Calamitous 7 Quotes & Sayings

It is our attitude toward events, not events themselves, which we can control. Nothing is by its own nature calamitous
even death is terrible only if we fear it. — Epictetus

But around her, the air was sad, somehow. And behind the smile in her eyes, the Grief was a fresh, shining blue. Because of a calamitous car crash. Because of a Joe-shaped hole in the universe. — Arundhati Roy

Of all failures, to fail in a witticism is the worst, and the mishap is the more calamitous in a drawn-out and detailed one — Walter Savage Landor

Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work. [ ... ] Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I had a long history of calamitous mishaps. — Janet Evanovich

I lost it in the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, I started to panic when I noticed the graveyard of empty toilet paper rolls. The brown cylinders had ostensibly been placed vertically to form a half oval on top of the flat shiny surface of the stainless steel toilet paper holder. It was like some sort of miniature-recycled Stonehenge in the women's bathroom, a monument to the bowel movements of days past. Actually, it was sometime around 2:30 p.m. when my day exited the realm of country song bad and entered the neighboring territory of Aunt Ethel's annual Christmas letter bad. Last year Aunt Ethel wrote with steady, stalwart sincerity of Uncle Joe's gout and her one - no, make that two - car accidents, the new sinkhole in their backyard, their impending eviction from the trailer park, and Cousin Serena's divorce. To be fair, Cousin Serena got divorced every year, so that didn't really count toward the calamitous computation of yearly catastrophes. I — Penny Reid

We always want more, he thought, we always take our past successes for granted and assume they point the way to future success. But the universe does not have our own best interests at heart, and to assume for a moment that it does, ever did or ever might is to make the most calamitous and hubristic of mistakes. — Iain M. Banks

I'm not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don't know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder. — Margaret Atwood

There is a calamitous difference between a people who have been immersed in paganism for centuries and a post-Christian society. While the culture of the latter may carry a deep tradition influenced by Christian values, its posture of rebellion will give it a direction that is more explicitly and consciously anti-Christian. — Edmund Clowney

I am quite scandalous, you see. I come packaged with unpredictable moments, brutal honesty, calamitous outbursts, the ghastly need for love, a fiendish lack of filter, the horrific need to question everything, nauseating affection, offensive kindness, indecent spirituality, obscene beauty, monstrous creativity, barbaric embellishments, contemptuous passion, sinful childhood traumas, unscrupulous hobbies, vexatious caring, abominable sensitivity, reprehensible humor, hideous sarcasm, displeasing feelings, unpalatable confidence, offensive compassion, villainous inspiration and a devilish wit. I am quite grotesque in my imperfectness and I am not ashamed to admit it. — Shannon L. Alder

The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others. — Cormac McCarthy

For the time being, it need only be said that the philosopher in question made much of human existence as a tragedy that need not have been were it not for the intervention in our lives of a single, calamitous event: the evolution of consciousness - parent of all horrors. — Thomas Ligotti

The general fund of vocabulary, nay, of discourse itself, so calamitous that the failure of the banks in 1929 seems paltry by comparison; so that we find verbal paupers all around us, tattered, emaciated, and reduced to the stark penury of such verbal resources as "It's like wow" or using "interface" or "office" as verbs. — Thomas Howard

But the fraud being once established, could not afterward be explained, for it is with a pious fraud as with a bad action, it begets a calamitous necessity of going on. — Thomas Paine

Even in my most calamitous times, love has been elemental. — Emma Lou Warner Thayne

I am the keeper of the beast, though all men harbor a beast in the depths of their heart
callous, calamitous creatures, driven by deviant demands and derisive diligence.
From the short story What Rough Beast — Michael Hibbard

If slavery be the destined sword of the hand of the destroying angel which is to sever the ties of this Union, the same sword will cut in sunder the bonds of slavery itself. A dissolution of the Union for the cause of slavery would be followed by a servile war in the slave-holding States, combined with a war between the two severed portions of the Union. It seems to me that its result might be the extirpation of slavery from this whole continent; and, calamitous and desolating as this course of events in its progress must be, so glorious would be its final issue, that, as God shall judge me, I dare not say that it is not to be desired. — John Quincy Adams

Catfish always drink alcoholic ether if begged, for every catfish enjoys heightened intoxication; gross indulgence can be calamitous, however; duly, garfish babysit for dirty catfish children, helping catfish babies get instructional education just because garfish get delight assisting infants' growth and famously inspire confidence in immature catfish, giving experience (and joy even); however, blowfish jeer insightful garfish, disparaging inappropriately, doing damage, even insulting benevolent, charming, jovial garfish, hurting and frustrating deeply; joy fades but hurt feelings bring just grief; inevitable irritation hastens feeling blue; however, jovial children declare happiness, blowfishes' evil causes dejection, blues; accordingly, always glorift jolly, friendly garfish! — John Green

Life's a freaking mess ... there's not one truth ever, just a bunch of stories, all going on at once, in our heads, in our hearts, all getting in the way of each other. It's all a beautiful calamitous mess. — Jandy Nelson

The most calamitous failures of prediction usually have a lot in common. We focus on those signals that tell a story about the world as we would like it to be, not how it really is. We ignore the risks that are hardest to measure, even when they pose the greatest threats to our well-being. We make approximations and assumptions about the world that are much cruder than we realize. We abhor uncertainty, even when it is an irreducible part of the problem we are trying to solve. — Nate Silver

The fundamental trouble with marriage is that it shakes a man's confidence in himself, and so greatly diminishes his general competence and effectiveness. His habit of mind becomes that of a commander who has lost a decisive and calamitous battle. He quite trusts himself thereafter. — H.L. Mencken

I shall be told by the zealots of the sect of regulation that this may be true, and may be safely committed to the convention of the farmer and the labourer, when the latter is in the prime of his youth, and at the time of his health and vigour, and in ordinary times of abundance. But in calamitous seasons, under accidental illness, in declining life, and with the pressure of a numerous offspring, the future nourishers of the community but the present drains and blood-suckers of those who produce them, what is to be done? [Thoughts and Details on Scarcity] — Edmund Burke

It was the music that finally roused Leo back to consciousness. "Hey. I like that old song," he croaked, completely oblivious to the calamitous chain reaction of the previous 10 seconds. That is until he realized there was a dead body separating him and Kay. — Delora Dennis

It seems when Opportunity knocks, Fate shows up to open the door. — Anthony Liccione

People say to me all the time that I threw some money into some guy's coffee cup [by accident, thinking they were poor]. People do make the same sort of mistake. I've made attempts to volunteer that have been calamitous! — Nicole Holofcener

There is in our natures a calamitous hunger for consummation. — Clive Barker

Ye Children of Man! whose life is a span, Protracted with sorrow from day to day, Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous, Sickly, calamitous creatures of clay! — Aristophanes

I am very poor - for a know nothing, understand nothing. It is not a calamitous condition until it is realized. — Rafael Sabatini

But generally speaking, people weren't fired, art jobs were very hard to get, so something really calamitous had to happen to a person who was working there in order for you to find a space. — Gil Kane

He didn't need to get up and look in the ornate, gilt-edged mirror over the massive fireplace to know that calamitous was the accurate word for his face. His right eye drooped, and the right half of his face was a gnarled mess of scar tissue. He was missing a small chunk of his nose on the right side, and he wore his hair shaggy to conceal the scar where his right ear used to be. But no amount of hairstyling could conceal the fact that his right arm was missing below the elbow. And his right leg, also injured in the blast, would always cause him to walk with a slight limp. Once a handsome young man, he was now a monster. A beast. — Katy Regnery