Cataclysms Quotes & Sayings

It was more necessary to him than redemption. She could break him. Him. In their year together, the surprise had still not left him. He had lived through cataclysms. — Thea Harrison

To my way of thinking, the slavery issue is just an excuse to allow some people to do hateful things and feel righteous about it. — Joan Lowery Nixon

At night the sky was very near, sprawled in star smoke and gamma cataclysms, but she didn't see it the way she used to, as soul extension, dumb guttural wonder, a thing that lived outside language in the oldest part of her. — Don DeLillo

No amount of art, even of the Great American variety, can elevate you above, or insulate you from, the divisions, the cataclysms, of ordinary life. — Garth Risk Hallberg

Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, 'convulsions of nature,' etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God's love. — John Muir

Nowhere in Chaucer do we find what can be called a radically allegorical poem. — C.S. Lewis

What did Diane know about this? What was her connection? Could she be the mastermind behind the blond man and the man in the tan jacket holding a deerskin suitcase and maybe even Jackie's mother's strange behavior? — Joseph Fink

Genocide is like a dessert. It is made of the flesh and bones of woman and children, it is sweetened with the blood of the innocent, and it is baked in the ovens of Auschwitz. There were truths to be learnt and there was wisdom to be gained ... but there was a price to to be paid as well. You could not brush up against the future and escape unscathed. You could not see into the forbidden and avoid damage to your sight. — Terry Brooks

Perhaps the reason we so often experience happiness only in hindsight, and that chasing it is such a fool's errand, is that happiness isn't a goal in itself but is only an aftereffect. It's the consequence of having lived in the way that we're supposed to - by which I don't mean ethically correctly so much as just consciously, fully engaged in the business of living. In this respect it resembles averted vision, a phenomena familiar to backyard astronomers whereby, in order to pick out a very faint star, you have to let your gaze drift casually to the space just next to it; if you look directly at it, it vanishes. And it's also true, come to think of it, that the only stars we ever see are not the "real" stars, those cataclysms taking place in the present, but always only the light of the untouchable past. — Tim Kreider

Wonderful or supernatural events are not so uncommon, rather they are irregular in their incidence. Thus there may be not one marvel to speak of in a century, and then often enough comes a plentiful crop of them; monsters of all sorts swarm suddenly upon the earth, comets blaze in the sky, eclipses frighten nature, meteors fall in rain, while mermaids and sirens beguile, and sea serpents engulf every passing ship, and terrible cataclysms beset humanity. — David Garnett

The biggest bursts of speciation that we know about in the history of the earth are soon after great cataclysms, like the extinction of the dinosaurs, which create new opportunities, and all sorts of new forms spring up ... So, quite often, the reasons for creativity depend on accidents or disasters that prevent the normal habits being carried out. — Rupert Sheldrake

That abominable and sensual act called reading the newspaper, thanks to which all the misfortunes and cataclysms in the universe over the last twenty-four hours, the battles which cost the lives of fifty-thousand men, the murders, the strikes, the bankruptcies, the fires, the poisonings, the suicides, the divorces, the cruel emotions of statesmen and actors, are transformed for us, who don't even care, into a morning treat, blending in wonderfully, in a particularly exciting and tonic way, with the recommended ingestion of a few sips of cafe au lait. — Marcel Proust

I don't think that Women's Liberation will change much though
not because there is anything wrong with their aims, but because it is already clear that the whole world is being shaken into a new pattern by the cataclysms we are living through: probably by the time we are through, if we do get through at all, the aims of Women's Liberation will look very small and quaint. — Doris Lessing

My mother doesn't cook; my grandmother didn't cook. Her kids were raised by servants. They would joke about Sunday night dinner. It was the only night she would cook, and apparently it was just horrendous, like scrambled eggs and Campbell's soup. — Katharine Weymouth

For optimists, human life never needs justification, no matter how much hurt piles up, because they can always tell themselves that things will get better. For pessimists, there is no amount of happiness - should such a thing as happiness even obtain for human beings except as a misconception - that can compensate us for life's hurt. As a worst-case example, a pessimist might refer to the hurt caused by some natural or human-made cataclysm. To adduce a hedonic counterpart to the horrors that attach to such cataclysms would require a degree of ingenuity from an optimist, but it could be done. And the reason it could be done, the reason for the eternal stalemate between optimists and pessimists, is that no possible formula can be established to measure proportions and types of hurt and happiness in the world. If such a formula could be established, then either pessimists or optimists would have to give in to their adversaries. — Thomas Ligotti

I don't have to worry about Madame Ouche! she'll still be robbing me blind when she's dead! ... having made her last confession and received extreme unction ... all the cataclysms will pass over her without harming a single gray hair on her head! it's a paradise here for scum like her, on earth as there is in heaven ... they don't really die, the sluts, the hussies, the really awful ones, they just go from one paradise to another, with their money, servants, cars ... just buy their cute little ticket and off they go! final absolution and see you later! they shit in your hands! ... they're born to slip out of both hells - the one here and the one in the next world ... all they do is fuck and whine ... loads of cash! never broke! ... cheers! here's to you! no regrets! you realize too late ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Of Course you can attract someone by Beautiful body ,but if you don't have beautiful soul than they will be with you only until they enjoy your body in Bed — Mohammed Zaki Ansari

The great anguishes of the soul always come upon us like cosmic cataclysms. When they do, the sun errs from its course and the stars are troubled. A day will come to every feeling soul when Fate stages an apocalypse of anguish, an upturning of all known heavens and universes over the soul's desolation. — Fernando Pessoa

To be loved by God is the highest relationship, the highest achievement, and the highest position in life. — Henry Blackaby

The person identifies with the image the others have created of him on Facebook, and this image in turn guides his life and actions. He comes to believe that his public image (with the comments underneath it) is who he is. — Nicos Hadjicostis

Where the glacier meets the sky, the land ceases to be earthly, and the earth becomes one with the heavens; no sorrows live there anymore, and therefore joy is not necessary; beauty alone reigns there, beyond all demands. — Halldor Laxness

You know what? Yesterday will never come back. Close your eyes and see something! You shall neither see yesterday nor tomorrow. Open your eyes and you shall see today! Open your eyes to realities then! Today is all you have to make the change! Today is the day you have to prepare for a better tomorrow. Arise and see! Today is the day you have to make the best use of the lessons of yesterday! Open your eyes and see today! Today is all you have to make a change. Awake and see why you have today! Arise and realize why you woke up today! Make today your day! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won't see it. It is, as Ruskin says, 'not merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense of the word, unseen.' ... I have to say the words, describe what I'm seeing ... But if I want to notice the lesser cataclysms of valley life, I have to maintain in my head a running description of the present. — Annie Dillard

Had he been informed by an indisputable authority that the end of the world was to be finally accomplished by a catastrophic disturbance of the atmosphere, he would have assimilated the information under the simple idea of dirty weather, and no other, because he had no experience of cataclysms, and belief does not necessarily imply comprehension. — Joseph Conrad

And somewhat as in blind night, on a mild sea, a sailor may be made aware of an iceberg, fanged and mortal, bearing invisibly near, by the unwarned charm of its breath, nothingness now revealed itself: that permanent night upon which the stars in their expiring generations are less than the glinting of gnats, and nebulae, more trivial than winter breath; that darkness in which eternity lies bent and pale, a dead snake in a jar, and infinity is the sparkling of a wren blown out to sea; that inconceivable chasm of invulnerable silence in which cataclysms of galaxies rave mute as amber. — James Agee

It is my aim to win the american people over to our side, to make them all lovers of beer. — Adolphus Busch

Nevertheless so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life! — Charles Darwin

It is a turn of events that highlights a certain human arrogance about our destructive powers. It is only hubris to imagine that we can destroy nature, or the world. It is the mirror image of the industrialist's egotistical desire to exploit and control it. And it is true that we can kill off continents of forest and destroy species by the thousands, and even wreak climate change. But once we're gone, the rest of nature will rush on, as it has after so many other cataclysms, growing over and through and out of us. The apocalypse we can create is for ourselves and for our cousins, but not for life on Earth. — Andrew Blackwell

A long time ago when cataclysms were common
as sneezes and land masses slid
around the globe looking for places
to settle down and become continents,
someone introduced us at a party. — Billy Collins

The mold we give to our lives is so that there will be no cataclysms. The order we seek we are willing to surrender to the flow of life at any time, but it is there as a brake on a car, and our health is a brake. We put brakes on, against our temperament. he said, Even a room, arranged in a certain manner, prevents certain things from taking place in it. — Anais Nin

Stupid that everyone in his case
Is praising his particular opinion!
If Islam means submission to God,
We all live and die in Islam. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

You begin to notice what it is that makes this person a teacher, beyond the limits of his individuality and personality. Thus the principle of the "universality of the guru" comes into the picture as well. Every problem you face in life is a part of your marriage. Whenever you experience difficulties, you hear the words of the guru. This is the point at which one begins to gain one's independence from the guru as lover, because every situation becomes an expression of the teachings. First you surrendered to your spiritual friend. Then you communicated and played games with him. And now you have come to the state of complete openness. As a result of this openness you begin to see the guru-quality in every life-situation, that all situations in life offer you the opportunity to be as open as you are with the guru, and so all things can become the guru. — Chogyam Trungpa

This is a catastrophic universe, always; and subject to hidden reversals, upheavals, changes, cataclysms, with joy never anything but the song of substance under pressure forced into new forms and shapes. — Doris Lessing

Geologists have usually had recourse for the explanation of these changes to the supposition of sundry violent and extraordinary catastrophes, cataclysms, or general revolutions having occurred in the physical state of the earth's surface. — George Julius Poulett Scrope

Conversations flowed like the waters of a water-fall! And every time they met their conversations sparked flames like the forest caught in a wild fire! — Avijeet Das