Perpetual Motion Machines

Famous quotes containing the words perpetual, motion and/or machines:

    Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.
    Joseph Addison (1672–1719)

    It is the fixed that horrifies us, the fixed that assails us with the tremendous force of mindlessness. The fixed is a Mason jar, and we can’t beat it open. ...The fixed is a world without fire--dead flint, dead tinder, and nowhere a spark. It is motion without direction, force without power, the aimless procession of caterpillars round the rim of a vase, and I hate it because at any moment I myself might step to that charmed and glistening thread.
    Annie Dillard (b. 1945)

    Shoes are the first adult machines we are given to master.
    Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)