Wallace Stegner Quotes

A raised weight can produce work, but in doing so it must necessarily sink from its height, and, when it has fallen as deep as it can fall, its gravity remains as before, but it can no longer do work.

The law in question asserts, that the quantity of force which can be brought into action in the whole of Nature is unchangeable, and can neither be increased nor diminished.

The fall of a given weight from a height of around 365 meters corresponds to the heating of an equal weight of water from 0° to 1°.

Sometimes something's got to happen before something is going to happen.

When a body acts upon another one, it is always immediately or through some intermediate body; this intermediate body is in general what one calls a machine.

Energy is everything. Rubbing happy and sad together creates energy.

A ball will always come to rest halfway down a hill, unless there is sand or water at the bottom.

Energy is the measure of that which passes from one atom to another in the course of their transformations. A unifying power, then, but also, because the atom appears to become enriched or exhausted in the course of the exchange, the expression of structure.

Everything is energy in motion.

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.

Energy is a concept that has been coined by physicists. There is no observable thing known as energy anywhere.

When I'm building my dome in my chapel, and I had a vision - I've worked on perpetual motion and I haven't never give it up yet. I still think it could be done, perpetual motion. I had a vision of a un resist able windmill.

It is indeed a law of politics as well as of physics, that a body in action must overcome a body at rest.

Temporality and the transformation of energy are two very important aspects in my work.

In order to lift a certain object from the ground, we have to use energy. But then to sustain it at that level, we have to keep on adding energy, or otherwise, the object falls to the ground. It's exactly the same thing with the sound.

In the Marvel universe, vibranium has always been this material that absorbs kinetic energy. And any tiny bit of physics knowledge will tell you that that's really non-Newtonian. You can't just absorb energy, you've gotta change it into something else.

A point of rest alone explains motion.

In speaking of the Energy of the field, however, I wish to be understood literally. All energy is the same as mechanical energy, whether it exists in the form of motion or in that of elasticity, or in any other form. The energy in electromagnetic phenomena is mechanical energy.

She bent her finger and then straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. She brought her forefinger closer to her face and stared at it, urging it to move. It remained still because she was pretending... . And when she did crook it finally, the action seemed to start in the finger itself, not in some part of her mind.

Momentum,' She repeats. 'You can't just stand there if you want something to fly. You have to run.

I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself.

Energy is a very subtle concept. It is very, very difficult to get right.

Action is called karma. And that's your continuation. When this body disintegrates, you continue on with your actions. It's like the cloud in the sky. When the cloud is no longer in the sky, it hasn't died. The cloud is continued in other forms like rain or snow or ice.

Every intention is a trigger for transformation.

Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of a trigger.