Small Engines

Famous quotes containing the words small and/or engines:

    Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made,
    Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the rath,
    And a small and a feeble populace stooping with mattock and spade,
    Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet;
    While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious, their chieftains stood....
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    America is like one of those old-fashioned six-cylinder truck engines that can be missing two sparkplugs and have a broken flywheel and have a crankshaft that’s 5000 millimeters off fitting properly, and two bad ball-bearings, and still runs. We’re in that kind of situation. We can have substantial parts of the population committing suicide, and still run and look fairly good.
    Thomas McGuane (b. 1939)