, one of those people who sets the temperature. — Cory Booker

It didn't seem fair to me that Jon Stewart's rally didn't get the same kind of attention that Glenn Beck's did. Why was Beck's seen as checking the thermometer of the country, and Jon Stewart just dismissed as a satirist? — David Sedaris

And - as a woman reconciled in her own body - I feel I can argue with anyone's god about my right to end a pregnancy. My first conception - wanted so badly - ended in miscarriage, three days before my wedding. A kind nurse removed my wedding manicure with nail-polish remover, in order to fit a finger-thermometer for the subsequent D&C operation. I wept as I went in to the operating theatre, and wept as I came out. In that instance, my body had decided that the baby was not to be and had ended it. This time, it was my mind that has decided that this baby was not to be. I don't believe one's decision is more valid than the other. They both know me. They are both equally capable of deciding what is right. — Caitlin Moran

I guess my thermometer for my baseball fever is still a goose bump. — Vin Scully

Every glass thermometer has subtle variations in the size and shape of the bulb at the bottom and the capillary tube inside, as well as variations in the width of gradations on the side. The compounded effect of these uncertainties is that each thermometer reads temperature slightly differently. — Sam Kean

Those magazine dieting stories always have the testimonial of a woman who wore a dress that could slipcover New Jersey in one photo and thirty days later looked like a well-dressed thermometer. — Erma Bombeck

Breath; but the dead air seemed to shrivel his lungs, and he dropped his head and dozed till the house was reached. Every effort of will was torture, yet he was called upon continually to make efforts of will. He gave the black he had ridden a nip of trade-gin. Viaburi, the house-boy, brought him corrosive sublimate and water, and he took a thorough antiseptic wash. He dosed himself with chlorodyne, took his own pulse, smoked a thermometer, and lay back on the couch with a suppressed groan. It was mid-afternoon, and he had completed his third round that day. He called the house-boy. "Take um big fella look along Jessie," he commanded. The boy carried the long telescope out on — Jack London

Sitting up, Jocelyn rolled her head from side to side. "Been better."
"Heard you're a doctor now." She grabbed the thermometer.
"Yes, a veterinarian."
Placing her fist on her ample hip, Mia scoffed, "You go to that fancy school in Washington State and now you don't eat meat?"
"Good Lord! I'm not a vegetarian - — Patricia W. Fischer

We have had a very severe frost and deep snow this month. My thermometer was one day fourteen degrees and a half below the freezing point, within doors. — Gilbert White

What I expect from my male friends is that they are polite and clean. What I expect from my female friends is unconditional love, the ability to finish my sentences for me when I am sobbing, a complete and total willingness to pour their hearts out to me, and the ability to tell me why the meat thermometer isn't supposed to touch the bone. — Anna Quindlen

And yet, I wake up every day to a sensation of pervading disgust and annoyance. I probably ought to carry around some kind of thermometer or other instrument, to keep checking that I am not falling prey to premature curmudgeonhood. — Christopher Hitchens

Everone has a pain thermometer that goes from zero to ten. No one will make a change until they reach ten. Nine won't do it. At nine you are still afraid. Only ten will move you, and when you're there, you'll know. No one can make that decision for you. — Vicki Myron

Prayer is the thermometer of grace. — Charles Spurgeon

There are two different types of leader. A person can either be like a thermometer or a thermostat. A thermometer will tell you what the temperature is. A thermostat will not only tell you what the temperature is, but it'll move you to the temperature you need to get to. — Kevin McCarthy

I think she's afraid to even hug me now. It's my fault, but I miss it, Andrew. I miss it so much it aches sometimes, you know?'
I do know. I do know, I want to tell him, but I let him talk. And he does, with a gut-wrenching honesty that tears at my heart.
'I want to be held. Is that so wrong? I want to be held, and stroked. I want to know that someone loves me. I want to feel it on my skin.' He looks at the ceiling and exhales, then meets my eyes again. 'But nobody touches me anymore. Not even when I have a fever. Mom just hands me a thermometer now.' He drops his eyes and his ears redden. 'Even when you kiss me, you don't touch me. It's like I'm a leper or something. I can hardly keep my hands off of you, but it's not the same for you, is it? — J.H. Trumble

You know, I used to warm the thermometer on the light bulb ... I was really good at being sick. I could forge my mother's signature on a sick note so well I was hardly ever at school. — Graydon Carter

He possesses the minimum sensibility necessary for his intelligence not to be merely mathematical, the minimum a human being needs so that it can be proven with a thermometer that he's not dead. — Alvaro De Campos

Heat may be considered, either in respect of its quantity, or of its intensity. Thus two lbs. of water, equally heated, must contain double the quantity that one of them does, though the thermometer applied to them separately, or together, stands at precisely the same point, because it requires double the time to heat two lbs. as it does to heat one. — Joseph Black

The art of making love, muffled up in furs, in the open air, with the thermometer at Zero, is a Yankee invention. — John Quincy Adams

science feeds our perpetual curiousity and claims that nothing exists until 'proven'. Science cannot prove the existence or non-existence of the human soul any more than a thermometer can prove the colour red or King Henry the eight could discourse on electronics. — Bryan Islip

How beautiful are these bangles! But if you put them on a man, he will not like it because he has assessed his own worth. One cannot be the 'thermometer (gauge)' as well as the 'fever', both cannot be one. — Dada Bhagwan

What I have related is sufficient for establishing the main principle, namely, that the heat which disappears in the conversion of water into vapour, is not lost, but is retained in vapour, and indicated by its expansive form, although it does not affect the thermometer. This heat emerges again from this vapour when it becomes water, and recovers its former quality of affecting the thermometer; in short, it appears again as the cause of heat and expansion. — Joseph Black

I think many cooks are afraid of undercooked meats. A good thermometer is a cook's best friend. — Emeril Lagasse

No heating system can deliver perfectly uniform temperatures throughout a house, and drafts can magnify the perceived difference in temperatures. Try walking around with a thermometer. — Seth Shostak

He is a thermostat leader, not a thermometer ... He does not react to the environment he's in. He changes every environment he's in. — Trent Dilfer

The Ocean Health Index is like the thermometer of the ocean. It will allow us to take the temperature to know what is going on at the global level, trying to integrate different impacts, including overfishing, invasive species, coastal development, and climate change. — Enric Sala

It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

True love is measured by the thermometer of suffering. — Mary Faustina Kowalska

Choose your own mental state, rather than letting the environment govern it. Be a thermostat, not a thermometer. — Pavan Choudary

If someone invented a thermometer that measured weirdness, it would probably melt under my tongue. — Dean Koontz

You've got to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat shapes the climate of opinion; a thermometer just reflects it. — Cornel West

The two things that are going to make you a better baker without even trying are a scale and a thermometer in your oven. — Tom Douglas

If you go to Minnesota in January, you should know that it's gonna be cold. You don't panic when the thermometer falls below zero. — Peter Lynch

Scientists say that the palm tree line, that is the climate suitable to growth of the palm, is moving north, five hundred metres, I think it was, every year ... The palm tree line ... I call it the coffee line, the strong black coffee line ... It's rising like mercury in a thermometer, this palm tree line, this strong coffee line, this scandal line, rising up throughout Italy and already passed Rome ... — Leonardo Sciascia

Antiseptic wash. He dosed himself with chlorodyne, took his own pulse, smoked a thermometer, and lay back on the couch with a suppressed groan. It was mid-afternoon, and he had completed his third round that day. He called the house-boy. "Take um big fella look along Jessie," he commanded. The boy carried the long telescope out on the veranda, and searched the sea. "One fella schooner long way little bit," he announced. "One fella Jessie." The white man gave a little gasp of delight. "You make um Jessie, five sticks tobacco along you," he said. There was silence for a time, during which he waited — Jack London

Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen to death! — Mark Twain

Ian's eyes settled on him, his expression grim. He bypassed everything, coming to a stop in front of the nervous young male. "I want all of your medicines to relieve fever, including liquids and capsules. Plus, I want a thermometer, the best one you have, and make sure it's not rectal." He narrowed his eyes at the wide-eyed clerk in front of him. "I don't do rectal, and I won't use anything that involves an ass. — Rose Wynters

Temperament is the thermometer of character. — Honore De Balzac

The thermometer of a church is its prayer meeting. — Vance Havner

Are you a thermometer or a thermostat? A thermometer only reflects the temperature of its environment, adjusting to the situation. But a thermostat initiates action to change the temperature in its environment — Nido R. Qubein

without warning, the thermometer disappeared from my fingers. Some sudden suction had drawn it inside the cow. I ran my fingers round just inside the rectum - nothing; I pushed my hand inside without success; with a feeling of rising panic I rolled up my sleeve and groped about in vain. — James Herriot

....The wife is the heartbeat of the home. She serves as the thermometer--if she's warm, so is the rest of the family; if she's cold, so is the rest of the family. And if she's an extreme temp--boiling or frigid--the family will follow suit. Calm or chaos comes from her.

I've resisted this responsibility often. It's much easier to point to my husband, the biblically appointed leader of the household, and to examine what I perceive are his flaws, his failures, his lack of whatever. But ultimately, I'm just denying what I really know--that I have a great role to honor and live up to in my marriage and in our home. The questions is, do I embrace it? Or do I run from it? My fear is that I've run from it for a while now. But I'm not running any more. — Sara Horn

Because in this house there's no such thing as being sick unless you can measure it with a thermometer — Jennifer Niven

Do not allow yourself to be a thermometer which gauges the temperature, rather be a thermostat which changes your environment. — Asa Don Brown

The fact is that the camera is literal if anything, which gives it something in common with a thermometer ... Often the tension that exists between the pictorial content of a photograph and its record of reality is the picture's true beauty. There is sleight of hand in photography ... you make the viewer think he's seeing everything while at the same time you make him realize he's not. I try to make my pictures seem reasonable and then, at the last minute, pull the rug from beneath the viewer's feet, very gently so there's a little thrill. — John Loengard

I have one other issue I'd like to throw on the table. I hesitate to do it, but let me tell you some of the issues that are involved here. If we are dealing with psychology, then the thermometers one uses to measure it have an effect. I was raising the question on the side with Governor Mullins of what would happen if the Treasury sold a little gold in this market. There's an interesting question here because if the gold price broke in that context, the thermometer would not be just a measuring tool. It would basically affect the underlying psychology. — Alan Greenspan

It is amusing to detect character in the vocabulary of each person. The adjectives habitually used, like the inscriptions on a thermometer, indicate the temperament. — Henry Theodore Tuckerman

Some people are like a thermometer. If their environment is negative, they are negative. If bad things happen, they are sad. If good things happen, they are happy. They are simply a product of their environment. Successful people, on the other hand, are more like a thermostat. Even if their environment is negative, they choose to be positive. — Cameron C. Taylor

Toward nightfall, Khrenov's temperature had risen. The thermometer was warm, alive - the column of mercury climbed high on the little red ladder. For a long time he muttered unintelligibly, kept biting his lips and gently shaking his head. Then he fell asleep. Natasha undressed by a candle's wan flame, and saw her reflection in the murky glass of the window - her pale, thin neck, the dark braid that had fallen across her clavicle. She stood like that, in motionless languor, and suddenly it seemed to her that the room, together with the couch, the table littered with cigarette stubs, the bed on which, with open mouth, a sharp-nosed, sweaty old man slept restlessly - all this started to move, and was now floating, like the deck of a ship, into the black night. — Vladimir Nabokov

After half an hour the Senora emerged, short of breath, with flushed cheeks....as uf she'd been seized and shaken like a faulty thermometer. — Helen Oyeyemi

The best value for money in cooking equipment, in my mind, is first a digital scale and digital thermometer. They're both about $20. They help you cook so much more accurately that they're both enormously valuable. — Nathan Myhrvold

There is a sense in which the United States ambassador speaks to the United States, as well as for the United States. I have always seen my role as a thermostat rather than a thermometer. So I'm going to be actively working ... for my own concerns. I have always had people advise me on what to say, but never on what not to say. — Andrew Young

Scriptures are as 'helping problem'. Scriptures only give directions. Scriptures are like a thermometer. Can you grind a thermometer and give it as medicine? — Dada Bhagwan

I went away, after trying once more to rouse up Bashan by renewed calls and
encouragement. In vain. He cared as little for my going as for my coming. He seemed weighed down by bitter loathing and despair. He had the air of saying: "Since you were capable of having me put in this cage, I expect nothing more from you." And, actually,
had he not enough ground to despair of reason and justice?
[ ... ]
How could I explain to him we were treating him with great distinction, in shutting him up like a jaguar, without sun, air, or exercise, and plaguing him every day with a
thermometer? — Thomas Mann

Can go downstairs right now and let my mom know how I'm feeling - if she's even home - but she'll tell me to help myself to the Advil in her purse and that I need to relax and stop getting myself worked up, because in this house there's no such thing as being sick unless you can measure it with a thermometer under the tongue. Things fall into categories of black and white - bad mood, bad temper, loses control, feels sad, feels blue. — Jennifer Niven

(On the energy radiated by the Sun)
It's four hundred million million million million watts. That is a million times the power consumption of the United States every year, radiated in one second, and we worked that out by using some water, a thermometer, a tin, and an umbrella. And that's why I love physics. — Brian Cox

The best thermometer to the progress of a nation is its treatment of its women. — Swami Vivekananda

Sunspots and cosmic rays have a 79 percent correlation with our thermometer record since 1860. Meanwhile the CO2 correlation is a mere 22 percent. — Dennis T. Avery

In time she said, "I love you, Oddie."
My voice was thick when I replied. "I love you more than life."
"We'll be okay," she said.
"We are okay."
"We're weird and screwed-up, but we're okay," she agreed.
"If someone invented a thermometer that measured weirdness, it would melt under my tongue. But you-you're cool. — Dean Koontz

Every jump of technical progress leaves the relative intellectual development of the masses a step behind, and thus causes a fall in the political-maturity thermometer. It takes sometimes tens of years, sometimes generations, for a people's level of understanding gradually to adapt itself to the changed state of affairs, until it has recovered the same capacity for self-government as it had already possessed at a lower stage of civilization. — Arthur Koestler

An instant-read thermometer is your best bet for making sure that meat and fish are cooked to the proper temperature. — Bobby Flay

I have invented the Thermometer style. — Josef Albers

When I removed into the country, it was to occupy an old-fashioned farm-house, which had no piazza - a deficiency the more regretted, because not only did I like piazzas, as somehow combining the coziness of in-doors with the freedom of out-doors, and it is so pleasant to inspect your thermometer there, but the country round about was such a picture, that in berry time no boy climbs hill or crosses vale without coming upon easels planted in every nook, and sunburnt painters painting there. — Herman Melville

It is on December nights, with the thermometer at zero, that we most think of the sun. — Victor Hugo