Light Seconds

Famous quotes containing the words light and/or seconds:

    But seldom the laurel wreath is seen
    Unmixed with pensive pansies dark;
    There’s a light and a shadow on every man
    Who at last attains his lifted mark—
    Nursing through night the ethereal spark.
    Elate he never can be;
    He feels that spirits which glad had hailed his worth,
    Sleep in oblivion.—The shark
    Glides white through the phosphorus sea.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)

    ... you can have a couple of seconds to rest in. I mean seconds. You have about two seconds to wait while the blanker is on the felt drawing the moisture out. You can stand and relax those two seconds—three seconds at most. You wish you didn’t have to work in a factory. When it’s all you know what to do, that’s what you do.
    Grace Clements, U.S. factory worker. As quoted in Working, book 5, by Studs Terkel (1973)