Famous quotes containing the words winnowing and/or machine:
“A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing, a weather-vane, a wind-mill, a winnowing flail, the dust in the barn door; a moment,—and the thing has vanished, because it was pure effect; but it leaves a relish behind it, a longing that the accident may happen again.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“The momentary charge at Balaklava, in obedience to a blundering command, proving what a perfect machine the soldier is, has, properly enough, been celebrated by a poet laureate; but the steady, and for the most part successful, charge of this man, for some years, against the legions of Slavery, in obedience to an infinitely higher command, is as much more memorable than that as an intelligent and conscientious man is superior to a machine. Do you think that that will go unsung?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)