Closely Observed Trains

Famous quotes containing the words closely, observed and/or trains:

    Description is revelation. It is not
    The thing described, nor false facsimile.
    It is an artificial thing that exists,
    In its own seeming, plainly visible,
    Yet not too closely the double of our lives,
    Intenser than any actual life could be....
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    “To my thinking” boomed the Professor, begging the question as usual, “the greatest triumph of the human mind was the calculation of Neptune from the observed vagaries of the orbit of Uranus.”
    “And yours,” said the P.B.
    Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)

    Conventions, at the present moment, are really menaced. The most striking sign of this is that people are now making unconventionality a social virtue, instead of an unsocial vice. The switches have been opened, and the laden trains must take their chance of a destination.
    Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)