train

Night, with all her negro train, Took possession of the plain; In an hearse she rode reclined, Drawn by screech-owls slow and blind: Close to her, with printless feet, Crept Stillness, in a winding sheet.

—Smart, Christopher

An artist who has travelled on a steam train, driven an automobile,or flowninanairplanedoesn'tfeelthesame way about form and space as one who has not.

—Davis, Stuart

The thing depicted is less stationary, even the object in itself is less discernible than it used to be. A landscape broken into and traversed in a car or an express train losesindescriptivevaluebut gainsinsynthetic value; the window of the railroad carriage or the windshield of the car, combined withthespeed at whichyou aretraveling, have changed the familiar look of things. Modern man registers one hundred times more impressions than did an eighteenth century artist.

—Le¤  ger, Fernand

And the three men I admired most, The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, They caught the last train for the coast The day the music died.

—McLean, Don

Have you seen the bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by? Blackened log and stump and sapling, ghostly trees all dead and dry; Here a patch of glassy water; there a glimpse of mystic sky? Have you heard the still voice callingöyet so warm, and yet so cold: 'I'm the Mother-Bush that bore you! Come to me when you are old'?

—Lawson, Henry Hertzberg

But for his funeral trainwhichthe bridegroomsees in the distance, Would he so joyfully, think you, fall in with the marriage- procession?

—Clough, Arthur Hugh

If you want truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go round the world, it will fly: it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it. It is well said in the old proverb, 'a lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on'.

—Springsteen, Bruce

That damnable woman's trick of heaping obligations on a man, of placing yourself so entirelyand helplesslyat his mercy that at last he dare not take a step without running to you for leave. I know a poor wretch whose one desire in life is to run away from his wife. She prevents him by threatening to throw herself in front of the engine of the train he leaves her in. That is what all women do. If we try to go where you do not want us to go there is no law to prevent us; but when we take the first step your breasts are under our foot as it descends: your bodies are under our wheels as we start. No woman shall ever enslave me in that way.

—Shaw, George Bernard

We feel the machine slipping from our hands As if someone else were steering; If we see the light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming train.

—Lowell, RobertTraill Spence,Jr

God! I will pack, and take a train, And get me to England once again! For England's the one land,I know, Where men with Splendid Hearts may go.

—Brooke, Rupert Chawner

   Gaily into Ruislip Gardens Runs the red electric train With a thousand Ta's and Pardon's Daintilyalights Elaine.

—Betjeman, SirJohn

Commuteröone who spends his life In riding to and from his wife; A man who shaves and takes a train, And then rides back to shave again.

—White, E(lwyn) B(rooks)

If the husband be a man with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage,öif you did not come inonthewife'sside,öif youdid not sneak intothehouse in her train, but were an old friend in first habits of intimacy before their courtship was so much as thought on,ölook about you† Every long friendship, every old authentic intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new stamped with their currency, as a sovereign Prince calls in the good old money that was coined in some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will let it pass current in the world.

—Lamb, Charles

Sure, the next train has gone ten minutes ago.

—Punch

I went toVietnam to take the train: people have done stranger things in that country.

—Theroux, Paul Edward

  In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the L of hosts: the whole earth isfull of hisglory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

—Bible (Old Testament)

For twenty years he has held a season ticket on the line of least resistance and has gone wherever the train of events has carried him, lucidly justifying his position at whatever point he happened to find himself.

—Amery, Leo(pold) Charles Maurice Stennett

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

—Eisenhower, Dwight D(avid)

Humanitydoesnot passthrough phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind.

—Lewis, C(live) S(taples)

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

—Bible (Old Testament)

Lo! He comes with clouds descending, Once for favoured sinners slain; Thousand thousand Saints attending Swell the triumph of His train.

—Wesley, Charles

I believe that people are like portmanteauxöpacked with certain things, started going, thrown about, tossed away, dumped down, lost and found, half emptied suddenly, or squeezed fatter than ever, until finally the Ultimate Porter swings them on to the UltimateTrain and away they rattle.

—Beauchamp

As we rush, as we rush in the train, The trees and the houses go wheeling back, But the starry heavens above that plain Come flying on our track.

—Thomson,James pseudonym 'BV',ByssheVanolis

Those trains will run over their tails, if they can, Snorting and sporting like porpoises. Flee The burly, the whirligig wheels of the train, As round as the world and as large again.

—Sitwell, Dame Edith Louisa

While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve! While Summer loves to sport Beneath thy lingering light; While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves, Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, Affrights thy shrinking train, And rudely rends thy robes.

—Collins,William