"Machine-like" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... applicable to the conditions of American life than that of the contemporary French philosopher Bergson. Bergson insists throughout his brilliant little book on Laughter that laughter is a social function. Life demands elasticity. Hence whatever is stiff, automatic, machine-like, excites a smile. We laugh when a person gives us the impression of being a thing,—a sort of mechanical toy. Every inadaptation of the individual to society is potentially comic. Thus laughter becomes a social initiation. It is a kind of hazing which ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... wore on, the gas and two lamps were lit. The company were still eating. The men, gorged with food, had unbuttoned their vests. McTeague's cheeks were distended, his eyes wide, his huge, salient jaw moved with a machine-like regularity; at intervals he drew a series of short breaths through his nose. Mrs. Sieppe wiped her forehead with ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... of sleep, and showed a tendency to grumble in a half-incoherent way, but Jawn was as silent as at the start. To Harvey, who even in the excitement was afraid to sit down for fear of falling asleep, the engineer was a marvel in his machine-like self-control. ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... move, and there he stood looking at her meekly. She leapt to him, and he shot off, as she arrived upon, the place where he had been. Perhaps she knew that only a genet, or a mongoose, could do that trick in a manner at once so machine-like and precise; and after that she merely sat, bent in a curve, with her lips up. But her spring had given her away, and he saw that she was lame. Perhaps he saw, too, the gleam of hunger, the wild, cruel gleam that forgets all else, in her eyes; ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... turned their attention to the infantry, which, firing with machine-like precision and accuracy, dealt havoc to the ranks of the Russian horsemen and ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... that I was tarred from the same stick and he proved it true, but there we sang together above the heads of venerable men who preached. They were good men, sometimes great scholars, but the ears they addressed were not always willing. A somewhat machine-like sermoniser who, it was irreverently declared, ran as if wound up but sometimes slipped a cog, had been known to pray "that the intemperate might become temperate, the intolerant tolerant, the industrious ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... the soul TANTALISED by the needs of the body: on the one hand, the moral personality with its intelligently varied energy, and, on the other, the stupidly monotonous body, perpetually obstructing everything with its machine-like obstinacy. The more paltry and uniformly repeated these claims of the body, the more striking will be the result. But that is only a matter of degree, and the general law of these phenomena may be formulated as follows: ANY INCIDENT IS COMIC THAT CALLS OUR ATTENTION TO THE PHYSICAL ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... and destroy so many fellows of my sort! If I am tempted what must it mean to the ordinary man?" He noted with angry shame that he felt a swelling of pride because he, of so lowly an origin, born no better than the machine-like lackeys, had been able to push himself in upon—yes, up among—these people on terms of equality. And it was, for the moment, in vain that he reminded himself that most of them were of full as lowly origin as he; that few indeed could ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... built merely by trade, built for the home of labor, of machines, and of engines, and for the dwelling-place (one cannot call it the home) of crowds of human beings, whose value is, for the most part, estimated according to the development of their machine-like qualities. Beauty is not consulted here. In those places in or near the city, where Nature, reluctant to be driven utterly away, still tries to keep a foothold, she is parched and scorched by the feverish breath of forges and furnaces. Standing here, one may see the cloud of smoke, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... not a major portion, of rural pupils will still be taught in the small, isolated, district school; there is danger that this district school may be neglected. Moreover, increased school machinery always invites undue reliance upon machine-like methods. Centralization permits, but does not guarantee, greater efficiency. A system like this one must be vitalized by constant and close touch with the life and needs and aspirations of ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... his for the 'poet of the happy Tityrus,' 'I that loved thee since my day began.' It has been suggested that he owed to a clever farce-comedy of the early eighties the caption of the widely-read column of journalistic epigram and persiflage, which he filled with machine-like regularity and the versatility of the brightest French journalism for ten years. I prefer to think that he took it, or his cue for it, from a line of Dr. Phillips Francis's translation of the eighth of the first ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... and gave a terse order. Delightedly, Pauline watched the brief, machine-like movements of the crew trimming the deck. Summers escorted her back to the conning tower. They descended. Within a few moments the wonderful craft was buried under ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... machine-like synchronism of flight; geese wheel down in more or less regular formation; but these herons concentrated along straight lines, each describing its individual radius from the spot where it caught its last fish or shrimp to its nest or the particular branch ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... chairs lying tumbled here and there, with plate, pictures, statues, ornaments heaped in wild confusion, crowds of people, in every variety of strange dishabille, gathered round; two long lines of them handing bucket after bucket, with machine-like regularity, from the fountain; others removing the furniture from the terrace; cushions, ormolu, fine china, handed out of the lower windows; the whole seen by the wild lurid light that flashed from the windows above, strangely ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... company was mounted in line; handsome, dashing fellows; one the son of an English nobleman, one the brother of an eminent Canadian politician, one related to a celebrated English dramatist. He ran his eye along the line, then turned to Mab, raised his cap with machine-like precision, and said: "No, I suppose you do not understand that. Keep Aleck Windsor from Pretty Pierre ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... habitual. Consideration, the mark of the second stage, disappears in the third. We cannot count a person honest so long as he has to decide on each occasion whether to take advantage of his neighbor. Long ago he should have disciplined himself into machine-like action as regards these matters, so that the dishonest opportunity would be instinctively and instantly dismissed, the honest deed appearing spontaneously. That man has not an amiable character who is obliged to restrain his irritation, and through all excitement and inner rage curbs ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... Celina smiled beautifully at the men who were staring from every window of The Enormous Room and, with a supreme effort, went over and dragged Renee (who had neatly and accurately folded up with machine-like rapidity in the mud) through the doorway and into the house. Eventually Lena followed her example, capturing Lily en route. The scene must have consumed all of twenty minutes. The plantons were so mirth-stricken that they had to sit down and rest under the washing-shed. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... building, that is lacking in far less ancient work, for oddly enough it is often the decaying features of the latest decorated style that impress the vulgar by their apparent age. The extreme care in the masonry has imparted a machine-like finish. As Professor Willis wrote: "The regularity of the size of the stones is astonishing. As soon as they had finished one part, they copied it exactly in the next, even though the additional expense was considerable. The masonry runs in even bands, and you may follow it from the south ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... in such an atmosphere is bliss. One does not seem to breathe, as at home, machine-like, just what is necessary for the maintenance of life, but, exhilarated with the pureness and freshness, one drinks in long breaths of pleasure. It would be difficult to give an idea of the charm of our morning and evening rambles—the delicious shade, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... unfailing, always fulfilling his duties with machine-like regularity, stern, impenetrable, ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the red squirrel are quick, sharp, jerky, machine-like. He does nothing slowly or gently; everything with a snap and a jerk. His progression is a series of interrupted sallies. When he pauses on the stone wall he faces this way and that with a sudden jerk; he turns round in two or three quick leaps. So ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... by the arrival of the surgeon and his two nurses, who set to work with the machine-like rapidity and precision of their highly-specialized craft. After a few minutes, the work completed, the surgeon turned to the two men who had been watching him so intently, with a smile ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... was a marvel that the defenders kept on fighting as long as they did. Already the door, beneath Wade's machine-like shooting, had been completely riddled; the windows were almost bare of glass; and great splinters of wood had been torn from the log walls by the heavy rifle bullets on their way through to the interior. Soon the door sagged and crashed inward, and into the ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... of discipline that the recruit undergoes in the army,—the making of a series of complicated movements so thoroughly automatic that they will be gone through with accurately and precisely, at the word of command. It means the sort of discipline that makes certain activities machine-like in their operation,—so that we do not have to think about which one comes next. Thus the mind is relieved of the burden of looking after the innumerable details and may use its precious energy ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... the canvas and stretch it out on the lot so an inventory might be taken to determine in what shape the show had been left. Others were assigned to search the lot for show properties, costumes and the like, and in a very short time the big, machine-like organization was working ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... field. The grandest thing of all, however, was the change in the men. The uncouth, coarsely jesting, blackberry-picking fellows that lagged and straggled to the battle became soldiers in their instincts and rising excitement and courage, if not in machine-like discipline and coolness. As I rode here and there I could see that they were erect, eager, and that their eyes began to glow like coals from their dusty, sunburned visages. If there were occasional evidences of fear, there were more of resolution ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... Poor, struggling, machine-like Elspeth! Margot felt a pang of pity for her unappreciated efforts, and the determination to spare her one task at least brought with ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... do it, nor did any of his personal followers. They taught when "the spirit moved them." I think none of the great preachers ever spoke with machine-like periodicity—certainly Savonarola did not. He preached only when ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... only one person in all England who, arriving at Crawshaws, would not have been gently but firmly enfolded by the machine-like order of its perfect administration and been led in and introduced with rites proper to the occasion. But that one person was the Reverend Cyril Boom Bagshaw, and he now strolled across the threshold and into ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... with machine-like accuracy. "Yes, sir, I deceived you. But my business was urgent nevertheless. That ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... terrifying to me about his machine-like efficiency," she said, "that I can believe him capable of anything. His whole plan was so perfectly thought out, down to the smallest detail. It only broke down through the purely accidental. Once through my losing the needle—though that wasn't so bad as ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... who are engaged in importing forged Treasury notes on a large scale and uttering them through skilfully organised agencies. The police and various civilians between them—there is no super-sleuth to weary us with his machine-like prowess—run the thing to earth, partly by skill and partly by good luck, and the civilians in particular have a stirring time doing it. Bombs, automatic pistols, even soldiers and a submarine, assist quite naturally in sustaining the interest. And a pleasant little romance is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... offices of the Skandinavia Corporation, in the heart of the city of Quebec, with their machine-like precision of life, their soulless method, their passionless progress towards the purpose of their organisation, meant the open road towards the fulfilment of her desires for independence ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... familiarity, and from the cold practical spirit in which the Roman always tended to play with the pawns of his business game, even when they were freemen and fellow-citizens. A man like Cato, who had sense and honesty enough to look after his own business, elaborated a machine-like system for governing his household, the aim of which was the maximum of profit with the minimum amount of humanity which is consistent with the attainment of such an end. The element of humanity is, however, accidental. There is no conscious appeal to ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... tattoo. Tawny ears turned backward in appreciative fellowship, but without any break in a plodding dog-trot. Though the rider's aspect might say with the desert that time was nothing, the pony's expressed a logical purpose. Thus the speed of their machine-like progress was entirely regulated by the prospect of a measure of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... words "I killed him," so quietly, in so matter of fact a way, that for the moment I was breathless. Like most other men, I had never sat face to face with one who had taken the life of another. Even soldiers, though they, we suppose, kill men, do it in a machine-like way. The killing is impersonal. The soldier handles the machine and it is the machine that kills. The individual soldier does not know whether he kills or not. That is why we are able to make much ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to smile, and could think of nothing to say. I was a little abashed, notwithstanding the tone of haughty indifference I took. I began to feel very young before this machine-like impersonation ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... and stronger than others. By a wiser system of education we may greatly increase the difference in people—Socialism would not hinder it. A higher average level of income—which is what Socialism ensures, will give people a chance to differ more than they do now. Our machine-like educational system, long hours of labor, specialized monotony of mill work, and "the iron law of wages" do tend to reduce us to a ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Their scores were exactly even. With machine-like precision he took his turn, utterly ignoring the grumbling criticisms of his adversary's play that were being freely expressed around the room. With the utmost steadiness he made his stroke, scoring two points. Then there fell a tremendous silence. The choice of two strokes now lay before ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... reaches out,—control of the body becomes a habit. The feet, legs, arms and body gradually come under the sway of the mind. In the position of the soldier, for instance, the mind holds the body motionless. In marching, the mind drives the legs to machine-like regularity. In shooting, the mind assumes command of the arms, hands, fingers and eye, linking them up and making them ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... different to that of the bulk of the men of the C.I.D. It may be that sometimes they realise that a man's life or liberty depends on their scrutiny, but for the most part they do their work with cold deliberation and machine-like precision. Is one set of finger-marks identical with another? That is all they have to answer. It is the pride of the department that since it has been established it ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... and subtle judgment. A fraction of a second too long in the water and the fine and silken edge of the proper heat was lost, and Martin found time to marvel at the accuracy he developed—an automatic accuracy, founded upon criteria that were machine-like and unerring. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... the priest's actions, Gordon, accepting them in such spirit, might have been at ease. But not the faintest spark of interest, of curiosity, the most perfunctory communion of sympathy, was evident on Merlier's immobile countenance; his movements were machine-like, he seemed infinitely removed from ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... at Firket watched in senseless apathy the deliberate, machine-like preparations for their destruction. They should have had good information, for although the Egyptian cavalry patrolled ceaselessly, and the outpost line was impassable to scouts, their spies, as camel-drivers, water-carriers, and the like, were in the camp. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... near which she sat. He was patrolling the narrow piazza which fronted the house. Toward the close of the rather trying luncheon she was almost unable to control the impulse to rush out and compel him to relax that imposing, machine-like stride. She hungered for a few minutes of ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... mechanical device to wind up and set going, the artistic results of which it is capable never would have been obtained, and, I may add, this book never would have been written. The fact that artistic expression instead of machine-like precision has been its aim is what has caused its possibilities as a musical instrument to appeal to me. It cannot be sufficiently urged that in this country, as in every other, there is an immense amount of latent musical taste awaiting only the touchstone of hearing music or, better still, ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... were abroad that night. Faintly audible to the apothecary of the rue Royale through that deserted stillness which is yet the marked peculiarity of New Orleans streets by night, came from a neighboring slave-yard the monotonous chant and machine-like tune-beat of an African dance. There our lately met marchande (albeit she was but a guest, fortified against the street-watch with her master's written "pass") led the ancient Calinda dance with that well-known song of derision, in whose ever multiplying stanzas the helpless satire of a feeble ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... was famous throughout the Alleghenia Guard,—an eye accustomed to control, not a single man, or two, or three, but a thousand, moving as one at his command; an eye enforcing obedience immediate, machine-like, and unquestioning. ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... wondered what they were saying: her mind was crystal clear as to what they were doing. She wondered if Nancy Ellen would send Adam, 3d, with a parcel of cut-out sewing for her to work on. She resolved to sew quickly and with stitches of machine-like evenness, if it came. She wondered if Nancy Ellen would be compelled to put off her wedding and teach the home school in order that it might be taught by a Bates, as her father had demanded. She wondered if ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... steady-riding men on his left, he must submit to wretched defeat. So he strained himself harder and burst into fresh speed, finding himself surprised that he could. In the thrill of it he forgot his double load, forgot the close-pressing horses, forgot irritating dust. On he galloped, racing forward with machine-like evenness—on his left the paralleling horsemen, to his rear yelling and shooting, on his right his own men and horses, and for them he felt he ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... himself, and at other times, "When shall I wake?" for he often persuaded himself that this was the troubled dream of a bad attack of fever, from which he would awaken some day quite in his right mind. Meanwhile, growing every hour more machine-like, he worked on and on always as ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... weeks it would not be difficult to relate. There was little or no incident to break the monotony of their enforced residence among the surly Japatites; the same routine obtained from day to day. Sultry, changeless, machine-like were those hundred days and nights. They looked forward with hopeful, tired eyes; never backward. There was nothing behind them but a dour waste, a bog through which they had driven themselves ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... continued to rise at the end of a stroke, and fall as they commenced delivery of another. Their action was quick, steady, machine-like; they gripped the water deep, and made no slips; with a thought of the exhilaration an eagle must feel when swooping from his eyrie, the Prince looked at the cloud defiantly as a challenger might. Each moment the donjon loomed up more ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... tombstone masques that pass for faces among Anglo-Saxons, they have human features, quick, responsive, mobile. Instead of the slow, long limbs creaking in stiff integuments, they have active members, for the most bare or moving freely in loose robes. Instead of a mumbled, monotonous, machine-like emission of sound they have real speech, vivacious, varied, musical. Their children are the loveliest in the world; so gay, so sturdy, so cheeky, yet never rude. It is a pure happiness merely to walk in the streets and look at them. It is a pure happiness, I might almost say, to look at anyone, ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Pre-raphaelite School came into being the art of other lands as well as that of England was in need of an awakening impulse, and the Pre-raphaelite revolt against conventionality and the machine-like art of the period roused such interest, criticism, and opposition as to stimulate English art to new effort, and much of its progress in the last half-century is doubtless due to the discussions of the theories of this movement as well as of ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... interfering; but Bridget is Bridget, and I might as soon command her not to use her tongue, as to stop taking an interest in anything that concerns "Herself". As a matter of fact, I don't try. Servility, and decorum, and a machine-like respect are to be hired for cash at any registry office; but Bridget's red-hot devotion, her child-like, unshakable conviction that everything that Miss Evelyn does and says, or doesn't say and doesn't do, is absolutely right—ah, that ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... position? Yes, of course you do!" For Cyrillon with one of the quick changes of mood habitual to him, smiled, as his temporary irritation passed like a cloud, and his eyes softened—"You see, I am a machine,—educated to be a machine; and I am set down to do certain machine-like duties,—and one of these duties is,—regardless of your fame, your eccentric theories, your special work which you have chosen to make for yourself in the world,—to put you in possession of the money your father left ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... other country, and as her railroads are not many and are poorly served, it was figured that it would be six weeks before the Russian army would be ready to fight anybody. Germany, on the other hand, with her wonderful system of government-owned railroads, and the machine-like organization of her army, could launch her forces across the frontier at two days' notice. As soon as the Germans began to hear that the Russians were mobilizing their troops against Austria, Germany set ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... Radbourn's office, he saw a young lady seated at a desk, manipulating a typewriter. She had the ends of a forked rubber tube hung in her ears, and did not see Bradley. He observed that the tube connected with a sewing-machine-like table and a swiftly revolving little cylinder, which he recognized as a phonograph. At the window sat Radbourn, talking in a measured, monotonous voice into the mouthpiece of a large flexible tube, which connected with another phonograph. His back was toward Bradley, and he stood for some ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... worker, hours, wages, and results being nearly identical. The Jewish women and girls represent a formidable element to contend with, as they are now coming over in great numbers, and the question has so organized itself that each falls almost at once into her own place, and works with machine-like ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... huge form leap from the gloom and caught the gleam of an uplifted knife. There was no time for him to leap aside, no time for him to reach for the revolver which he carried in his pocket. In such a crisis one's actions are involuntary, machine-like, as if life, hovering by a thread, preserves itself in its own manner and without thought or reasoning on the part of ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... many were excited. Kingozi passed them rapidly in review. But when Chake came forward, he paused in the machine-like regularity of his inspection. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... pathways of discharge developed by the laws of inner growth and independent of individual learning, there can be no doubt. This of course means that in the early days of a child's life, and later in so far as he is governed by these inborn tendencies, his conduct is machine-like and blind—with no purpose and no consciousness controlling or initiating the responses. Only after experience and learning have had an opportunity to influence these responses can the child be held responsible for his ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... meantime the congregation had assembled in large numbers and the body of the church as well as the side aisles were comfortably filled. From time to time the ushers, with machine-like precision, took one or two persons from the patiently waiting line of non-pew-holders and escorted them to seats, a proceeding which began to irritate Armitage, seeing which Thornton grinned and observed, sotto voce, that one might worship ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... stood there, hesitant, staring back at old Isaac, half in a fascinated gaze, half as though trying to read some sign of weakness in the bestial countenance that confronted him. And then, very slowly, in an automatic, machine-like way, his hand groped into the inside pocket of his vest—and old Isaac cackled ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... to impose human law upon environment until it becomes machine-like in its regularity. The objectionable is eliminated, the inevitable is foreseen. One is not even made wet by the rain nor cold by the frost; while death, instead of stalking about grewsome and accidental, becomes a prearranged pageant, ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... length he was so near the town, that he was surprised to have come upon no inner line of sentries. Even as he wondered, he emerged from a copse into a field, and received the usual challenge—spoken this time in so quick, machine-like a manner, and accompanied by so prompt and precise a levelling of the musket, that he knew 'twas a British regular ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens |
