Straight Lines Quotes

The car is not a rabbit or a deer that jumps around in sweeping lines, but it is a man-made work of technology in need of an appropriate roadway. ~ Fritz Todt

At thee seaside all is narrow horizontals, the world reduced to a few long straight lines pressed between earth and sky. ~ John Banville

It's kind of like trying to make straight lines from curves, but involving shapes that sort of dictate what the curves are, if you like, and the difference between two separate pieces creates a third transitional piece if you like. ~ Sean Booth

So tired of this straight line, and everywhere you turn
There's vultures and thieves at your back
The storm keeps on twisting, you keep on building the lies
That you make up for all that you lack.
It don't make no difference, escaping one last time
It's easier to believe
In this sweet madness, oh this glorious sadness
That brings me to my knees. ~ Sarah McLachlan

Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows - only hard with luminous edges - and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said "my universe:" but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things. In such a country, you will perceive at once that it is impossible that there should be anything of what you call a "solid" kind; but I dare say you will suppose that we could at least distinguish by sight the Triangles, Squares, and other figures, moving about as I have described them. On the contrary, we could see nothing of the kind, not at least so as to distinguish one figure from another. Nothing was visible, nor could be visible, to us, except Straight Lines; and the necessity of this I will speedily demonstrate. ~ Edwin A. Abbott

I deliberately disregarded the right angle and rationalist architecture designed with ruler and square to boldly enter the world of curves and straight lines offered by reinforced concrete. [ ... ] This deliberate protest arose from the environment in which I lived, with its white beaches, its huge mountains, its old baroque churches, and the beautiful suntanned women. ~ Oscar Niemeyer

Nature is crooked. I wanted right angles and straight lines. Ice! Oh, why do they all drip? You cut yourself opening a can of tuna fish and you die. One puncture in your foot and your life leaks out through your toe. What are they for, moose antlers? Get down on all fours and live. You're protected on your hands and knees. It's either that or wings. ~ Paul Theroux

To spin the web and not be caught in it, to create the world, to create your own life, to rule your fate, to name the grandmothers as well as the fathers, to draw nets and not straight lines, to be a maker as well as a cleaner, to be able to sing and not be silenced, to take down the veil and appear: all these are the banners on the laundry line I hang out. ~ Rebecca Solnit

The car resembles a dragon fly or any other jumping animal that moves shorter distances in straight lines and then changes its direction at different points. ~ Fritz Todt

And they dare to rule the world! They have made it so ugly. Square houses! Their obsession with straight lines and right angles has ruined the earth! They consider all curves, all subtleties, all softness, all indefinites, female, and they shun them. They have poisoned and denatured everything they touch, and expect us to be grateful. ~ Lucy Ellmann

The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future. Instead time moves through and within us, in endless spirals. Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness. ~ Elif Shafak

Reality is made up of circles but we see straight lines. ~ Peter M. Senge

One of the jobs of a writer is to add nuance and ambiguity to that straight line that people often draw to very specific kinds of heroism. Most of us don't get to be Snooki. For most of us heroism has to be in our everyday lives. ~ John Green

It's easier to construct a more palatable life story-where I can draw straight lines from each hurt of the past to the healing I later experienced-than to face the raw truth. ~ Lysa TerKeurst

I hope you slept well," he said. "Yes, isn't it lovely?" Jenny replied, giving two rapid little nods. "But we had such awful thunderstorms last week." Parallel straight lines, Denis reflected, meet only at infinity. He might talk for ever of care-charmer sleep and she of meteorology till the end of time. Did one ever establish contact with anyone? We are all parallel straight lines. Jenny was only a little more parallel than most. "They ~ Aldous Huxley

Draw a straight line and follow it. ~ La Monte Young

Style is a continuum. Style never changes. It's a straight line. It's a refinement of the same vocabulary. Style takes you from day to evening, season to season. ~ Ralph Rucci

Be able to back up a car for a considerable distance in a straight line and back out of a driveway. ~ Marilyn Vos Savant

Beneath Jamie's attempt to live a rational life where all was clearly marked and set in order, there was a wellspring of eccentric behaviour waiting to be tapped, which Jamie seemed instinctively at pains to keep from spilling over. It looked to be a daily battle. And the more fight he put up, the more impressive the results when the guy either temporarily cracked, or permanently bent. No one bends further than someone made of completely straight lines. ~ Will Elliott

Words should wander and meander. They should fly like owls and flicker like bats and slip like cats. They should murmur and scream and dance and sing. ~ David Almond

Physics has found no straight lines. Instead, the physical universe consists of only waves undulating back and forth allowing for corrections and balance. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Our knowledge of stars and interstellar matter must be based primarily on the electromagnetic radiation which reaches us. Nature has thoughtfully provided us with a universe in which radiant energy of almost all wave lengths travels in straight lines over enormous distances with usually rather negligible absorption. ~ Lyman Spitzer

Straight lines vary only in length, and therefore are least ornamental. ~ William Hogarth

On second glance, though, the activities didn't seem regimented or organized enough to have been put together by the Earth military. The EDF tended to lay out everything in straight lines and perfect grids. Conversely, this work seemed energetic and independent, as if each unit was following only a general master plan. ~ Kevin J. Anderson

Stories move in circle. They don't move in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles. There are stories inside stories and stories between stories and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. And part of the finding is the getting lost. And when you're lost you start to look around and to listen. ~ Deena Metzger

Printing meant arranging the letters into words, the words into perfectly straight lines, and the lines into even blocks of text to be inked and pressed onto paper or vellum. And each small step of the process, which sounds so mundane today, required invention. ~ Margaret Leslie Davis

I see that the path of progress has never taken a straight line, but has always been a zigzag course amid the conflicting forces of right and wrong, truth and error, justice and injustice, cruelty and mercy. ~ Kelly Miller

Nowhere is it ordained that history moves in a straight line. ~ Barack Obama

Only lifeless mechanisms move along faultlessly straight lines and compass circles. In art the surest way to destroy is to canonize one given form and one philosophy: that which is canonized quickly dies of obesity, of entropy. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

There's no straight line to progress. ~ Barack Obama

It is our inward journey that leads us through time – forward or back, seldom in a straight line, most often spiraling. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge. Our living experience at those meeting points is one of the charged dramatic fields of fiction. ~ Eudora Welty

Concrete you can mold, you can press it into - after all, you haven't any straight lines in your body. Why should we have straight lines in our architecture? You'd be surprised when you go into a room that has no straight line - how marvelous it is that you can feel the walls talking back to you, as it were. ~ Philip Johnson

Success is not a straight line, it's much more of a dance and being open to possibilities. ~ Arianna Huffington

It is of course the nature of historical contraction that the shortest distance to a historical destination is never a straight line. ~ Ibrahim Babangida

I honestly think that a Pavlik fight would be easier than Jones because styles make fights. He's one dimensional, comes in straight lines, I love that. ~ Joe Calzaghe

She sighed as she looked around. Tell you what I don't like about a place so goddamned orderly like this. As an artist . . . it's the lines that get me. All the straight lines in the walls, on the floors, in the corners that turn into boxes - like coffins. The only way I can get rid of the boxes is to take a few drinks. Then all the lines get wavy and wiggly, and I feel a lot better about the whole world. When things are all straight and lined up this way I get morbid. Ugh! If I lived here I would have to stay drunk all the time. ~ Daniel Keyes

But actually time isn't a straight line. It doesn't ave a shape. In all senses of the term, it doesn't have any form. But since we can't picture something without form in our minds, for the sake of convenience we understand it as a straight line. At this point, humans are the only ones who can make that sort of conceptual substitution. ~ Haruki Murakami

Life lessons are not journeys traveled in straight lines but are crossroads
formed years and miles apart. ~ Gina Greenlee

Where everyone else sees a straight line, you see a maze, and when I'm done talking to you, the maze starts to make more sense
Reply by Dove to Aly's silent inquiry ~ Tamora Pierce

After, Mam,' I say. 'What happens when you pass away?"
I couldn't bear her being a ghost. Couldn't take her sitting in the kitchen, invisible. Couldn't take seeing Pop walk around her without touching her cheek, without bending to kiss her on her neck.
'It's like walking through a door, Jojo.'
'But you won't be no ghost, huh, Mam?' I have to ask even though I know the telling hurts her. Even though I feel like speaking's bringing her leaving closer. Death, a great mouth set to swallow.
'Can't say for sure. But I don't think so. I think that only happens when the dying's bad. Violent. The old folks always told me that when someone dies in a bad way, sometimes it's so awful even God can't bear to watch, and then half your spirit stays behind and wanders, wanting peace the way a thirsty man seeks water.' She frowns: two fishhooks dimpling down. 'That ain't my way.'
'That don't mean I won't be here, Jojo. I'll be on the other side of the door. With everybody else that's gone before. Your uncle Given, my mama and daddy, Pop's mama and daddy.'
'How?'
'Because we don't walk no straight lines. It's all happening at once. All of it. We all here at once. My mama and daddy and they mamas and daddies.' Mam looks to the wall, closes her eyes. 'My son. ~ Jesmyn Ward

There are no straight lines in nature or business. ~ Verne Harnish

Wisdom, Happiness, and Courage are not waiting somewhere out beyond sight at the end of a straight line; they're part of a continuous cycle that begins right here. They're not only the ending, but the beginning as well. ~ Benjamin Hoff

The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man. ~ Victor Hugo

I think only of objects: of a leg or an arm, of the wonderful sense of foreshortening, breaking through the plane, of the division of space, of the combination of straight lines in relation to curved ones. ~ Max Beckmann

Youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines. ~ Anthony Burgess

I organize the opposition between colors, lines and curves. I set curves against straight lines, patches of color against plastic forms, pure colors against subtly nuanced shades of gray. ~ Fernand Leger

Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line. ~ Benoit Mandelbrot

People're always buried facing west, so at the end of time when the Last Trumpet blows, all the dead people'll claw their way up and walk due west to the throne of Jesus to be judged ... Suicides, mind, get buried facing north. They won't be able to find Jesus 'cause dead people only walk in straight lines ... Isn't no god better than one who does that to people? ~ David Mitchell

Q: What's hard for you?
A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German. ~ Tom Waits

Revenge is never a straight line. It's a forest, and like a forest it's easy to lose your way ... to get lost ... to forget where you came in. ~ Hattori Hanzo

Organizing gods is like herding cats into straight lines. They don't take naturally to it. ~ Neil Gaiman

That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which the angles are less than two right angles. ~ Euclid

Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground. ~ Terry Pratchett

The walk liberating, I was released from forms, from the perpendiculars, straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds of thought into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends of sight ... ~ A.R. Ammons

Jimmy Connors likes the ball to come at him in a straight line, so that he can hit it back in another straight line. When it comes to him in a curve, he uses up half of his energy straightening it up again. ~ Clive James

I walk the straight lines. I walk through the summer nights. I walk the silver rope of dreams. I walk through dawns of dawns. There's not a lot that isn't dying. I see people parading in front of each other like insects in a killing jar, watching each other die. I walk the straight lines through the Christ machines. Through the eyes of the throwaway people. Through the wards and the shores and the cracks in the skulls of the sidewalks. Through love's howling vacancy. I am the freedom soil. I dig my own grave. I resurrect myself every night. I am all things to myself. I walk the straight lines. I walk the spider's jailhouse. I walk the think line, the thin line, the white line and all the lines in between. I wish I could trade in my eyes. ~ Henry Rollins

The straight line cannot proceed through the torturous twists of life. ~ Giambattista Vico

Humans like to consider everything as linear, when in reality everything is cyclic.

They are obsessed with straight lines. Straight roads, straight houses, straight pieces of steel, glass, and timber. Straight cut diamonds. Let's get straight to the point. Be straight with me. I am straight, not gay.

And this is how they see their lives. A linear journey, along the road of life. That is where expressions such as Highway to Hell come from.

But what about other expressions, such as the life cycle, the cycle of nature, and the weather cycle?

Because of this obsession with straight lines, they view history and historical events, as existing way back along an imaginary path, one they are sure they are far away from. Like watching a fading wake from a ship.

So when they look at the religious wars, for example, the Christians versus the Muslims, the rise and fall of Empires, democracies and dictatorships, they seem blind when comparing present day situations with those of the past.

The majority of humans see evolution as a race along a straight race track, a race they are winning by a long margin, yet they are afraid to ever slow down, in case other life catches them.

If they did slow down long enough, they may observe that the track is actually cyclic. ~ Robert Black

I want to go down in history in a chapter marked miscellaneous because the writers could find no other way to categorize me In this world where classification is key I want to erase the straight lines So I can be me ~ Staceyann Chin

Definition of inertia: 'The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavours to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line. ~ Isaac Newton

I still smile it's not worth the trouble any more for a long time now it's not been worth the trouble the tongue spring goes into the mud I stay like this not thirsty any more the tongue goes back into the mouth it closes it has to make a straight line now it's done I've made the image. ~ Samuel Beckett

Straight lines don't exist in the human form and are extremely rare in nature, so the human touch in the logo is that all the lines and forms have at least a slight curve. ~ Marissa Mayer

The phenomena in these exhausted tubes reveal to physical science a new world-a world where matter may exist in a fourth state, where the corpuscular theory of light may be true, and where light does not always move in straight lines, but where we can never enter, and with which we must be content to observe and experiment from the outside. ~ William Crookes

In reality, life is no more made of physico-chemical elements than a curve is composed of straight lines. ~ Henri Bergson

They walked in straight lines that the dogs scribbled all over. ~ Rachel Cusk

A house is very much like a portrait. I cannot disconnect houses from people. The thought of arrangement, the curves and straight lines. It gives an indication of the character at the heart of it. ~ Christian Louboutin

The dining-room was in the good taste of the period. It was very severe. There was a high dado of white wood and a green paper on which were etchings by Whistler in neat black frames. The green curtains with their peacock design, hung in straight lines, and the green carpet, in the pattern of which pale rabbits frolicked among leafy trees, suggested the influence of William Morris. There was blue delft on the chimneypiece. At that time there must have been five hundred dining-rooms in London decorated in exactly the same manner. It was chaste, artistic, and dull. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Success isn't one straight line - it's a ladder, and there's always another rung above you to reach out for. Like anything else, there are ups and downs. ~ Joan Jett

The physical technique is important," I say. "But it's mostly a mental game, which is lucky for you, because you know how to play those. You don't just practice the shooting, you also practice the focus. And then, when you're in a situation where you're fighting for your life, the focus will be so ingrained that it will happen naturally."
"I didn't know the Dauntless were so interested in training the brain," Caleb says. "Can I see you try it, Tris? I don't think I've ever really seen you shoot something without a bullet wound in your shoulder."
Tris smiles a little and faces the target. When I first saw her shoot during Dauntless training, she looked awkward, birdlike. But her thin, fragile form has become slim but muscular, and when she holds the gun, it looks easy. She squints one eye a little, shifts her weight, and fires. Her bullet strays from the target's center, but only by inches. Obviously impressed, Caleb raises his eyebrows.
"Don't look so surprised!" Tris says.
"Sorry," he says. "I just…you used to be so clumsy, remember? I don't know how I missed that you weren't like that anymore."
Tris shrugs, but when she looks away, her cheeks are flushed and she looks pleased. Christina shoots again, and this time hits the target closer to the middle.
I step back to let Caleb practice, and watch Tris fire again, watch the straight lines of her body as she lifts the gun, and how steady she is when it goes off. I touch her shoulder and lean in cl ~ Veronica Roth

I spend hours mowing the lawn in absolutely straight lines on my tractor. If it's not right, I do it again. ~ Britt Ekland

There is no straight line to a dream. ~ Jack Welch

Energy moves in cycles, circles, spirals, vortexes, whirls, pulsations, waves, and rhythms - rarely if ever in simple straight lines. ~ Starhawk

I have never understood why so many gardeners favour straight lines and narrow, regulated borders; perhaps they think wildness could work only in a larger space. ~ John Burnside

God draweth straight lines but we call them crooked. ~ Horace Mann

It is the same with mathematics, which would certainly not have arisen if it had been known from the beginning that in Nature there are no exactly straight lines, no real circle, no absolute standard of size. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I don't know many people, if any, who have had some straight line toward success. I mean, they start here, they work hard, they've got what it takes, and they just go straight to the top over some number of years. Most people get a little failure. ~ Sam Donaldson

If you love math, have a knack for numbers, study hard and become a successful accountant; who cares if you can't draw a straight line or sing on key? ~ Nick Carter

Life is never a straight line - it's peaks and valleys. Why would you want to be the same person every day of your life? ~ Mary Chapin Carpenter

As the crow flies-a popular and picturesque expression to denote a straight line. ~ William Henry Maule

Modernism, rebelling against the ornament of the 19th century, limited the vocabulary of the designer. Modernism emphasized straight lines, eliminating the expressive S curve. This made it harder to communicate emotions through design. ~ Eva Zeisel

The Labyrinth, a walled garden where humans tortured plants and flowers into growing in straight lines and sharp corners so unnatural that it hurt the mind to see, was east of Thorn's court, on the very edge of the Center Kingdom. ~ Jon Evans

Nature creates curved lines while humans create straight lines. ~ Hideki Yukawa

Tell you what I don't like about a place so goddamned orderly like this. As an artist ... it's the lines that get me. All the straight lines in the walls, on the floors, in the corners that turn into boxes - like coffins. The only way I can get rid of the boxes is to take a few drinks. Then all the lines get wavy and wiggly, and I feel a lot better about the whole world. When things are all straight and lined up this way I get morbid. ~ Daniel Keyes

t was amazing how easy it was to think in straight lines when he was in motion, even without his violin. ~ Victoria Schwab

Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and alleyways in a Cartesian grid, sketched in sepia, mile on mile. "The Great Bovine City of the World," breathed Lindsey in wonder. Indeed, the backs of cattle far outnumbered the tops of human hats. From this height it was as if the Chums, who, out on adventures past, had often witnessed the vast herds of cattle adrift in everchanging cloudlike patterns across the Western plains, here saw that unshaped freedom being rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killingfloor. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Right angles don't attract me. Nor straight, hard and inflexible lines created by man. ~ Oscar Niemeyer

In a library in Missouri that was covered with vines
Lived thousands of books in a hundred straight lines
A boy came in at half past nine
Every Saturday, rain or shine
His book selections were clan-des-tine. ~ Rebecca Makkai

Those who think only in straight lines cannot see around a curve. ~ Romina Russell

English people are famous for never speaking out but only saying what they really feel about you behind your back. Americans believe the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I like exploring those, er, differences in national snippiness. ~ Rachel Johnson

The challenge to me as a director was for the audience to see the film as going on in a straight line, so that they did not sense all of these break-ups. I did not want a film to be a collage of all these images. ~ Pedro Almodovar

The sharply precise divisions and boundaries, together with the fact that - wind and your more exotic-type spins aside - balls can be made to travel in straight lines only, make textbook tennis plane geometry. It is billiards with balls that won't hold still. It is chess on the run. It is to artillery and airstrikes what football is to infantry and attrition. ~ David Foster Wallace

You are wrong to assume that I insist upon perfection in a woman. I enjoy physical beauty like any other man, but it's hardly a requirement. That would be hypocritical, coming from a man who is far from handsome himself."
Aline paused in surprise, regarding his broad, even features, his strong jaw, the shrewd black eyes set beneath the straight lines of his brows. "You are attractive," she said earnestly. "Perhaps not in the way that someone like Mr. Shaw is... but few men are."
Her brother shrugged. "Believe me, it doesn't matter, since I've never found my looks- or lack thereof- to be an impediment in any way. Which has given me a very balanced perspective on the subject of physical beauty- a perspective that someone with your looks rarely attains."
Aline frowned, wondering if she was being criticized.
"It must be extraordinarily difficult," Marcus continued, "for a woman as beautiful as you to feel that there is a part of you that is shameful and must be concealed. You've never made peace with it, have you?"
Leaning her head back against the settee, Aline shook her head. "I hate these scars. I'll never stop wishing that I didn't have them. And there's nothing I can do to change them."
"Just as McKenna can never change his origins."
"If you're trying to draw a parallel, Marcus, it won't do any good. McKenna's origins have never mattered to me. There is nothing that would make me stop loving him-" She stopped abruptly as she understood the ~ Lisa Kleypas

Straight lines go too quickly to appreciate the pleasures of the journey. They rush straight to their target and then die in the very moment of their triumph without having thought, loved, suffered or enjoyed themselves. Broken lines do not know what they want. With their caprices they cut time up, abuse routes, slash the joyous flowers and split the peaceful fruits with their corners. It is another story with curved lines. The song of the curved line is called happiness. ~ Rene Crevel

In a room the size of a ballroom the Pattern was laid. The floor was black and looked smooth as glass. And on the floor was the Pattern.
It shimmered like the cold fire that it was, quivered, made the whole
room seem somehow unsubstantial. It was an elaborate tracery of bright power, composed mainly of curves, though there were a few straight lines near its middle. It reminded me of a fantastically intricate, life-scale version of one of those maze things you do with a pencil (or ballpoint, as the case may be), to get you into or out of something. Like, I could almost see the
words "Start Here," somewhere way to the back. It was perhaps a hundred
yards across at its narrow middle, and maybe a hundred and fifty long.
It made bells ring within my head, and then came the throbbing. My mind recoiled from the touch of it. But if I were a prince of Amber, then somewhere within my blood, my nervous system, my genes, this pattern was recorded somehow, so that I would respond properly, so that I could walk the
bloody thing. ~ Roger Zelazny

To the untrained (human) eye, Thalassinia looks like an expanse of coral reefs and volcanic formations. There are no straight lines or geometric shapes to give away the fact that the structures are actually mermade. (Get it? Mermade. Like mermaid, but ... oh, never mind.) ~ Tera Lynn Childs

This is a war against lies. If we want to win, we can't attack in straight lines. ~ Susan Campbell Bartoletti

If you consider that a single straight line can be drawn between any two points, one day I'm going to draw a line from him to me or me to him. ~ Delphine De Vigan

On the street they moved with purpose, at different speeds but in straight lines, like a thousand bullets fired at a thousand different angles from a thousand different guns. All of these people moving in the way they thought right . . . ~ Jess Walter