Quotes About Pendulums

Novelists do not swing on the same pendulums as critics.

One basic principle found throughout nature is this: Tension seeks resolution. From the spider web to the human body, from the formation of galaxies to the shifts of continents, from the swing of pendulums to the movement of wind-up toys, tension-resolution systems are in play.

Her broken sentences hung in midair like the pendulums of several clocks, each ticking along at a different speed, each following its own logic and reaching its own conclusions, each rising up at a different moment, each hammering its bell at a different time....

To separate the effects of gravity on a given mass from the effects of air resistance was a brilliant intellectual achievement. It allowed Galileo to close in on the essence of inertia and momentum. Still, in the real world, pendulums eventually do exactly what Aristotle's quaint paradigm predicted. They stop.