Nature

"Iron, at the same time the most useful and the most fatal instrument in the hand of mankind. For by the aid of iron we lay open the ground, we plant trees, we prepare our vineyard-trees, and we force our vines each year to resume their youthful state, by cutting away their decayed branches. It is by the aid of iron that we construct houses, cleave rocks, and perform so many other useful offices of life. But it is with iron also that wars, murders, and robberies are effected, and this, not only hand to hand, but from a distance even, by the aid of missiles and winged weapons, now launched from engines, now hurled by the human arm, and now furnished with feathery wings. This last I regard as the most criminal artifice that has been devised by the human mind; for, as if to bring death upon man with still greater rapidity, we have given wings to iron and taught it to fly."

"As frequent Mention is made in the News Papers from Europe, of the Success of the Philadelphia Experiment for drawing the Electric Fire from Clouds by Means of pointed Rods of Iron erected on high Buildings, &c. it may be agreeable to the Curious to be inform'd, that the same Experiment has succeeded in Philadelphia, tho' made in a different and more easy Manner, which any one may try, as follows."

"After the golden age of Latinity, we gradually slide into the silver, and at length precipitately descend into the iron."

"I have been driven to assume for some time, especially in relation to the gases, a sort of conducting power for magnetism. Mere space is Zero. One substance being made to occupy a given portion of space will cause more lines of force to pass through that space than before, and another substance will cause less to pass. The former I now call Paramagnetic & the latter are the diamagnetic. The former need not of necessity assume a polarity of particles such as iron has with magnetic, and the latter do not assume any such polarity either direct or reverse. I do not say more to you just now because my own thoughts are only in the act of formation, but this I may say: that the atmosphere has an extraordinary magnetic constitution, & I hope & expect to find in it the cause of the annual & diurnal variations, but keep this to yourself until I have time to see what harvest will spring from my growing ideas."

"A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside; and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact, in one of the spice islands of the Indian Ocean."

"When iron was found, the trees began to tremble, but the iron reassured them: 'Let no handle made from you enter into anything made from me, and I shall be powerless to injure you.'"

"In 1728 James Logan wrote that "there are four furnaces in blast in the colony." Colebrook and Durnham were certainly two... The iron industry of Pennsylvania may fairly be said to have been established on a firm foundation at this period. In 1728-29 the colony exported two hundred and seventy-four tons of pig-iron to the mother country."

"Access to talented and creative people is to modern business what access to coal and iron ore was to steel-making."

"We can no more have exact religious thinking without theology, than exact mensuration and astronomy without mathematics, or exact iron-making without chemistry."

"Beauty in this Iron Age must turn From fluid living rainbow shapes to torn And sootened fragments, ashes in an urn On whose gray surface runes are traced by a Norn Who hopes to wake the Future to arise In Phoenix-fashion, and to shine with rays To blast the sight of modern men whose dyes Of selfishness and lust have stained our days... ... Reader, pray that soon this Iron Age Will crumble, and Beauty escape the rusting cage."

"The Iron never lies to you... The iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the real deal. The iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds."

"According to Sir Isaac Newton's Calculations, the last Comet that made its Appearance in 1680, imbib'd so much Heat by its Approaches to the Sun, that it would have been two thousand times hotter than red hot Iron, had it been a Globe of that Metal; and that supposing it as big as the Earth, and at the same Distance from the Sun, it would be fifty thousand Years in cooling, before it recovered its natural Temper. In the like manner, if an Englishman considers the great Ferment into which our Political World is thrown at present, and how intensely it is heated in all its Parts, he cannot suppose that it will cool again in less than three hundred Years. In such a Tract of Time it is possible that the Heats of the present Age may be extinguished, and our several Classes of great Men represented under their proper Characters. Some eminent Historian may then probably arise that will not write recentibus odiis [fresh hate] (as Tacitus expresses it) with the Passions and Prejudices of a contemporary Author, but make an impartial Distribution of Fame among the Great Men of the present Age."

"Whoever hammers a lump of iron, first decides what he is going to make of it, a scythe, a sword, or an axe. Even so we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge or we labour in vain."

"Iron yields to certain degrees of beatings or repeated pressure; its impenetrable molecules, purified by man and made homogeneous, disintegrate; and, without being in fusion, the metal no longer has the same virtue of resistance. Marshals, locksmiths, tool makers, all the workers who constantly work this metal then express the state of it by a word of their technology: "The iron is retty!" they say, appropriating this expression exclusively devoted to hemp, the disorganization of which is obtained by retting. Well, the human soul, or if you will the threefold energy of body, heart, and spirit, is in an iron-like situation, as a result of certain repeated shocks. It is thus with men like hemp and iron — they are retty."

"With many a stiff thwack, many a bang, Hard crab-tree and old iron rang. ... Ay me! what perils do environ The man that meddles with cold iron!"

"33 His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. 34 Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. 35 Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. 40 And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. 41 And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. 42 And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. 43 And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. 45 Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure."

"Samuel Nutt died in 1737. In his will he made provision for the erection of a new furnace by his wife... commenced in 1737 and probably finished in 1738. This... was called Warwick. In 1740 its management fell into the hands of , who had married into the Nutt family, and was a friend of Benjamin Franklin. In 1742 Franklin invented his celebrated stove, the model of which he presented to his friend Grace, who afterwards cast many stoves at the furnace. Warwick furnace continued in operation... to 1867, when its last blast came to an end... During the Revolution it was very active casting cannon for the Continental army"

"There is nothing of greater interest connected with the Durham furnace than the manufacture of iron stove plates and their artistic embellishments. ...[T]he manufacture of iron stoves, for heating of buildings, was begun at the furnace about 1741, when controlled by George Taylor, James Logan and James Morgan, father of General , iron master. These were called the "Adam and Eve" stoves from the figures, cast on them. ...In 1745, the furnace began casting the famous "Franklin Stove," or fire-place, and continued until it blew out, 1793. They were favorably received and with minor improvements, extensively manufactured. It was the first stove made that could be utilized for baking and cooking, having an extra door above the fuel door, a plate the whole length of the stove and a descending flue the same as the Prince Rupert stove, 1678, cast in England. It was improved, 1754, by a door on one side. This was known as the Philadelphia pattern, though smaller in size. The Franklin sold at £4. 6s, each at the furnace, and at Philadelphia £18 per ton, the price varying with the metal. About 1775, a stove pattern, artistically decorated with a bony skeleton inscribed on the center of the side plates, grasping a bone in one hand in the act of striking a man, near the end of the plate, while another figure on rear end of plate is standing in a frightened attitude looking on the unequal battle. Beneath the figures is the following inscription:HIR. FEIT. MIT. MIR. DER. BITER. TOTER. BRINCT. MICH.INTOTS. NO.A free translation of this Swedish-German is "Here (man) presumes to fight with me, bitter death, but he cannot overcome death.""

"Just for the record, the weather today is partly suspicious with chances of betrayal."

"A Song for September Sorrow and scarlet leaf, Sad thoughts and sunny weather: Ah me, this glory and this grief Agree not well together!"

"By the waters of Life we sat together, Hand in hand in the golden days Of the beautiful early summer weather, When skies were purple and breath was praise."

"The weather is so very mild That some would call it warm. Good gracious, aren’t we lucky child?..."

"Isn't the [lightning darling? Fear not the thunder, little one. It's weather, simply weather; It's friendly giants full of fun Clapping their hands together. I hope of lightning our supply Will never be exhausted ; You know it's lanterns in the sky angels who are losted. We [[love] the kindly wind and hail, The jolly thunderbolt, We watch in glee the fairy trail Of ampere, watt, and volt."

"Precipitate as weather, she appeared from somewhere, then evaporated, leaving only memory."

"Prayer: Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee to retain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations. Amen."

"But there are dreams that cannot be And there are storms we cannot weather."

"The color of the sky as far as I can see is coal gray lift my head from the pillow and then fall again with a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather."

"Strange, fertile correspondences the alchemists sensed in unlikely orders of being. Between men and planets, plants and gestures, words and weather."

"When it is evening, ye say it will be fair weather: for the sky is red."

"There’s no such thing as bad weather. It’s just light and what you are gonna do about it!"

"Stickeen always insisted on going with me, however wild the weather, gliding like a fox through dripping huckleberry bushes and thorny tangles of panaz and rubus...Once he followed me over a glacier the surface of which was so crusty and rough that it cut his feet until every step was marked with blood..."

"...defined by islands and enclosed by the rainforest, out here, everything was open, and the weather was the fabric of the world."

"How to start on my adventure—how to become a forester—was not so simple. There were no schools of Forestry]] in America. … Whoever turned his mind toward Forestry in those days thought little about the forest itself and more about its influences, and about its influence on rainfall first of all. So I took a course in meteorology, which has to do with weather and climate. and another in botany, which has to do with the vegetable kingdom—trees are unquestionably vegetable. And another in geology, for forests grow out of the earth. Also I took a course in astronomy, for it is the sun which makes trees grow. All of which is as it should be, because science underlies the forester's knowledge of the woods. So far I was headed right. But as for Forestry itself, there wasn't even a suspicion of it at Yale. The time for teaching Forestry as a profession was years away."

"Yes, today we have genuine Russian weather. Yesterday we had Swedish weather. I can't understand why your weather is so terrible. Maybe it is because you are immediate neighbours of NATO."

"I told her I'd rather talk about her, instead of listening to her drone on about the weather. Little did I know she was an aspiring meteorologist."

"Give 'em quips, give 'em fun And they'll happy to say you're A-1 If you become a farmer you've the weather to buck If you become a gambler you'll be stuck with your luck But Jack you'll never lack if you can quack like a duck Be a clown, be a clown, be a clown."

"Meteorologist see perfect in strange things, and the meshing of three completely independent weather systems to form a hundred-year event is one of them. My God, thought Case, this is the perfect storm."

"The storm starts, when the drops start dropping. When the drops stop dropping then the storm starts stopping."

"But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand."

"I loved weather, all weather, not just the good kind. I loved balmy days, fearsome storms, blizzards, and spring showers. And the colors! Everyday brought something to be admired: the soft feathery patterns of cirrus clouds, the deep, dark grays of thunderheads, the lacy gold and peach of the early morning sunrise. The sky and its moods called to me."

"The notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together, so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known thereto during all the time there is an assurance to the contrary."

"When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure."

"And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather; For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these."

"Yet with today's technological knowledge and computational tools, we can only define weather in terms of probability or chaos theories. Our scientific advancements have been exceptional during the last 400 years, but we still have only begun to understand."

"WEATHERS This is the weather the cuckoo likes, And so do I; When showers betumble the chestnut spikes, And nestlings fly; And the little brown nightingale bills his best, And they sit outside at 'The Traveller's Rest,' And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest, And citizens dream of the south and west, And so do I. This is the weather the shepherd shuns, And so do I; When beeches drip in browns and duns, And thresh and ply; And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe, And meadow rivulets overflow, And drops on gate bars hang in a row, And rooks in families homeward go, And so do I."

"Why is it that showers and even storms seem to come by chance, so that many people think it quite natural to pray for rain or fine weather, though they would consider it ridiculous to ask for an eclipse by prayer?"

"There is no way that we can predict the weather six months ahead beyond giving the seasonal average."

"For the man sound in body and serene in mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every sky has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously."

"Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy - your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself."

"April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain."