Kinnison Surveying Quotes

Jack put his hands on his hips, surveying the scene with a satisfied nod. "That turned out much better than I'd hoped."
"Please,let's leave!"
"What's your hurry? Let's take a moment to bask in the satisfaction of a job well done."
"I didn't want to do that!"
"No?" He cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. "I thought you hated the fey."
"I do,but that doesn't mean I want to run around the Faerie Realms lighting everything on fire!"
"What's the point in hating something if you aren't proactive?" He put his arm around my shoulders, steering me to look at the inferno with him. "You can't tell me that's not satisfying, not after what you saw.Faeries care about very few things,but they're quite fond of their little trinkets. That boat was a particular favorite of hers,not to mention the entire lake. All the centuries she spent crafting this landscape,then poof! One excellently thrown firebomb, and you've made her feel anger and pain more deeply than she's probably ever known. And far less than she deserves to know. ~ Kiersten White

You know, I still feel in my wrists certain echoes of the pram-pusher's knack, such as, for example, the glib downward pressure one applied to the handle in order to have the carriage tip up and climb the curb. First came an elaborate mouse-gray vehicle of Belgian make, with fat autoid tires and luxurious springs, so large that it could not enter our puny elevator. It rolled on sidewalks in a slow stately mystery, with the trapped baby inside lying supine, well covered with down, silk and fur; only his eyes moved, warily, and sometimes they turned upward with one swift sweep of their showy lashes to follow the receding of branch-patterned blueness that flowed away from the edge of the half-cocked hood of the carriage, and presently he would dart a suspicious glance at my face to see if the teasing trees and sky did not belong, perhaps to the same order of things as did rattles and parental humor. There followed a lighter carriage, and in this, as he spun along, he would tend to rise, straining at his straps; clutching at the edges; standing there less like the groggy passenger of a pleasure boat than like an entranced scientist in a spaceship; surveying the speckled skeins of a live, warm world; eyeing with philosophic interest the pillow he had managed to throw overboard; falling out himself when a strap burst one day. Still later he rode in one of those small contraptions called strollers; from initial springy and secure heights the child came lower and lower, until, when h ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematize what it reveals. He arrives at two generalizations:
(1) No sea-creature is less than two inches long.
(2) All sea-creatures have gills.
These are both true of his catch, and he assumes tentatively that they will remain true however often he repeats it. ~ Arthur Eddington

A great deal of the joy of life consists in doing perfectly, or at least to the best of one's ability, everything which one attempts to do. There is a sense of satisfaction, a pride in surveying such a work, a work which is rounded, full, exact, complete in all its parts-which the superficial man, who leaves his work in a slovenly, slipshod, half-finished condition can never know. It is this conscientious completeness which turns work into art. The smallest thing, well done, becomes artistic. ~ William Matthews

Meditation is, first of all, a tool for surveying our territory so we can know what is going on. With the energy of mindfulness, we can calm things down, understand them, and bring harmony back to the conflicting elements inside us. ~ Nhat Hanh

Socrates was a wise man. Surveying the goods on a market stall, the great one was said to have remarked, What a lot of things a man doesn't need! ~ Ruth Downie

What surprises me most when surveying the great destinies of man is always seeing before me the opposite of what Darwin and his school see or want to see today: selection in favor of the stronger, in favor of those who have come off better, the progress of the species. The very opposite is quite palpably the case: the elimination of the strokes of luck, the uselessness of the better-constituted types, the inevitable domination achieved by the average, even below-average types. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Alec Kirkbride later graphically described the events in Amman on 18 July:

"A couple of thousand Palestinian men swept up the hill toward the main [palace] entrance... screaming abuse and demanding that the lost towns should be reconquered at once... The king[of Jordan] appeared at the top of the main steps of the building; he was a short dignified figure wearing white robes and headdress. He paused for a moment, surveying the seething mob before, then walked down the steps to push his way through the line of guardsmen into the thick of the demonstrators. He went up to a prominent individual, who was shouting at the top of his voice, and dealt him a violent blow to the side of the head with the flat of his hand. The recipient of the blow stopped yelling... and the king could be heard roaring: 'so you want to fight the Jews, do you? Very well, there is a recruiting office for the army at the back of my house... go there and enlist! The rest of you, get the hell down the hillside!'

Most of the crowd got the hell down the hillside, indeed... ~ Benny Morris

Preliminary accounting, banking and surveying (known as arithmetic, algebra and geometry). ~ Alan Watts

Size Matters. A lot.
How much you have and more importantly how much space it will take up in a movingtruck are the first things you need to know when planning a long distance move. Professional movers charge by weight because it is an easier and more uniform way to determine exactly how much you have. They literally drive the truck onto a large scale before loading your goods to get a light weight and return after loading your stuff to get a heavy weight, with the difference being the weight of your shipment. The moving company's estimate, however, is based on coming to your home and surveying the total cubic feet, or estimated size of all your household goods.
They then convert that figure into a weight estimate by multiplying the cubic feet (cubes) by the average density of 6.5 pounds per cubic foot. A small 2-bedroom house for example might have 1,000 cubic feet which when multiplied by a density of 6.5 (lbs) would equal 6,500 lbs. If this sounds like brain surgery then I would ask you to try and remember the last furniture mover you met who struck you as brain surgeon-ish. ~ Jerry G. West

As I sounded through the ice I could determine the shape of the bottom with greater accuracy than is possible in surveying harbors which do not freeze over, and I was surprised at its general regularity. In the deepest part there are several acres more level than almost any field which is exposed to the sun, wind, and plow. In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, the depth did not vary more than one foot in thirty rods; and generally, near the middle, I could calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in any direction beforehand within three or four inches. Some are accustomed to speak of deep and dangerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like this, ~ Henry David Thoreau

Good day, ladies," he said with a distinctly American accent when all the women were above decks and the hatches closed. With a grin that took some of the edge off his fierce looks, he surveyed the crowd and added, "We've come to rescue you."
His words were so unexpected, so completely self-assured that Sara bristled. After all his blatant methods of intimidation, after he'd stood there surveying the women like cattle before the slaughter, he had the audacity to say such a thing!
"Is that what they're calling thievery, pillage, and rape these days?" she snapped. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

That guy with the silver hair, he's your dad, right?" Amber questioned, surveying the scene.
"Yes," I said, reluctant to say anything but, considering what was happening, figured was the least of my worries.
"Ooo la la. He's, like, totally diesel. Look at those arms." She went on, admiring my dad to a sickening degree.
"All right, jailbait, back off. It's practically incest."
She sucked air through her teeth. "I know," she said regretfully. "But a girl can dream. And I have a feeling he's going to be starring in a lot of them. ~ Brandi Salazar

We can read a book to learn how to live. Alternatively, akin to any weeping philosopher seeking self-realization, we can look inside ourselves to determine right from wrong. Ethics is not a matter of surveying scripture to determine what constitutes virtuous behavior. A person with high moral character must think about life and act in accordance with their conscientious conclusion(s). My faith is in free will and the ability of a moral person to discern good versus evil, not a person's ability to describe the intentions of whatever deity his or her faith chooses to worship. Simply put, the godhead exists inside me as a spiritual manifestation that embodies people's innate desire to go forth and multiply, dance in the Etesian wind, and make an artistic testament to the primacy of his or her existence by their honorable performance of worthy deeds. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Do you consider shoes unhealthy? he asked, surveying the socks with respectful interest ~ Louisa May Alcott

The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact. ~ George Santayana

I think that people can get caught up in the "gee-whiz" technology of surveying, which is constantly changing, and forget about the legal aspects and the professional responsibility that surveyors bear - something that hasn't changed much at all in hundreds of years. ~ Mark Mason

A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it'll ... it'll point you true north from where you're standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasms that you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp, what's the use of knowing true north? ~ Tony Kushner

Not long after, as Tom, all undressed for bed, was surveying his drenched garments by the light of ~ Mark Twain

The piecemeal criticism which, like the fly, scans only the edge of a plinth in the great edifice upon which it crawls, disappears under a criticism that is all-comprehending and all-surveying. ~ William Greenough Thayer Shedd

As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Violet, surveying him with a cruel detachment, had never felt less married. ~ Louis Auchincloss

Skepticism literally means a thoughtful inquiry, the looking at a problem in a disinterested spirit, the surveying of a question from many sides. In this sense it is the very essence of philosophy and science. ~ Joseph Alexander Leighton

Surveying the available alternative energy sources for criteria such as energy density, environmental impacts, reliance on depleting raw materials, intermittency versus constancy of supply, and the percentage of energy returned on the energy invested in energy production, none currently appears capable of perpetuating this kind of society. ~ Richard Heinberg

Land surveying has been a positive influence on my life, and I'd encourage anyone who hasn't considered it to give it a chance! ~ Mark Mason

Surveying American scientists as a whole, Pew Research showed that 33 percent admitted belief in God, while 41 percent were atheists (the rest either didn't answer, didn't know, or believed in a "universal spirit or higher power"). In contrast, belief in God among the general public ran at 83 percent and atheism at only 4 percent. In other words, scientists are ten times more likely to be atheists than are other Americans. This disparity has persisted for over eighty years of polling. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Perhaps we underestimated your mother," he said. "I can't imagine she would have made it so easy for anyone to find."

"A World War isn't enough of a hurdle?" Etta asked, rubbing her hand over her face. "Okay, okay…we just have to think this through.…"

"I do have an idea, but I'm afraid it's terrible," Nicholas said, surveying the lock on the gate and giving it another hard tug.

"A bad idea is better than no idea," Etta said.

"I'm glad you feel that way, because this is an exquisitely bad one." He turned toward her. "We can go around the back of the museum and I can lift you over the gate. You can then slip into the museum and hold any guards or curators inside hostage, until they give up the information about the location of the statues."

"Hold them hostage?" she repeated.

"Don't you know? That's how real pirates like Blackbeard made most of their money. He ransomed whole cities," he said. "I'll even teach you how to use the revolver."

Despite herself, Etta smiled. "I really appreciate the faith you have in my criminal abilities. But even if I find someone in there, I doubt they'll be good for anything other than calling the police to pick me up. It seems like the kind of information people would do anything to protect ~ Alexandra Bracken

Because I'm not thinking about the fiber content in stain resistant carpet." My eyes remained stubbornly shut.
"What does that mean?"
"It means ... " I lifted my lids and found him surveying me with simple curiosity. I swallowed a new thickness in my throat, knowing that I needed to tell him the truth. "It means my brain finds you more interesting than all the really interesting trivial facts I could be contemplating or researching at present."
His answering smile was leisurely, measured; "I think that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. ~ Penny Reid

I believe that the clue to his mind is to be found in his unusual powers of continuous concentrated
introspection. A case can be made out, as it also can with Descartes, for regarding him as an accomplished
experimentalist. Nothing can be more charming than the tales of his mechanical contrivances when he was a
boy. There are his telescopes and his optical experiments, These were essential accomplishments, part of his
unequalled all-round technique, but not, I am sure, his peculiar gift, especially amongst his contemporaries.
His peculiar gift was the power of holding continuously in his mind a purely mental problem until he had
seen straight through it. I fancy his pre-eminence is due to his muscles of intuition being the strongest and
most enduring with which a man has ever been gifted. Anyone who has ever attempted pure scientific or
philosophical thought knows how one can hold a problem momentarily in one's mind and apply all one's
powers of concentration to piercing through it, and how it will dissolve and escape and you find that what
you are surveying is a blank. I believe that Newton could hold a problem in his mind for hours and days and
weeks until it surrendered to him its secret. Then being a supreme mathematical technician he could dress it
up, how you will, for purposes of exposition, but it was his intuition which was pre-eminently extraordinary
- 'so happy in his conjectures', said De Morgan, 'as ~ John Maynard Keynes

If you help me find my sister, you can have these back. I saved them for you."
"Thanks," he croaks, surveying the wings. "They'll look great on my wall. ~ Susan Ee

There are many arts and sciences of which a miner should not be ignorant. First there is Philosophy, that he may discern the origin, cause, and nature of subterranean things; for then he will be able to dig out the veins easily and advantageously, and to obtain more abundant results from his mining. Secondly there is Medicine, that he may be able to look after his diggers and other workman ... Thirdly follows astronomy, that he may know the divisions of the heavens and from them judge the directions of the veins. Fourthly, there is the science of Surveying that he may be able to estimate how deep a shaft should be sunk ... Fifthly, his knowledge of Arithmetical Science should be such that he may calculate the cost to be incurred in the machinery and the working of the mine. Sixthly, his learning must comprise Architecture, that he himself may construct the various machines and timber work required underground ... Next, he must have knowledge of Drawing, that he can draw plans of his machinery. Lastly, there is the Law, especially that dealing with metals, that he may claim his own rights, that he may undertake the duty of giving others his opinion on legal matters, that he may not take another man's property and so make trouble for himself, and that he may fulfil his obligations to others according to the law. ~ Georgius Agricola

It is not very easy to see," Mircea Eliade writes, "how the discovery that the primal laws of geometry were due to the empirical necessities of the irrigation of the Nile Delta can have any bearing on the validity or otherwise of those laws." We can argue here in the same way. For it is really no easier to understand how the fact that the first emergence of the idea of God may possibly have been provoked by a particular spectacle, or have been linked to a particular experience of a sensible nature, could affect the validity of the idea itself. In each case the problem of its birth from experience and the problem of its essence or validity are distinct. The problems of surveying no more engendered geometry than the experience of storm and sky engendered the idea of God. He important thing is to consider the idea in itself; not the occasion of its birth, but its inner constitution. If the idea of God in the mind of man is real, then no fact accessible to history or psychology or sociology, or to any other scientific discipline, can really be its generating cause. ~ Henri De Lubac

Welcome to the future, she thought, surveying all this wordage and tat. All our tragedies and triumphs, our lives and deaths, our shames and joys are just stuffing for your emptiness. ~ Iain M. Banks

Ayaana was surveying the longest line on the globe's three dimensional grid, the equator, the first line of latitude. Her special point zero, 40,075 kilometers long; 78.7 percent across water, 21.3 percent over land, zero degrees, all the Kenya equator places she had never imagined to claim as her own: Nanyuki, Mount Kenya. The invisible equator line crossed only thirteen countries - Kenya, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, São Tomé and Principe, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Uganda, Somalia, Maldives, Indonesia, and Kiribati - thirteen countries that were the center of the world, and hers was one of them. ~ Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Don't come here again. Ever," he said, but instead of a threat, this sounded like a declaration of affection.
"Beckett, you can kiss my ass," Livia countered. "I'll be here if you need me - or if I need you."
Beckett winked before growling angrily, surveying the parking lot, and turning to go back inside. ~ Debra Anastasia

I was born into
A religion of Light,
But with so many other
Religions and
Philosophies,
How do I know which
ONE
Is right?

Is it not
My birthright
To seek out the light?
To find Truth
After surveying all the proof,
Am I supposed
To love
Or fight?
And why do all those who
Try to guide me,
Always start by dividing
And multiplying me –
From what they consider
Wrong or right?
I thought,
There were no walls
For whoever beams truth and light.
And how can one speak on Light's behalf,
lf all they do
Is act black,
But talk WHITE?


BLACK AND WHITE by Suzy Kassem ~ Suzy Kassem

Wow, you got a car!" she said, surveying the toy box. "it's so cute!"
Cute. He was starting to hate that word.
"I think the word you're looking for is manly," he said. ~ Wendy Higgins

No complaints. The kid is back in the saddle," Jackson said, sitting down. "You should have been up in the Tomcat with me last week. Oh, man, I'm finally back in the groove. I was hassling with a guy in an A-4 playing aggressor, and I ruined his day. It was so fine." He grinned like a lion surveying a herd of crippled antelope. "I'm ready!" "When ~ Tom Clancy

VIEW FROM A HILL
I am not yet quite over it.
I am lying down on top of it.
Surveying behind me a wasteland
Of dried-up promise.
While the lights below twinkle
With dull mocking uncertainty.
There isn't much left to look forward to,
And the looking forward of the past has been belied. ~ John Tottenham

Closeness,' he said, surveying the congregation. 'It's easy to be close, but almost impossible to stay close. Think about friends. Think about hobbies. Even ideas. They're close to us--sometimes so close we think they are part of us--and then, at some point, they aren't close anymore. They go away. Only one thing can keep something close over time: holding it there. Grappling with it. Wrestling it to the ground, as Jacob did with the angel, and refusing to let go. What we don't wrestle we let go of. Love isn't the absence of struggle. Love is struggle.'
That sounded like the person I wanted to be, but couldn't be. It sounded like Max. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

The first scene I shot on The Originals was the one with Phoebe, Charles (Michael Davis), and Andy Lees when we are plotting our plan and surveying the map and plotting our grand "break in." It was a relatively light scene which was nice because I was able to warm up a bit and get comfortable with being around the new crew. They were all very kind and helpful and I felt pretty at home after a few takes. ~ Paul Wesley

After a while he got into the rhythm of it, and started playing the private little quantity-surveying game that everyone plays in these circumstances. Let's see, he thought, I've done nearly a quarter, let's call it a third, so when I've done that corner by the hayrack it'll be more than half, call it five-eighths, which means three more wheelbarrow loads. . . . It doesn't prove anything very much except that the awesome splendor of the universe is much easier to deal with if you think of it as a series of small chunks. The ~ Terry Pratchett

I guess you've got a spice of temper," commented Mr. Harrison, surveying the flushed cheeks and indignant eyes opposite him. "It goes with hair like yours, I reckon ~ L.M. Montgomery

Max Planck, surveying his own career in his Scientific Autobiography, sadly remarked that "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."8 ~ Thomas S. Kuhn

John Isidore said, "I found a spider."

The three androids glanced up, momentarily moving their attention from the TV screen to him.

"Let's see it," Pris said. She held out her hand.

Roy Baty said, "Don't talk while Buster is on."

"I've never seen a spider," Pris said. She cupped the medicine bottle in her palms, surveying the creature within. "All those legs. Why's it need so many legs, J. R.?"

"That's the way spiders are," Isidore said, his heart pounding; he had difficulty breathing. "Eight legs."

Rising to her feet, Pris said, "You know what I think, J. R.? I think it doesn't need all those legs."

"Eight?" Irmgard Baty said. "Why couldn't it get by on four? Cut four off and see." Impulsively opening her purse, she produced a pair of clean, sharp cuticle scissors, which she passed to Pris.

A weird terror struck at J. R. Isidore.

Carrying the medicine bottle into the kitchen, Pris seated herself at J. R. Isidore's breakfast table. She removed the lid from the bottle and dumped the spider out. "It probably won't be able to run as fast," she said, "but there's nothing for it to catch around here anyhow. It'll die anyway." She reached for the scissors.

"Please," Isidore said.

Pris glanced up inquiringly. "Is it worth something?"

"Don't mutilate it," he said wheezingly. Imploringly.

With the scissors, Pris snipped off one of the spider's ~ Philip K. Dick

No Congress of the United States ever assembled, on surveying the state of the Union, has met with a more pleasing prospect than that which appears at the present time. In the domestic field there is tranquillity and contentment, harmonious relations between management and wage earner, freedom from industrial strife, and the highest record of years of prosperity. ~ Calvin Coolidge

I think they ought to know. You do them a disservice by not confiding something this important to them."
"I didn't want - "
" - to worry or frighten them?" said Dumbledore, surveying Harry over the top of his half-moon spectacles. "Or perhaps, to confess that you yourself are worried and frightened? You need your friends, Harry. As you so rightly said, Sirius would not have wanted you to shut yourself away. ~ J.K. Rowling