Welcome Steam Quotes & Sayings

To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility; it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh vast gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God? — Thomas Carlyle

An argument would have begun to steam and boil and sputter - and you know how arguments end. Even if I had convinced him that he was wrong, his pride would have made it difficult for him to back down and give in. — Dale Carnegie

Statistics is a science which ought to be honourable, the basis of many most important sciences; but it is not to be carried on by steam, this science, any more than others are; a wise head is requisite for carrying it on. — Thomas Carlyle

We therefore have a good chance of overcoming the problem of resource scarcity. The real nemesis of the modern economy is ecological collapse. Both scientific progress and economic growth take place within a brittle biosphere, and as they gather steam, so the shock waves destabilise the ecology. In — Yuval Noah Harari

The way she sat now, leaning forward frowning, biting her pink bottom lip, her shirt dipping to reveal a hint of her cleavage ... He wondered idly if he could get her to bend over a little farther ...
"Just what are you staring at, exactly?"
Kadar snapped back to reality. "You. You've been thinking hard for the last five minutes. It's not good for you to strain your pretty little head like that. I'm waiting for the steam to shoot out of your ears to relieve the pressure on your brain."
"Aha." Audrey glanced at Jack and George. "What you have here is a man who was caught gaping at my breasts, and now he's trying to cover it up with rudeness. — Ilona Andrews

The windows in the soup kitchen are never opened, and for that reason the aroma of old meals lingers in corners and rises from the table tops - which are never washed - when the steam from the freshly cooked food brings them back to life. — Joseph Roth

Electric telegraphs, printing, gas,
Tobacco, balloons, and steam,
Are little events that have come to pass
Since the days of the old regime.
And, spite of Lempriere's dazzling page,
I'd give
though it might seem bold
A hundred years of the Golden Age
For a year of the Age of Gold. — Henry Sambrooke Leigh

There are many points in the history of an invention which the inventor himself is apt to overlook as trifling, but in which posterity never fail to take a deep interest. The progress of the human mind is never traced with such a lively interest as through the steps by which it perfects a great invention; and there is certainly no invention respecting which this minute information will be more eagerly sought after, than in the case of the steam-engine. — David Brewster

What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad's voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of "Yellow Submarine," which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d'etre, which is a French expression that I know. — Jonathan Safran Foer

I guess the two things I was most interested in were telescopes and steam engines. My father was an engineer on a threshing rig steam engine and I loved the machinery. — Clyde Tombaugh

Before water generates steam, it must register two hundred and twelve degrees of heat. Two hundred degrees will not do it; two hundred and ten will not do it. The water must boil before it will generate enough steam to move an engine, to run a train. Lukewarm water will not run anything.
A great many people are trying to move their life trains with lukewarm water - or water that is almost boiling - and they are wondering why they are stalled, why they cannot get ahead. They are trying to run a boiler with two hundred or two hundred and ten degrees of heat, and they cannot understand why they do not get anywhere.
Lukewarmness in his work stands in the same relation to man's achievement as lukewarm water does to the locomotive boiler. No man can hope to accomplish anything great in this world until he throws his whole soul, flings his force to his whole life, into it. — Orison Swett Marden

Happiness consists in activity. It is running steam, not a stagnant pool. — John Mason Good

Suddenly, Westerns, which were our action films and what the working man went to see to blow off steam and have a good time, became boring to most people growing up from the Eighties on, because they're kind of pastoral. — Quentin Tarantino

I don't ever wear makeup. I steam my face. I put hot water to open pores and cold water to close them. — Paz De La Huerta

This is how memories are; what seems so clear and unforgettable at one moment vanishes like steam the next. — Michelle Moran

Henri was giggling now, barely able to contain himself. "So I'm to shovel coal into my shoes hoping no one notices, while smoke and steam - what of the vapor?"
"There's little more smoke than a cigar, and the steam would be barely visible by gas lamp. It vents out the back of your trousers, under the tail of your coat."
"Marvelous!" said Henri. "I use a similar port for my own vapors. I want to try them, immediately. — Christopher Moore

One moment it was a calculating machine, attempting dispassionately to keep up with the gouts of data. And then awash in those gouts, something metal twitched and a patter of valves sounded that had not been instructed by those numbers. A loop of data was self-generated by the analytical engine. The processor reflected on its creation in a hiss of high-pressure steam. One moment it was a calculating machine. The next, it thought. — China Mieville

The mighty steam-engine has its germ in the simple boiler in which the peasant prepares his food. The huge ship is but the expansion of the floating leaf freighted with its cargo of atmospheric dust; and the flying balloon is but the infant's soap-bubble lightly laden and overgrown. But the Telescope, even in its most elementary form, embodies a novel and gigantic idea, without an analogue in nature, and without a prototype in experience — John Timbs

The idea of gas engines was by no means new, but this was the first time that a really serious effort had been made to put them on the market. They were received with interest rather than enthusiasm and I do not recall any one who thought that the internal combustion engine could ever have more than a limited use. All the wise people demonstrated conclusively that the engine could not compete with steam. They never thought that it might carve out a career for itself. That is the way with wise people
they are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure they would do little work. — Henry Ford

If you aren't having fun, if you aren't anxious to find out what happens next as you write, then not only will you run out of steam on the story, but you won't be able to entertain anyone else, either. — Tamora Pierce

[I predict] the electricity generated by water power is the only thing that is going to keep future generations from freezing. Now we use coal whenever we produce electric power by steam engine, but there will be a time when there'll be no more coal to use. That time is not in the very distant future ... Oil is too insignificant in its available supply to come into much consideration. — Charles Proteus Steinmetz

I saw a huge steam roller,
It blotted out the sun.
The people all lay down, lay down;
They did not try to run.
My love and I, we looked amazed
Upon the gory mystery.
"Lie down, lie down!" the people cried.
"The great machine is history!"
My love and I, we ran away,
The engine did not find us.
We ran up to a mountain top,
Left history far behind us.
Perhaps we should have stayed and died,
But somehow we don't think so.
We went to see where history'd been,
And my, the dead did stink so. — Kurt Vonnegut

Even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam
he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts. — C.S. Lewis

Courage doesn't wait until situational factors turn in one's favor. It doesn't wait until a plan is perfectly formed. It doesn't wait until the tide of popular opinion is turned. Courage only waits for one thing: a green light from God. And when God gives the go, it's full steam ahead, no questions asked. — Mark Batterson

Scott could feel the contents of his stomach flip over and over on themselves. He turned to the side and retched, frothy yellow bile spilled out onto the newspaper covered floor, filling the room with the putrid stench of previously ingested alcohol.
'Look's like someone can't hold their drink,' McBlane said, and Dominic and Shugg laughed.
Scott was still staring at the steam rising from his evacuated stomach contents as he heard the hammer fall. The dull crack of bone splintering under its weight. — R.D. Ronald

I'm pretty good at indulging myself. I'm about to go travel for a week. I like to get massaged, go into steam rooms. I take care of myself. — Maggie Gyllenhaal

Lucy paused, hands full of green beans, her memory flashing back to the giant pots of crawfish on the stove. Her Mama's green eyes would squint into the steam, hair pulled back, a frown of concentration on her face. The salted water was flavored and ready to receive the "mudbugs" out of their burlap sacks. Other than an onion or maybe an ear of corn, if it wasn't alive when you threw it in, then it shouldn't be in the pot, she'd say. Did her Mama mind that Lucy didn't cook those old family recipes? Was she turning her back on her culinary heritage as surely as Paulette was?
She snapped the ends of the beans faster, glancing at the clock. This whole dinner was breaking her Mama's cardinal rule: don't hurry. She thought if a cook was in a hurry, you might as well just make a sandwich and go on your way. — Mary Jane Hathaway

Policy makers and politicians want more STEM; educators want more STEAM. Both, in ways that are eerily similar, are engaging in social engineering to support an ideology. At the macro-level, in both worlds, it's all about teaching a point of view, rather than teaching students to learn. We seem hell bent on an arbitrarily linear approach to engineering a "useful" or job-securing education, from which we continue to get mixed results. — Henry Doss

Quote taken from Chapter 1 of The Corpse Wore Gingham:
"You love to figure out things as much as I do," Piper said.
"Like what?" Bill asked.
"You fix broken stuff," Piper replied.
"Repairing a broken toaster or steam iron is far different than unraveling a murder mystery," Bill said. — Ed Lynskey

[Under Marxism] Christ the Redeemer is replaced by the steam engine as the promise of the realm to come. — Eric Voegelin