Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Bicycle Quotes

I rode in to work in the pouring rain today, but I still enjoyed the ride. For some reason being on a bicycle just puts me in a great mood. I dug up some quotes on cycling today and thought I'd put them here to share with others:

"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of mankind" - H.G. Wells

"The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets."

- Christopher Morley

"The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart."

- Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green

"When I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations: bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay's call, ice melting and so on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart."

- Diane Ackerman

"[T]he bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created: Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon."

- Bill Strickland, The Quotable Cyclist

"Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride."

- John F. Kennedy

"You never have the wind with you - either it is against you or you're having a good day."

- Daniel Behrman, The Man Who Loved Bicycles

1 comment:

B said...

Right on Matt! I'm going to school in Sweden for the fall and its nice to see so many people riding bicycles. Of course, none of them where helmets, and they ride without any law or order, but its better than the streets full of cars. I just took my bike for a little 2500km ride down to Switzerland and back (cyclingeurope2005.blogspot.com).
-Ben Heumann, McGill University