Beam Engines

Famous quotes containing the words beam and/or engines:

    What do we plant when we plant the tree?
    We plant the ship that will cross the sea,
    We plant the mast to carry the sails,
    We plant the planks to withstand the gales—
    The keel, the keelson, and beam and knee—
    We plant the ship when we plant the tree.
    Henry Abbey (1842–1911)

    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)