Quotes & Sayings About Calamity

By daily contrition, and habitual mortification of the flesh, man is day by day RENEWED, bearing heavenly fruits and celestial graces, of an inexplicable sweetness. Contrariwise, the pleasure of the world bringeth heaviness of heart, vexation of spirit, and a wounded conscience: yea, so great hence is the calamity of the soul, and so heavy the loss of the heavenly gift (a loss which necessarily flows from the pleasures of the flesh, and from worldly delights) that he who duly calls the same to mind, cannot be exceedingly fear and dread any of the fleshly and worldly joys, which serve but to divert him from those that are spiritual and heavenly, and to quench in him the most sweet grace of devotion that brings the soul into the kingdom of God. — Johann Arndt

Whilst the Bihar calamity damages the body, the calamity brought about by untouchability corrodes the very soul. — Mahatma Gandhi

He who runs away from a fearful calamity, a foreign invasion, a terrible famine, and the companionship of wicked men is safe. — Chanakya

There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people's safety and greatness. — Eldridge Cleaver

We are born to lose and to perish, to hope and to fear, to vex ourselves and others; and there is no antidote against a common calamity but virtue; for the foundation of true joy is in the conscience. — Seneca The Younger

It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. — Benjamin E. Mays

It said I was equal parts earth and stars, equal parts animal and soul. I was hope. I was calamity. I was love. I was prejudice. I was my sister. I was his daughter. I was Juma. I was Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack. — Leylah Attar

Kyoto costs a lot, does nothing to prevent calamity, and pays no compensation in the event of loss. If my insurance broker offered that sort of policy, I would not carry insurance. Instead what my broker offers is a policy that costs a little and pays full compensation in the event of loss. If someone wants to propose that as a policy on global warming, I'm all in favour. — Ross McKitrick

We can be serene even in the midst of calamities and, by our serenity, make others more tranquil. — Swami Satchidananda

Aey mauj-e-bala unko bhi zara do char thapede halke se Kuchh log abhi tak sahil se toofan ka nazara karte hain (Loosely translated, the couplet means: O wave of calamity, strike those lightly who even now merely watch the storm from the safety of the shore.) — I.K. Gujral

In many different ways it would be an unprecedented plague, a calamity like the one that had befallen the Egyptians in the Old Testament. The only difference between the Egyptians then and the Americans now, Jende reasoned, was that the Egyptians had been cursed by their own wickedness. They had called an abomination upon their land by worshipping idols and enslaving their fellow humans, all so they could live in splendor. They had chosen riches over righteousness, rapaciousness over justice. The Americans had done no such thing. And — Imbolo Mbue

Overcome the Empyrean; hurl
Heaven and Earth out of their places,
That in the same calamity
Brother and brother, friend and friend,
Family and family,
City and city may contend. — William Butler Yeats

I'd punch that cocksucker in the balls before I'd cup him for comfort. — Calamity Jane

The story depicts also the troubled part of the hero's life which precedes and leads up to his death; and an instantaneous death occurring by 'accident' in the midst of prosperity would not suffice for it. It is, in fact, essentially a tale of suffering and calamity conducting to death. — A. C. Bradley

It neither kills outright nor inflicts apparent physical harm, yet the extent of its destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record - and its potential damage to the quality of human life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason this sickness of the soul might well be called the 'Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.' Its more conventional name, of course, is dehumanization. — Ashley Montagu

The man who in times of popular excitement boldly and unflinchingly resists hot-tempered clamor for an unnecessary war, and thus exposes himself to the opprobrious imputation of a lack of patriotism or of courage, to the end of saving his country from a great calamity, is, as to 'loving and faithfully serving his country,' at least as good a patriot as the hero of the most daring feat of arms," Schurz — Stephen Kinzer

It is to be feared that about a hundred detective stories have begun with the discovery that an American millionaire has been murdered; an event which is, for some reason, treated as a sort of calamity. — G.K. Chesterton

The calamity that comes is never the one we had prepared ourselves for. — Mark Twain

fluidity of the sea, not the rigidity of irresistible law, characterizes human conduct, especially in the midst of a calamity. — Nathaniel Philbrick

So ... I feel in regard to this aged England ... pressed upon by transitions of trade and ... competing populations,-I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before;-indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that, in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The realms of good fortune and calamity in human life are all made of thoughts and imaginings. Therefore Buddhists say that the burning of desire for gain is itself a pit of fire, while drowning in greedy love is itself a bitter sea. The moment thoughts are pure, fierce flames become a pond; the moment you become aware, the boat has arrived on the further shore. If your thoughts vary at all, your world will immediately differ, so can we not be careful? — Zicheng Hong

To face calamity with a mind as unclouded as may be, and quickly to react against it-that in a city and in an individual-is real strength. — Pericles

Jeb didn't say nothing. Didn't smile none, neither. Didn't even move except for the color running right out of him. — J.D. Jordan

These bible people remind me of another calamity similar to this missionary scheme, when our people, or any christian power would go to Africa for the pious purpose of kidnapping negroes, the mother would cry out to her children "run, run, the christians are coming," so when ever you hear "bibles," run for your life, if you do not want your pockets picked, or to be insulted and slandered as I was ... and if you hear "hopeful conversions" or the "gospel," don't stop to look behind you. — Anne Royall

God's love may take the form of wrath. It can show itself to us as a calamity. This is the difficult lesson its taken me a lifetime to learn. — Ian McEwan

I review all I know, but can synthesize no meaning. When I doze, the Fact, the certain accomplished calamity, wakes me roughly like a brutal nurse. I see it crouching inflexibly in a corner of the ceiling. It comes down in geometrical diagonal like lightning.
It says, I remain, I AM, I shall never cease to be: your memory will grow a deathly glaze: you will forget, you will fade out, but I cannot be undone.
Thus every quarter hour it puts the taste of death in my mouth, and shows me, but not gently, how I go whoring after oblivion. — Elizabeth Smart

The most reckless volume on the subject, the Malleus Maleficarum, or Witch Hammer, summoned a shelf of classical authorities to prove its point: "When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil." As is often the case with questions of women and power, elucidations here verged on the paranormal. Weak as she was to devilish temptations, a woman could emerge dangerously, insatiably commanding. According to the indispensable Malleus, even in the absence of occult power, women constituted "a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment." The — Stacy Schiff

There was someplace urgent he needed to be, and he wasn't going to make it there on time. It was a gorgeous calamity in scale, I thought. A lovely misfortune. Immediate and irreversible and very soon forgotten. We needed more troubles like that. — Lyndsay Faye

Through the inscrutable decrees of Providence everything has its recompense, and a visible calamity sometimes brings with it a great, if invisible, profit. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

For the perversely minded, simply killing the trinkets of your greatest amusement and nutritional satisfaction produces at best only temporary elation, a dazzling sensation that is over in a flash, but to permit your prey to fear calamity and to live through catastrophes large and small, to hope and to weep and to lament, to feel anguish over things lost, to regret things found, and to suffer with physical discomfort, emotional injuries and psychological lesions is the wellhead of enduring pleasure. — John Zande

Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to every misery. — Samuel Johnson

It is not a terrible thing to a wretched soul, when it shall lie roaring perpetually in the flames of hell, and the God of mercy himself shall laugh at them; when ... God shall mock them instead of relieving them; when none in heaven or earth can help them but God, and he shall rejoice over them in their calamity — Richard Baxter

Too-easy credit and millions of bad loans made during the U.S. housing bubble paved the way for the financial calamity and Great Recession that followed. Today, by contrast, credit is too tight. Mortgage loans are particularly hard to get, creating a problem for the housing market and the broader economy. — Mark Zandi

Even worse, greedy bosses might curtail the workers' freedom of movement through debt peonage or slavery. At the end of the Middle Ages, slavery was almost unknown in Christian Europe. During the early modern period, the rise of European capitalism went hand in hand with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. Unrestrained market forces, rather than tyrannical kings or racist ideologues, were responsible for this calamity. — Yuval Noah Harari

Calamity is man's true touchstone. — John William Fletcher

... she does not resent her grief. No; the weakness of that word would make it a lie. To her, what hurts becomes immediately embodied: she looks on it as a thing that can be attacked, worried down, torn in shreds. Scarcely a substance herself, she grapples to conflict with abstractions. Before calamity she is a tigress; she rends her woes, shivers them in convulsed abhorrence. Pain, for her, has no result in good; tears water no harvest of wisdom; on sickness, on death itself, she looks with the eye of a rebel. Wicked, perhaps, she is, but also she is strong: and her strength has conqueredBeauty, has overcome Grace, and bound both at her side, captives peerlessly fair, and docile as fair. Even in the uttermost frenzy of energy is each maenad movement royally, imperially, incedingly upborne. ... Fallen, insurgent, banished, she remembers the heaven whereshe rebelled. — Charlotte Bronte

I have a lot of sympathy with the ideas and frustration of the Occupy movement. I absolutely agree with the sense that Wall Street has brought an economic calamity to the middle class and that no one has been held accountable. — Susan Bysiewicz

Realize clarity from calamity. — T.F. Hodge

It will be recorded that the dead in the first decade of the calamity died of our indifference. — Paul Monette

May God protect us from every calamity. — Lailah Gifty Akita

There are always signs that a reign is ending, and they are usually spotted not in the king himself but in his court. In the inner circle, latent jealousies between advisers spill into open conflict, as they angrily debate who is to blame for the calamity, chewing over each other's past errors and pointing the finger at old and nascent enemies. — Hanna Rosin

They whose minds are least sensitive to calamity, and whose hands are most quick to meet it, are the greatest men and the greatest communities. — Thucydides

In terms of the real quality of a human being, only when suffering comes, when pain comes, does a man stand up as a human being. You can see great human beings surface only when the society is really suffering. When India was under the oppression of British rulers, how many wonderful people stood up? Where are they now? They have just fallen back into their comforts, that's all. All those Ghandis, Patels, Tilaks are still there, but they're dormant. When pain came, they all became alive. They left everything behind and stood up as giants. Where are they now? This is the human misfortune that still there's not enough intelligence in the world that human beings will rise to their peaks when everything is well. They wait for calamities. — Jaggi Vasudev

It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence. — Albert Camus

We all know by theory that there is no permanent happiness in this life: But the weight of the precept is not felt in the same manner as when it is confirmed to us by a heavy calamity. — Samuel Richardson

It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and
actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Circumstances may appear to wreck our lives and God's plans, but God is not helpless among the ruins. God's love is still working. He comes in and takes the calamity and uses it victoriously, working out His wonderful plan of love. — Eric Liddell

O evil man, leave the upright man alone and quit trying to cheat him out of his rights. Don't you know that this good man, though you trip him up seven times, will each time rise again? But one calamity is enough to lay you low. — Anonymous

Thus it takes the imminence of an infinite calamity to redeem the human adventure. On this level our age testifies to a narcissism of malediction that rips it out of its insignificance and reaffirms its centrality: by designating itself as damned, it merely emphasizes its singularity while apparently depreciating itself: 'Our period is not accidentally ephemeral; ephemerality is its essence. It cannot pass into another period but only collapse' (Anders, La Menace nucleaire, pag. 100).
What a relief to know that we are not living in a little province of time but in the historic moment when time itself is going to be engulfed! What presumption, and what naivite, to believe that we are the pinnacle of history! This self-abasement is a form of vainglory. If we can't be the best, we can still be the worst. Behind their lamentations, the catastrophists are bursting with self-importance. — Pascal Bruckner

156 : Who say, when afflicted with calamity: "To Allah We belong, and to Him is our return":- — Anonymous

The riches of scholarship, the benignities of literature, defy fortune and outlive calamity. They are beyond the reach of thief or moth or rust. As they cannot be inherited, so they cannot, be alienated. — James Russell Lowell

As much as anybody since George Wallace or Pat Buchanan, he has overtly sent dog whistles of race out to white working-class voters. That gratuitous defamation of group after group, person after person, is just anathema to Obama. He genuinely believes this guy would be a calamity for the country." Unlike the Bushes, who outsourced their political thuggery, Donald Trump does his own wet work. "He — Maureen Dowd

We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, God permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame. The danger of inducing cowardice in our patients, therefore, is lest we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing, with consequent repentance and humility. — C.S. Lewis

When we are moved primarily by fear, sooner or later we precipitate the very calamity we dread. If we fear condemnation, we behave in ways that ultimately elicit disapproval. If we fear anger, eventually we make people angry. — Nathaniel Branden

Where self-interest is the bond, The friendship is dissolved When calamity comes. Where Tao is the bond, Friendship is made perfect By calamity. — Thomas Merton

Deep knowledge is to be aware of disturbance before disturbance, to be aware of danger before danger, to be aware of destruction before destruction, to be aware of calamity before calamity. Strong action is training the body without being burdened by the body, exercising the mind without being used by the mind, working in the world without being affected by the world, carrying out tasks without being obstructed by tasks. — Sun Tzu

Half a calamity is better than a whole one. — T.E. Lawrence

People are lonely in this world for lots of different reasons. Some people have something in their disposition. Maybe they were born too mean, or maybe they were born too tender. But most people are brought to where they are by circumstance, by calamity or a broken heart or something else happening in their lives that wasn't anything they planned on. People are lonely in this world for lots of different reasons. The one thing that I do know is, it doesn't matter what any one of them tell you
nobody wants to be alone. — Dakota Fanning

There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war, or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it. — Will Rogers

No way this could be seen as probable or possible, unless you think of a blow between the eyes, a sudden calamity. The stroke of fate that leaves a man a cripple, the wicked joke that turns clear eyes into blind stones. — Alice Munro

The wisdom of the chess player is displayed more in winning over a capable opponent than a novice. The wisdom of the general is displayed more in defeating a superior army than in subduing an inferior one. Even more so, the wisdom of God is displayed when He brings good to us and glory to Himself out of confusion and calamity rather than out of pleasant times. — Jerry Bridges

Some writers maintain arithmetic to be only the only sure guide in political economy; for my part, I see so many detestable systems built upon arithmetical statements, that I am rather inclined to regard that science as the instrument of national calamity. — Jean-Baptiste Say

Accumulating love brings luck, accumulating hatred brings calamity. — Paulo Coelho

Cookie had taken her daughter amber to school then walked the thirty-something feet to work earlier. Our business was on the second floor of Calamity's, my dad's bar, which sat right in front of our apartment building. The short commute was nice and rarely invloved rabid raccoons. — Darynda Jones

I dare say you are planning on a late repentance. You do not know what you are doing. You are planning without God. Repentance and faith are the gifts of God, and they are gifts that He often withholds, when they have been long offered in vain. I grant you true repentance is never too late, but I warn you at the same time, late repentance is seldom true. I grant you, one penitent thief was converted in his last hours, that no man might despair; But I warn you, only one was converted, that no man might presume. I grant you it is written, Jesus is 'Able to save completely those who come to God through him' (Hebrews 7:25). But I warn you, it is also written by the same Spirit, 'Since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you' (Proverbs 1:24-26).

Believe me, you will find it no easy matter to turn to God whenever you please. — J.C. Ryle

Those as don't eat, without exception, fail to survive. — Calamity Jane

To accumulate love means luck, to accumulate hatred means a calamity. Whoever does not recognize the door to problems will one day leave it open, letting tragedy in. — Paulo Coelho

Loss is essential, loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life. Mind you, I'm not complaining. Thanks to some inexplicable universal guiding force, it is always the worthless things we lose - slough off, like a moulting snake. Losing and losing again, is the very basis of the process, til all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence ... — Rohinton Mistry

Society considers the sex experiences of a man as attributes of his general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that is good and noble in a human being. This double standard of morality has played no little part in the creation and perpetuation of prostitution. It involves the keeping of the young in absolute ignorance on sex matters, which alleged "innocence," together with an overwrought and stifled sex nature, helps to bring about a state of affairs that our Puritans are so anxious to avoid or prevent. — Emma Goldman

The wickedness of the few makes the calamity of the many. — Publilius Syrus

Intermarriage is not a calamity but an opportunity for both a Jewish and non-Jewish partner to learn. — Edgar Bronfman, Sr.

What a blessed truth to understand that, in the middle of all of our difficulties and calamities, we have a refuge. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

These healers ... my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories ... But their facts are patent and startling; and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, I believe, be a public calamity. — William James

We say, sorrow, disaster, calamity. God says, chastening and it sounds sweet to him though it is a discord to our ears. Don't faint when you are rebuked, and don't despise the chastening of the Lord. In your patience possess your souls. — Oswald Chambers

Religious fervor controlled by prejudice and ignorance is the greatest calamity that can befall a nation. — John R. Musick

Insomnia is a variant of Tourette's
the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has turned away, touching it everywhere, refusing to settle, to join the collective nod. The insomniac brain is a sort of conspiracy theorist as well, believing too much in its own paranoiac importance
as though if it were to blink, then doze, the world might be overrun by some encroaching calamity, which its obsessive musings are somehow fending off. — Jonathan Lethem

No personal calamity is so crushing that something true and great can't be made of it — Bill W.

We enter a time of calamity. Blood on the tarmac. Fingers in the juicer. Towers of air frozen in the lunar wastes. Models dead on the runways, with their legs facing backward. Children with smiles that can't be undone. Chicken shall rot in the aisles. See the pillars fall. — M T Anderson

Your right standing with God and your connection to Him remains your strongest defense in the day of calamity. — Jaachynma N.E. Agu

In my errant life I roamed
to learn the secrets of women and men,
of gods and dreams.
I lived in wealth and poverty,
in fame and calamity.
I saw every country of our world,
I lived a thousand lives.
Many lives I spent, other lives I squandered,
for in my life I never traveled, all I did was wander. — Roman Payne

Often it takes some calamity to make us live in the present. Then suddenly we wake up and see all the mistakes we have made. — Bill Watterson

It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions. — Robert Bly

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It was a gorgeous calamity in scale, I thought. A lovely misfortune. Immediate and irreversible and very soon forgotten. We needed more troubles like that. Ones like burning supper or coming down with a head cold at an awkward time. I desperately wanted to pass through countless small, endurable problems with the girl sitting next to me. I didn't need much else. — Lyndsay Faye

It's got you thinking - you've never really known anyone who's died of natural causes, have you? Parents and grandparents, plus friends and neighbors and casual lovers, they've all left you too early, and in such ghastly ways. Cancers and violence, accidents and congenital defects, aneurysms of the brain and psyche. You've heard of people who've slipped peacefully away in their sleep, or in their favorite easy chairs, after ripe octogenarian lives, but suspect they must be mythical, in the company of unicorns and mermaids. If you didn't know better, you'd think there was a deliberate methodology behind it all, a gradual pattern of calamity spiraling inward until, at last, you're the only one left to be dealt with. You could be expected to think that, but don't, because you still keep your wits about you, thank god - So to speak. — Brian Hodge

It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer. — Aeschylus

Low minded people are fraudulent, wicked and chaeat. They shouldnot be trusted. To h ave faith in low minded ones is mistake in policy and useless because they are not trustworthy. An administrator should not invited calamity by trusting the low minded ones. — Chanakya

Honour, in the Republic, had never been a goal in itself, only a means to an infinite end. And what was true of her citizens, naturally, was also true of Rome herself. For the generation that had lived through the civil wars, this was the consolation history gave them. Out of calamity could come greatness. Out of dispossession could come the renewal of a civilised order. — Tom Holland

Well-meant ignorance is a grievous calamity in high places. — Jacques-Benigne Bossuet

A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The stock actor is a stage calamity — George Bernard Shaw

A defeat in war is not the greatest of all evils; but when the defeat has been inflicted by enemies who are not worthy of you, then the calamity is doubled. — Aeschines

Targets come big, he said. Time comes small. — J.D. Jordan

No calamity greater than to be discontented with one's lot; — Lao-Tzu

Learn to see in another's calamity the ills which you should avoid. — Publilius Syrus

Classical Sanskrit prose writers made very long sentences like this: "Lost in the forest and in thought, bent upon death and at the root of a tree, fallen upon calamity and her nurse's bosom, parted from her husband and happiness, burnt with the fierce sunshine and the woes of widowhood, her mouth closed with silence as well as by her hand, held fast by her companions as well as by grief, I saw her with her kindred and her graces all gone, her ears and her soul left bare, her ornaments and her aims abandoned, her bracelets and her hopes broken, her companions and the needle-like grass-spears clinging round her feet, her eyes and her beloved fixed within her bosom, her sighs and her hair long, her limbs and her merits exhausted, her aged attendants and her streams of tears falling down at her feet...." and it goes on. — Abraham Eraly

While in El Paso, I met Mr. Clinton Burk, a native of Texas, who I married in August 1885. — Calamity Jane

Bear sorrows and calamities patiently, otherwise you will never be happy. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

Havaa, standing on a stepstool and stirring the broth, found an unfamiliar gratitude for the smallness of her life. Everywhere beyond these four walls smelled of smoke and gasoline, but here, no calamity was greater than an egg falling to the floor. — Anthony Marra

The whole trouble with the Republicans is their fear of an increase in income tax, especially on higher incomes. They speak of it almost like a national calamity. I really believe if it come to a vote whether to go to war with England, France and Germany combined, or raise the rate on incomes of over $100,000, they would vote war. — Will Rogers