Longitude Quotes

Scientists say every action initiates an equal and opposite reaction. I say that's just the start. I say every action initiates a most unequal and upredictable chain reaction, that every filament of living becomes part of a larger weave, while remaining identifiable. That every line of latitude requires several stripes of longitude to obtain meaning. That every universe is part of a bigger heaven, a heaven of rhythm and geometry, where a heartbeat is the apex of a triangle. ~ Ellen Hopkins

they had no way of reckoning longitude. ~ Anonymous

No navigator has yet traced lines of latitude and longitude on the conjugal sea. ~ Honore De Balzac

It is not possible that you will repent unless you are aware of your sin; it is not likely that you will look to Christ unless you first know what it is for which you are to look to him. Therefore, I pray you, set apart some season every day, or at least some season as often as you can get it, in which the business of your mind shall be to take your longitude and latitude, that you may know exactly where you are. You may be drifting towards the rocks, and you may be wrecked before you know your danger. I implore you, do not let your ship go at full steam through a fog; but slacken speed a bit, and heave the lead, to see whether you are in deep waters or shallow. I am not asking you to do more than any kind and wise man would advise you to do; do I even ask you more than your own conscience tells you is right? Sit alone a while, that you may carefully consider your case. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Women, are a map, Avik. You've got to understand their longitude, and how much latitude you can take. ~ Walter Russell

But pass through Copula Hall and she or he might leave Beszel, and at the end of the hall come back to exactly (corporeally) where they had just been, but in another country, a tourist, a marvelling visitor, to a street that shared the latitude-longitude of their own address, a street they had never visited before, whose architecture they had always unseen, to the Ul Qoman house sitting next to and a whole city away from their own building, unvisible there now they had come through, all the way across the Breach, back home. ~ China Mieville

People used to pooh-pooh the idea of a check-in, saying that this wasn't interesting. But when you have 3 billion of those data points, you can take any latitude and longitude anywhere in the world, and I'll tell you what is interesting now, 20 minutes from now, and 6 hours from now. ~ Dennis Crowley

Scramblers deactivated, then?
Well here's some good news.
You feel no pain.
You will go straight to a hospital. Remember nothing of this place.
And every time you hear the words "parsley", "intractable" or "longitude", you will vomit uncontrollably for forty-eight hours. ~ Joss Whedon

A good watch may serve to keep a recconing at Sea for some days and to know the time of a Celestial Observ[at]ion: and for this end a good Jewel watch may suffice till a better sort of Watch can be found out. But when the Longitude at sea is once lost, it cannot be found again by any watch. ~ Isaac Newton

You get to thinking of the Earth as an organism, a living thing. You get to worry about it, care for it, wish it well. National boundaries are as invisible as meridians of longitude, or the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The boundaries are arbitrary. The planet is real. Spaceflight, therefore, is subversive. If they are fortunate enough to find themselves in Earth orbit, most people, after a little meditation, have similar thoughts. The nations that had instituted spaceflight had done so largely for nationalistic reasons; it was a small irony that almost everyone who entered space received a startling glimpse of a transnational perspective, of the Earth as one world. It ~ Carl Sagan

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end? "I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?" she said aloud. "I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think - " (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the school-room, and though this was not a very good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) " - yes, that's about the right distance - but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?" (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.) ~ Lewis Carroll

Percy says be talked to a Nereid in Charleston Harbor!"
"Good for him!" Leo yelled back.
"The Nereid said we should seek help from Chiron's brothers."
"What does that mean? The Party Ponies?" Leo had never met Chiron's crazy centaur relatives, but he'd heard rumors of Nerf sword-fights, root beer-chugging contests, and Super Soakers filled with pressurized whipped cream.
"Not sure," Annabeth said. "But I've got coordinates. Can you input latitude and longitude in this thing?"
"I can input star charts and order you a smoothie, if you want. Of course I can do latitude and longitude! ~ Rick Riordan

What we seek in travel is neither discovery nor trade but rather a gentle deterritorialization: we want to be taken over by the journey - in other words, by absence. As our metal vectors transcend meridians, oceans and poles, absence takes on a fleshy quality. The clandestineness of the depths of private life gives way to annihilation by longitude and latitude. But in the end the body tires of not knowing where it is, even if the mind finds this absence exalting, as if it were a quality proper to itself.

Perhaps, after all, what we seek in others is the same gentle deterritorialization that we seek in travel. Instead of one's own desire, instead of discovery, we are tempted by exile in the desire of the other, or by the desire of the other as an ocean to cross. The looks and gestures of lovers already have the distance of exile about them; the language of lovers is an expatriation in words that are afraid to signify; and the bodies of lovers are a tender hologram to eye and hand, offering no resistance and hence susceptible of being crisscrossed, like airspace, by desire. We move around with circumspection on a mental planet of circumvolutions, and from our excesses and passions we bring back the same transparent memories as we do from our travels. ~ Jean Baudrillard

The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth. ~ Charles Lamb

What poor, mean trash this whole business of human virtue is! A mere matter, for the most part, of latitude and longitude, and geographical position, acting with natural temperament. The greater part is nothing but an accident. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

All over India, all over the world, as the sun or the shadow of darkness moves from east to west, the call to prayer moves with it, and people kneel down in a wave to pray to God. Five waves each day - one for each namaaz - ripple across the globe from longitude to longitude. The component elements change direction, like iron filings near a magnet - towards the house of God in Mecca. ~ Vikram Seth

I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?' she said aloud. 'I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think--' (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a VERY good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) '--yes, that's about the right distance--but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?' (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.) Presently she began again. 'I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think--' (she was rather glad there ~ Lewis Carroll

Butterhorn?" Ben asked, holding out a bag full of pastries.
"Well, you did condemn yourself to bad luck just to get them for me," I said, "So absolutely!"
"Yeah," Ben agreed, "they'd better be worth it."
"Mmmm, completely worth it," I said with my mouth full. "The rest of you have to have some of these."
"Hmmm," Sage mused, examining his, "no garlic. I'm not entirely sure my taste buds will know how to handle this."
"Um, you guys," Rayna asked, "where am I driving?"
"Excellent question-let's find out!" I pulled the cribbage board out of duffel bag and handed it to Sage, pointing out the longitude and latitude notations on the back. "Where is that?"
Sage took out his phone, then entered the coordinates. "Interesting."
"What?" I asked. "It's not Antarctica, is it? I didn't pack a parka. ~ Hilary Duff

- but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to? ~ Lewis Carroll

One degree of longitude equals four minutes of time the world over, but in terms of distance, one degree shrinks from sixty-eight miles at the Equator to virtually nothing at the poles. ~ Dava Sobel

I propose to construct a new chart for navigating, on which I shall delineate all the sea and lands of the Ocean in their proper positions under their bearings; and further, I propose to prepare a book, and to put down all as it were in a picture, by latitude from the equator, and western longitude. ~ Christopher Columbus

After Simla, I must mention Darjeeling, with its pretty white houses, overlooked by Mount Kinchinjinga, 312 miles to the north of Calcutta, 6,900 feet above the level of the sea, about the eighty-sixth degree of longitude, and the twenty-seventh degree of latitude - a charming situation, in the most beautiful country in the world. Other ~ Jules Verne

Djuna concerned only with the longitude, and latitude and altitude of human beings in relation to each other. ~ Anais Nin

[John] Harrison [could not] express himself clearly in writing ... No matter how brilliantly ideas formed in his mind, or crystallized in his clockworks, his verbal descriptions failed to shine with the same light ... The first sentence [of his last published work] runs on, virtually unpunctuated, for twenty-five pages. Dava Sobel, Longitude, p66 ~ Dava Sobel

The history of religions, of which Christianity is a transcendent element, awaits the deepest study. It requires Bibles to free from Bibles. Comparative theology is the best of studies for liberating one's mind from geographical and traditional limitations. Like travelling, it shows the globe in its varying climates and zones, its latitude and longitude of intelligence. When the races shall have learned each other's language, the significance of things to thoughts, one faith becomes universal, one brotherhood. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott

In the wake of the Longitude Act, the concept of "discovering the longitude" became a synonym for attempting the impossible. ~ Dava Sobel

Canada is actually a major country, with an area of more than 169 billion hectometers in longitude, ~ Dave Barry

The lines of his face were the longitude and latitude of his life. ~ Louise Penny

The zero-degree parallel of latitude is fixed by the laws of nature, while the zero-degree meridian of longitude shifts like the sands of time. ~ Dava Sobel

In 1498, Vasco da Gama the Portuguese navigator explored this eastern coast of Africa flanking the Indian Ocean. This led him to open a trade route to Asia and occupy Mozambique to the Portuguese colony. In 1840, it came under the control of the Sultan of Zanzibar and became a British protectorate in 1895, with Mombasa as its capital.

Nairobi, lying 300 miles to the northwest of Mombasa is the largest city in Kenya. It became the capital in 1907 and is the fastest growing urban area in the Republic having become independent of the United Kingdom on December 12, 1963 and declared a republic the following year on December 12, 1964.


Kenya is divided by the 38th meridian of longitude into two very different halves. The eastern half of Kenya slopes towards the coral-backed seashore of the Indian Ocean while the western side rises through a series of hills to the African Shear Zone or Central Rift. West of the Rift, the lowest part of a westward-sloping plateau contains Lake Victoria. This, the largest lake in Africa, receives most of its water from rain, the Kagera River and countless small streams. Its only outlet is the White Nile River which is part of the longest river on Earth. Combined, the Blue Nile and the White Nile, stretches 4,160 miles before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. ~ Captain Hank, "Seawater Three"