Magnetic North Quotes

Here's a simple experiment that you might want to try if there is absolutely nothing else going on in your life. All you need is a cork, a bar magnet, and a pail of water. Simply attach your magnet to your cork, then drop it into the water, and voilà (literally, "you have a compass")-you have a compass. How does it work? Simple. Notice that, no matter which way you turn the bucket, the cork always floats on top of the water (unless the magnet is too heavy). Using this scientific principle, early hardy mariners were able to tell at a glance whether they were sinking!

The sailor cannot see the north / but knows the needle can.

Before we left, Grandmother talked a lot about the arctic night we would fly through. 'Isn't it a mystical word, "arctic"? Pure and quite hard. And meridians. Isn't that pretty? We're going to fly along them, faster than the light can follow us... Time won't be able to catch us.

It was 1975. I had spent the year at the Boston Museum School doing some very bizarre performance works. The last one included going to the North Magnetic Pole and spending all of my money.

How do you make a compass? Uhhh hmmm so if I was a compass how would I make myself?

O, how glorious would it be to set my heel upon the Pole and turn myself 360 degrees in a second!

North was only a direction indicated by a compass--if a man had one, that is, for otherwise there was no north or south or east or west; there was only the brooding desolation.

In practical terms the South Pointing Chariot was a simple direction finder. It could have been made to point in any direction - north, south, east or west.

A compass is narrow-minded-it always points to the magnetic north... We must discipline ourselves, personally, to fight any deviation from the course Jesus set for us. We cannot be tolerant of any other course.

Look at this vigorous plant that lifts its head from the meadow, See how its leaves are turned to the north, as true as the magnet; This is the compass-flower, that the finger of God has planted Here in the houseless wild, to direct the traveller's journey. Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless waste of the desert, Such in the soul of man is faith.

I always have a sense of trembling, but so does a compass, after all.