Quotes & Sayings About Cataracts

His political and social speeches were cataracts of anecdotes and "loud laughter"; his bodily health was of a bursting sort; his ethics were all optimism; and he dealt with the Drink problem (his favourite topic) with that immortal or even monotonous gaiety which is so often a mark of the prosperous total abstainer. The established story of his conversion was familiar on the more puritanic platforms and pulpits, how he had been, when only a boy, drawn away from Scotch theology to Scotch whisky, and how he had risen out of both and become (as he modestly put it) what he was. Yet his wide white beard, cherubic face, and sparkling spectacles, at the numberless dinners and congresses where they appeared, made it hard to believe, somehow, that he had ever been anything so morbid as either a dram-drinker or a Calvinist. He was, one felt, the most seriously merry of all the sons of men. — Wilkie Collins

An honest work generates its own power; a dishonest work tries to rob power from the cataracts of the given. — Annie Dillard

If our eyes were not blinded by the cataracts of the flesh - we would see horses of fire, and chariots of fire, round about the Lord's beloved. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

For soon, the dark millenium will fall, and the world will be a different place, requiring different species. Cataracts will occlude the Sun, shutting out its hateful light, and fabulous new life-forms shall flourish and struggle beneath the perpetual stars. — Alan Moore

When I talk about the pain and hardship of a scientist's life, I'm speaking of more than existential angst. Galileo's work was condemned by the Church; Madame Curie paid with her life, a victim of leukemia wrought by radiation poisoning. Too many of us develop cataracts. None of us gets enough sleep. Most of what we know about the universe we know thanks to a lot of guys (and ladies) who stayed up late at night. — Leon M. Lederman

And it was in the midst of shouts rolling against the terrace wall in massive waves that waxed in volume and duration, while cataracts of colored fire fell thicker through the darkness, that Dr. Rieux resolved to compile this chronicle, so that he should not be one of those who hold their peace but should bear witness in favor of those plague-stricken people; so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done them might endure; and to state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise. — Albert Camus

We have had a hard and somewhat dangerous but very successful trip. No less than six weeks were spent... forcing our way down through what seemed a literally endless succession of rapids and cataracts. For forty-eight days we saw no human being. In passing these rapids we lost five of the seven canoes... One of our best men lost his life in the rapids. Under the strain one of the men went completely bad... and when punished by the sergeant he... murdered the sergeant and fled into the wilderness... We have put on the map a river about 1500 kilometres in length... Until now its upper course has been utterly unknown to every one, and its lower course... unknown to all cartographers. — Theodore Roosevelt

I always thought my days spent in darkness [as a child she had cataracts and was unable to see for nearly four years] gave me a very special sensitivity. Much later, when I really wanted to hear, really 'see' a song, I'd close my eyes, and when I wanted to bring it out of the very depths of myself, out of my guts, out of my belly, when the song had to come from far away, I'd close my eyes. — Edith Piaf

To those who believe the dead do not visit them, I say you have cataracts in your soul. I am a man of science, yet I believe in guardian angels and the haunting by ghosts. — Alyson Richman

If one yearns to see the face of the Divine, one must break out of the aquarium, escape the fish farm, to go swim up wild cataracts, dive in deep fjords. One must explore the labyrinth of the reef, the shadows of the lily pads. How limiting, how insulting to think of God as a benevolent warden, an absentee hatchery manager who imprisons us in the 'comfort' of artificial pools, where intermediaries sprinkle our restrictive waters with sanitized flakes of processed nutriment. — Tom Robbins

The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our teeples, drowned the cocks!
You sulphurour and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's molds, all germens spill at once
That make ingrateful man! — William Shakespeare

Over a quarter of a century ago she and Vernon had made a household for almost a year, in a tiny rooftop flat on the rue de Seine. There were always damp towels on the floor then, and cataracts of her underwear tumbling from drawers she never closed, a big ironing board that was never folded away, and in the one overfilled wardrobe dresses , crushed and shouldering sideways like commuters on the metro. Magazines, makeup, bank statements, bead necklaces, flowers, knickers, ashtrays, invitations, tampons, LPs, airplane tickets, high heeled shoes- not a single surface was left uncovered by something of Molly's, so that when Vernon was meant to be working at home, he took to writing in a cafe along the street. And yet each morning she arose fresh from the shell of this girly squalor, like a Botticelli Venus, to present herself, not naked, of course, but sleekly groomed, at the offices of Paris Vogue. — Ian McEwan

Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad, deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine - no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery. — Washington Irving

In books "we converse with the wise, as in action with fools." That is, if we know how to select our books. "Some books are to be tasted," reads a famous passage, "others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested"; all these groups forming, no doubt, an infinitesimal portion of the oceans and cataracts of ink in which the world is daily bathed and poisoned and drowned. — Will Durant

How could the wind be so strong, so far inland, that cyclists
coming into the town in the late afternoon looked more like
sailors in peril? This was on the way into Cambridge, up Mill
Road past the cemetery and the workhouse. On the open
ground to the left the willow-trees had been blown, driven
and cracked until their branches gave way and lay about the
drenched grass, jerking convulsively and trailing cataracts of
twigs. The cows had gone mad, tossing up the silvery weeping
leaves which were suddenly, quite contrary to all their exper-
ience, everywhere within reach. Their horns were festooned
with willow boughs. Not being able to see properly, they
tripped and fell. Two or three of them were wallowing on
their backs, idiotically, exhibiting vast pale bellies intended by
nature to be always hidden. They were still munching. A scene
of disorder, tree-tops on the earth, legs in the air, in a university
city devoted to logic and reason. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Dilly reckons it would be difficult to thread those needles, the eyes so small, especially with her cataracts. — Edna O'Brien

My son never eats baloney. He says the stuff in baloney will kill you. I say when? I've got cataracts, high blood pressure, enlarged prostate, skin cancer, hemorrhoids, an artificial hip, false teeth, and gas. Every day I take eleven different pills and a stool softener. And now I'm supposed to worry about baloney. — Janet Evanovich

Italian in the mouth of Italians is a deep-voiced stream, with unexpected cataracts and boulders to preserve it from monotony. In Mr. Eager's mouth it resembled nothing so much as an acid whistling fountain which played ever higher and higher, and quicker and quicker, and more and more shrilly, till abruptly it was turned off with a click. — E. M. Forster

To look into what will be isn't unlike self-abuse. To watch yourself march through possibilities, to follow the truth through all those twists and turns. Just a little might stunt your growth." I thought of Jane, tiny and older than Gorgoth. "Or make you go blind." His cataracts seemed opalescent in the Builder light. "And if you look too far, if you look to see what waits for us all at the end . . ." "Tell me." Father Merrin shook his head. "It burns." And for an instant I glimpsed a skinless hand holding a copper box. — Mark Lawrence

I, too, like to read. Once a month, I go to the local branch. For myself, I pick a novel and, for Bruno, with his cataracts, a book on tape. At first Bruno was doubtful. "What am I supposed to do with this?" he said, looking at the box set of "Anna Karenina" as if I'd handed him an enema. And yet. A day or two later I was going about my business when a voice from above bellowed, ALL HAPPY FAMILIES RESEMBLE ONE ANOTHER, nearly giving me a conniption. After that, he listened to whatever I'd brought him at top volume and then returned it to me without comment. One afternoon, I came back from the library with Ulysses. For a month straight he listened. He had a habit of pressing the stop button and rewinding when he hadn't fully grasped something. INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT. Pause, rewind. INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE. Pause, rewind. INELUCTABLE MODALITY. Pause. INELUCT. — Nicole Krauss

I have come to see that the benefits produced by eating a plant-based diet are far more diverse and impressive than any drug or surgery used in medical practice. Heart diseases, cancers, diabetes, stroke and hypertension, arthritis, cataracts, Alzheimer's disease, impotence and all sorts of other chronic diseases can be largely prevented. These diseases, which generally occur with aging and tissue degeneration, kill the majority of us before our time. — T. Colin Campbell

Power
Living in the earth-deposits of our history
Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.
Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power. — Adrienne Rich

Fact One: Cataract surgery is simple, painless and (except with implants) risk free ... the whole procedure is common, routine and nothing to worry about. Fact Two: Fact One applies only to cataracts on the eyes in somebody else's head. — Helene Hanff

They legalized alcohol, they legalized tobacco. What is it gonna hurt to legalize this medicinal, medical marijuana that's used for purposes of cataracts? — Snoop Dogg

Calcification is the hardening of body tissues by calcium salts or deposits. Although calcification itself is not considered a disease, it has been shown to be a significant contributing factor in nearly every known illness and aging condition, including heart disease, kidney stones, gallstones, chronic inflammation, arthritis, cancers, cataracts, eczema, psoriasis, and even wrinkles. — David Wolfe

In every evocation of a childhood scene, my stepfather's face is the least detailed, the most out of focus; when I think of him my memory's eyes have cataracts. (p. 12) — Rabih Alameddine

God has blessed the vale of Kashmir with grace and grandeur. It is a land of lush green meadows, crystal clear springs and lakes, the majestic rivers and streams, the snow white and roaring cataracts, sweet waters, high snow-covered peaks make it a perfect archetype of the promised land of God. — Tarif Naaz

When the purity of Jesus lies over a heart, His transparency burns the cataracts off the soul. The only way to see God manifested in the world around is with the eyes of Jesus within. — Ann Voskamp

As you go down the water,' he said, 'you will find that the trees will fail, and you will come to a barren country. There the River flows in stony vales amid high moors, until at last after many leagues it comes to the tall island of the Tindrock, that we call Tol Brandir. There it casts its arms about the steep shores of the isle, and falls then with a great noise and smoke over the cataracts of Rauros down into the Nindalf, the Wetwang as it is called in your tongue. That is a wide region of sluggish fen where the stream becomes tortuous and much divided. There the Entwash flows in by many mouths from the Forest of Fangorn in the west. About that stream, on this side of the Great River, lies Rohan. On the further side are the bleak hills of the Emyn Muil. The wind blows from the East there, for they look out over the Dead Marshes and the Noman-lands to Cirith Gorgor and the black gates of Mordor. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not tempted to explore it,
to penetrate to the shores of its Lake Tchad, and discover the source of its Nile, perchance the Mountains of the Moon? Who knows what fertility and beauty, moral and natural, are to be found? In the Mountains of the Moon, in the Central Africa of the night, there is where all Niles have their hidden heads. The expeditions up the Nile as yet extend but to the Cataracts, or perchance to the mouth of the White Nile; but it is the black Nile that concerns us. — Henry David Thoreau

By the time I'm 75 and I have a new hip, and my eyes are laser cleaned of cataracts, I wont think I'm a bionic man. I think that's just how technology works. The posthuman future of humanity will not announce itself; it will just creep up on us. — John Scalzi

Twelve years ago my mother gets her cataracts removed. So twelve years ago the doctor gives her these enormous sunglasses to wear to protect her eyes from the sun for 4-6 weeks after the operation ... twelve years ago. She still wears them. She thinks they're attractive. She looks like Bea Arthur as a welder. — Judy Gold

Love was not blind, but it might mimic a deteriorating case of cataracts. — Sherry Thomas