Wheel of life

“ His job is to go round and round on a wheel but never to make progress, for the wheel is so swung that it revolves with him. I am appalled by the absolute inutility of it. What a life! What a life! Wearing out a wheel and himself at one and the same time. "Let him go when you get to the woods," say I, "it will be kinder. You have heard of those Eastern folk, who, when they wish to praise Allah, buy birds and set them free." ”

“ You have no feeling for life. Paint life! You’re still sitting by a spinning-wheel, instead of at some mighty wheel of steel, propelled by a force of sixteen thousand horse-power. Paint my age for me, my huge delight in being! ”

“ Practically the whole western country has tied itself to a wheel, and so whatever its happiness and welfare may be, come of or with the wheel. This territory is capable of self-support; it has still its independent spirit, bred of the pioneer who lived before the day of wheels; it is responsive to appeals that stop its restless movement—as the wheel of Ixion when Orpheus played; but none the less is it an eager, restless, unquiet life, driven as a wheel, driven by the same hand that urged it into the valley. ”

“ For the things of our country are often distant; but the things of our cosmos are always near; we can shut our doors upon the wheeled traffic of our native town; but in our own inmost chamber we hear the sound that never ceases; that wheel which Dante and a popular proverb have dared to christen as the love that makes the world go round. For this is the great paradox of life; that there are not only wheels within wheels, but the larger wheels within the smaller. ”

“ And as for writing and reading on a wheel that all the while keeps whirling, I do not deny the wonder of it, but what pleasure such a marvel can present, I cannot for the life of me discover. Nor do I see how it is a whit more charming to watch these fair young people twisting about their bodies and imitating wheels than to behold them peacefully reposing. ”

“ His waking and sleeping thought would be the desire that each wheel should perform in its own place exactly the same rotation in the same time. His life would simply become intolerable to him if any of his thousands of wheels began to show signs of consciousness, and to make independent movements of their own. ”

“ And one can understand the motive in exemplifying the variations of human fortune by pictures of the wheel of life which show types of all the degrees of human happiness and unhappiness—instances of indescribable tortures at one side of the wheel, lesser miseries adjoining it, followed by similar gradations so arranged that as we go round the circle we come at last to fair scenes of ideal human bliss. ”

“ These two diverse tendencies at work eternally in the same world produce strain and tension and anguish. The tension occasioned by these opposite forces gives rise to the third "quality," which is a tendency toward movement, oscillation, rotation—what Boehme often calls the wheel of nature, or the wheel of motion, or the wheel of life. ”

“ Day and night, week in week out, the human writing-machines, and those other machines which are almost human (and better than human in some points) hurry through their allotted tasks, and ignore the saintly shadow cast upon them by the spire of St. Dunstan. This is indeed the centre of the world: the hub from whence spring the spokes of the vast wheel of life. For to this point all things over the world converge by a vast web of wire, railroad, coach road, and steamer track. ”

“ To my mind the infelicities of which we see so much in life grow out of lack of time and patience thus to study and adjust the natures that have agreed in the sight of God and man to stand by one another to the last. They will not take the pains, they have not enough specific gravity, to balance themselves in their new environment. Indeed, I found a whole philosophy of life in the wooing and the winning of my bicycle. ”

“ That hence it is clear and manifest, that his wheel is in the midst of the wheels of men, and that therefore he is ordering all their motions and reelings to the best. His wheel keepeth an even pace, and moveth equally and equitably in the midst of men's contrary motions. ”

“ That which caused the many failures I had in learning the bicycle had caused me failures in life; namely, a certain fearful looking for of judgment; a too vivid realization of the uncertainty of everything about me; an underlying doubt—at once, however (and this is all that saved me) , matched and overcome by the determination not to give in to it. ”

“ And so I found high moral uses in the bicycle and can commend it as a teacher without pulpit or creed. He who succeeds, or, to be more exact in handing over my experience, she who succeeds in gaining the mastery of such an animal as Gladys, will gain the mastery of life, and by exactly the same methods and characteristics.
One of the first things I learned was that unless a forward impetus were given within well-defined intervals, away we went into the gutter, rider and steed. ”

“ to climb life’s worn, heavy wheel,
Which draws up nothing new? ”

“ After all, what a dull, monotonous life ours would be, if within this outer life there were not the inner life, the 'wheel within the wheel,' as in Ezekiel's vision. Though this inner wheel is 'lifted up whithersoever the spirit' wills 'to go,' the outer—unlike that in the vision—is not also lifted up ”

“ Already I knew well enough that tens of thousands who could never afford to own, feed, and stable a horse, had by this bright invention enjoyed the swiftness of motion which is perhaps the most fascinating feature of material life, the charm of a wide outlook upon the natural world, and that sense of mastery which is probably the greatest attraction in horseback-riding. ”

“ "Any place you love is the world to you," exclaimed a pensive Catharine Wheel, who had been attached to an old deal box in early life, and prided herself on her broken heart; ”

“ But all this is a part of that equilibration of thought and action by which we conquer the universe in conquering ourselves.
I finally concluded that all failure was from a wobbling will rather than a wobbling wheel. I felt that indeed the will is the wheel of the mind—its perpetual motion having been learned when the morning stars sang together. When the wheel of the mind went well then the rubber wheel hummed merrily; but specters of the mind there are as well as of the wheel. ”

“ The wheel holds you, the glance has caught you; it has caught, no matter where or how, by some part of your thought which dragged after you, or by some inattention on your part. You are lost, and your whole body will be drawn in; a series of mysterious forces seizes you, and you struggle in vain, for human aid is no longer possible. ”

“ Turn thy wild wheel thro’ sunshine, storm, and cloud;
Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.
Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown;
With that wild wheel we go not up or down;
Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.
Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands;
Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands;
For man is man and master of his fate. ”

“ What wonder, when she saw him cast pitilessly down on the road-side—alive or dead she knew not—the wheel of the carriage that bore her away might have crushed and destroyed his tender limbs—what wonder that she should be threatened by instant death, through the excess of her agony? ”

“ If anyone can answer this question instantly, his eyes will be like a comet and his mind like a flash of lightning. When the hubless wheel turns, Master or no master can stop it. It turns above heaven and below earth, South, north, east, and west. ”

“ We have just given ourselves a good shake, like a Newfoundland dog, when four bells (2 a.m.) strike, and the man at the wheel is of course relieved, his time being up. It happens to be our turn, or 'trick,' at the wheel, and we must at once take to it, all dripping and exhausted as we are. ”

“ We jog quietly along, meeting the same faces, grinding over the same thoughts, the gravel of the soul's highway,—now and then jarred against an obstacle we cannot crush, but must ride over or round as we best may, sometimes bringing short up against a disappointment, but still working along with the creaking and rattling and grating and jerking that belong to the journey of life, even in the smoothest-rolling vehicle. ”

“ At home on sea and land, like the feet of the Proclaiming Angel, it finds a fulcrum wherever it happens to be. It is the alphabet of human ingenuity. You can spell out with the wheel and the lever—and the latter is only a loose spoke of that same wheel—pretty much everything in the Nineteenth Century but the Christian Religion and the Declaration of Independence. ”

“ The wheels were whirring like a high wind and the big body creaking and groaning with the strain. But the lights were brilliant, and one could steer to an inch. I remember thinking what an awful and yet majestic sight we should appear to anyone who met us. It was a narrow road, and we were just a great, roaring, golden death to anyone who came in our path.
We got round the corner with one wheel three feet high upon the bank. ”

“ That curious sense of responsibility for carrying on the world's affairs which little children often exhibit because "the old man clogs our earliest years," I remember in myself in a very absurd manifestation. I dreamed night after night that every one in the world was dead excepting myself, and that upon me rested the responsibility of making a wagon wheel. ”

“ When the wheelbarrow broke.
Broke midway in the struggle: a providen-
tial mystery:
The usual meek accounting for of such mis-
handled history:
As if it were the method of the wisdom and
the glory
To run the earth on one wheel,—and each
small earthly story,—
Till the wheelbarrow broke!
Ah, friend! of God's mechanics you mistake
the grand solution;
On no weak, single centre runs the perfect
revolution ”

“ I seem to be like a little speck whirling on a wheel, suddenly caught up. 'What am I here for?' I ask. Simply to be here a time—I asked it a week ago, I asked it yesterday, and I ask it to-day. And little things happen and the days pass. ”

“ The whole arrangement seemed a delightful survival of days when no one was ever in a hurry, and life revolved on leisurely wheels, as different from our modern rush and excitement as a bullock cart is from a motor car. ”

“ But I haven't such an excuse. I am not necessary to the happiness of any household. I am what is known as a fifth wheel—a useless piece of paraphernalia carried along as necessary impedimenta on other people's journeys. ”

“ The wheel goes on and on. A soul enters one form, resides in it for a time, then leaves it and goes into another and quits that again for a third. Thus the round goes on till it comes out of the wheel and becomes free. ”

“ For which sin Ixion is at last bound upon a wheel -- fiery and toothed, and rolling perpetually in the air: -- the type of human labour when selfish and fruitless (kept far into the Middle Ages in their wheels of fortune) ; the wheel which has in it no breath or spirit, but is whirled by chance only; whereas of all true work the Ezekiel vision is true, that the Spirit of the living creature is in the wheels, and where the angels go, the wheels go by them ”

“ So it must stand—“The Wheel of Love;” but if any lady (men are worse than useless) will save the author’s credit by proving that wheels do not go round, he will be very much obliged—and will offer her every facility. ”

“ The road may be rough, roundabout, and steep, without precluding wholesome and hearty happiness; but if one wheel drags while the other turns, if one goes back while the other goes forward, if for any reason the two do not move by parallel lines in the same direction, the whole carriage is bewitched, the whole journey is embittered, the whole object is baffled. ”

“ The great wheels have slowly turned, until they have ceased to crush me so low, and grind me so small, and once more I begin, under God’s Providence, to reach out my hands into the passing atmosphere of life and feel the breezes blow over the seared and fevered palms. Once more I dare turn my eyes toward the labor-fields and their faithful workers; in my land, bright with its western sunbeams, aglow with beauty and abounding in plenty, they sew and glean in peaceful valleys. ”

“ Nature is like the chain of the Ferris Wheel, endless and infinite, and these little carriages are the bodies or forms in which fresh batches of souls are riding, going up higher and higher until they become perfect and come out of the wheel. ”

“ It is overwhelmed by decrepitude and grief, and it has diseases and calamities for its progeny. That wheel relates in time and place. It has toil and exercise for its noise. Day and Night are the rotations of that wheel. It is encircled by heat and cold. Pleasure and pain fire its joints, and hunger and thirst are the nails fixed into it. ”

“ A soul’s a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon.” ”

“ The idea of attributing life or spirit to wheels, organs by their nature detached or discontinuous from the living creatures of which they were parts, was worthy of a prophet or poet; but to no such prophetic vision were the first wheelwrights indebted for their conception of so great an improvement upon animal locomotion. ”