Quotes & Sayings About Colossal

All information will come in by super-realistic television and other electronic devices as yet in the planning stage or barely imagined. In one way this will enable the individual to extend himself anywhere without moving his body - even to distant regions of space. But this will be a new kind of individual - an individual with a colossal external nervous system reaching out and out into infinity. And this electronic nervous system will be so interconnected that all individuals plugged in will tend to share the same thoughts, the same feelings, and the same experiences. There may be specialized types, just as there are specialized cells and organs in our bodies. For the tendency will be for all individuals to coalesce into a single bio-electronic body. — Alan W. Watts

Vast, colossal destiny, which raises man to fame, though it may also grind him to powder! — Friedrich Schiller

If one takes the kinds of risks which I took, which are colossal, but taking risks, I was rewarded by being able to contribute in a very substantial fashion to a variety of fields. I was able to reawaken and solve some very old problems. — Benoit Mandelbrot

Once in power, Stalin's campaign to succeed Lenin required a legitimate heroic career which he did not possess because of his experience in what he called 'the dirty business' of politics: this could not be told, either because it was too gangsterish for a great, paternalistic statesman or because it was too Georgian for a Russian leader. His solution was a clumsy but all-embracing cult of personality that invented, distorted and concealed the truth. Ironically this self-promotion was so grotesque that it fanned sparks, sometimes innocent ones, which flared up into colossal anti-Stalin conspiracy-theories. It was easy for his political opponents, and later for us historians, to believe that it was all invented and that he had done nothing much at all - particularly since few historians had researched in the Caucasus where so much of his early career took place. An anti-cult, as erroneous as the cult itself, grew up around these conspiracy-theories. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

The aggregate energy of all the great masters of the past and those of the present communicates the greatest possibilities of art. It is from this position that the artist attains colossal strength. — Jorg Immendorff

The purpose of the memorial is to communicate the founding, expansion, preservation, and unification of the United States with colossal statues of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. — Gutzon Borglum

Bah. What does it matter now? There are no certainties let in the world. That was the age of great men, doing what was right." He frowned down at the broken rubble choking the floor of the colossal room. "This is the age of little men, doing what they must. Little men, with little dreams, walking in giant footsteps. — Joe Abercrombie

Well, where is she ? Where the colossal / Mountains of smoke stand. / That thing there amongst the fires / Is her. — Bertolt Brecht

To invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens; which to do requires a colossal intellect: but to describe a separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of someone sitting on the other side of the table. — John Ruskin

I waited. Nothing. Here again was the colossal silence where God's, someone's, anyone's voice should have been. Learn this lesson now, my brother said, I shan't teach it twice. There is nothing. It means nothing. Then the night exhaled and flowed again. I knew with clairvoyant weariness I'd go back countless times to the question of why, how, but knew too I carried the answer inside. It had gone in like an inhaled spec of toxic dust. Life is nothing but a statement of what happens to be. — Glen Duncan

I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. — Sylvia Plath

Colossal Cave (also known as Adventure - not to be confused with the Atari VCS game of the same name) was developed by assembly-language programmer William Crowther — Anonymous

He, Dominix Alexander Zubiri, was in love. With a woman who gagged at the thought of sucking his dick. The universe's idea of a colossal joke. — Jianne Carlo

Like Dvoretsky, I think that (all other things being equal), the analytical method of studying chess must give you a colossal advantage over the chess pragmatist, and that there can be no certainty in chess without analysis. I personally acquired these views from my sessions with Mikhail Botvinnik, and they laid the foundations of my chess-playing life. — Garry Kasparov

Gandhi has sound economic and cultural reasons for encouraging the revival of cottage industries, but he does not counsel a fanatical repudiation of all modern progress. Machinery, trains, automobiles, the telegraph have played important parts in his own colossal life! Fifty years of public service, in prison and out, wrestling daily with practical details and harsh realities in the political world, have only increased his balance, open-mindedness, sanity, and humorous appreciation of the quaint human spectacle. — Paramahansa Yogananda

It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current President ... Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been ... I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him. — Jack Cafferty

And yet every so often, the heart of America, shuddering with indignation, sends a nervous spasm through the gentle back of the Andes, and tumultuous shock waves assault the surface of the land. Three times the cuppola of proud Santo Domingo has collapsed from on high to the rhythm of broken bones and its worn walls have opened and fallen too. But the foundations they rest on are unmoved, the great blocks of the Temple of the Sun exhibit their gray stone indifferently; however colossal the disaster befalling its oppressor, not one of its huge rocks shifts from its place. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Despairingly she looked all round. She was completely encircled by the tremendous ice walls, which were made fluid by explosions of blinding light, so that they moved and changed with a continuous liquid motion, advancing in torrents of ice, avalanches as big as oceans, flooding everywhere over the doomed world. Wherever she looked, she saw the same fearful encirclement, soaring battlements of ice, an over-hanging ring of frigid, fiery, colossal waves about to collapse upon her. Frozen by the deathly cold emanating from the ice, dazzled by the blaze of crystalline ice-light, she felt herself becoming part of the polar vision, her structure becoming one with the ice and snow. As her fate, she accepted the world of ice, shining, shimmering, dead; she resigned herself to the triumph of glaciers and the death of her world. — Anna Kavan

One strange quality of writing about political campaigns is that it's a little like writing about a baseball game inning by inning. We presume we can say something about the final result from the state of play a third of the way through. You can when a game is a colossal blowout, but you can't when it's close. — John Podhoretz

Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot — Albert Einstein

The most fearful phenomenon of these midcentury years is not the atom bomb; atomic energy does have its constructive possibilities ... The most fearful event of these times is the colossal expansion of the government of the United States and the constant increase of executive power within the government. — Wheeler McMillen

A pretty handsome jerk, I might add, but a huge, colossal megajerk nonetheless. Kenzie gave me a quick glance to see how I was taking this. I shrugged.
Not going to argue with that.
And then a second later:
She thought I was handsome? — Julie Kagawa

The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale. — Richard Dawkins

There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams
not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart. — F Scott Fitzgerald

A low, angry growl hit Jatred's ears like a hammer. He turned and saw a massive figure crashing its way through the snow. Although he'd only seen the drawings of the Winter monsters, he knew it was a Garhanan. There was nothing pleasing in the way the creature looked, smelled, or sounded. Even its movements were horrid. A flat nose sat in the middle of the meaty face. The Garhanan's bushy white brows stuck out, shading small beady eyes. Its arms were muscular and swung down past its strong knees. The back, chest, and thighs were colossal too. The beast's whole body was covered in white, sparse, long fur.
"Great," Jatred snarled, his jaws clenching. He tried not to show how much Garhanan scared him. — A.O. Peart

A set of huge marble busts stared smugly down from on high: great merchants and financiers of Styrian history, by the look of them. Criminals made heroes by colossal success. — Joe Abercrombie

There were plenty of reasons to suspect Obamacare might have been a colossal failure - although none of them had to do with death panels, huge lines for treatment, a government takeover of health care, etc. — Kurt Eichenwald

I do not want to miss the historic opportunity to embedd the smallest memories of seeing you grow into the colossal fabric of my life. — Harshada Pathare

But I can tell you what I believe: When tens of thousands of innocent souls have perished in Darfur-when 11 million children are without health insurance-when our colossal debt subjects our economic future to the whims of Asian bankers-no one can tell me that faith demands this Senate spend its time arguing over a handful of judges. No one with those priorities can use my faith to intimidate me. — John F. Kerry

I should've been better. But sometimes all you can really stand to do is think about yourself. Sometimes it's the only way to cope. The only way to make sense of something as colossal and and intimidating as the world is to make it about you. — Emma Mills

The eternal raison d'etre of America is in its being the "sweet land of liberty". Should a land so dreamed into existence, so degenerate through material prosperity as to become what its European critics, with too much justice, have scornfully renamed it the "Land of the Dollar" - such a development will be one of the sorriest conclusions of history, and the most colossal disillusionment that has ever happened to mankind. — Frank Norris

Creative Artists Agency put together a project of extraordinary mediocrity and colossal stupidity. Otherwise, it was great. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them - and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon - laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution
these can lift at a colossal humbug, - push it a little - crowd it a little - weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.
- "The Chronicle of Young Satan," Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts — Mark Twain

But Moominpappa wasn't listening, because just at that moment he had got the right grip on a big round boulder, and with a great thud it rolled down the slope. It made two very clear sparks and left a faint but enchanting smell of gunpowder behind. Now it was lying at the bottom, just where it should lie. It was wonderful to roll stones, first pushing with all one's might, then feeling them beginning to move just a little at first
then a little more
and then giving way and rolling into the sea with a colossal splash, leaving one standing there trembling with effort and pride. — Tove Jansson

If, instead of saying that thieves will go to prison or liars will go to hell, we could make people think that stealing is as bad as going to a funeral in a coloured tie, or lying as bad as frying a sausage on the parlour fire, we should achieve a colossal reformation. — FitzRoy James Henry Somerset

Let me explain. Say you have an eating disorder like anorexia - you've probably been hiding the condition for a long time. After months or years, you face your demons, with or without therapy, you admit you're ill and eventually decide you want to recover. But this is only half the battle. Once start to eat again, once you begin to gain weight, it's unbelievably stressful. Having gone from absolute control over every calorie which goes into your mouth, you're now being forced to double, maybe even triple that amount. You're being forced to consume unsafe substances like butter, oil, nuts. Every mouthful takes a colossal effort. In your rigid anorexic mindset, not being underweight equates to being overweight. Not being hungry equates to greed. Giving up an eating disorder is frightening. It is almost impossible to imagine that the process will ever be ok. — Emma Woolf

The humorist who invented trial by jury played a colossal practical joke upon the world, but since we have the system we ought to try and respect it. A thing which is not thoroughly easy to do, when we reflect that by command of the law a criminal juror must be an intellectual vacuum, attached to a melting heart and perfectly macaronian bowels of compassion. — Mark Twain

Getting any movie made is just like trying to push a giant boulder up a mountain, and there's so many moving parts. Obviously, there's the creative side, and then there's the logistical side, and they're both colossal. — Ed Helms

Mindless action without a real understanding of the ramifications is only likely to result in serious miscalculations or a colossal waste of time. Avoid both by using your judgment, filtered through both knowledge and experience. Use common sense and logic as a counterbalance to emotion. — David Amerland

In the meantime, though, the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination sure seems funny. The event known around the world as hashtagGOPClownCar is improbable, colossal, spectacular and shocking; epic, monumental, heinous and disgusting. It's like watching 17 platypuses try to mount the queen of England. You can't tear your eyes away from it. It — Matt Taibbi

Infinite Universe: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger
than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real "wow,
that's big" time. Infinity is just so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks
really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is
the sort of concept we're trying to get across here. — Douglas Adams

The biggest mistake entrepreneurs can make is trying to do everything themselves. They usually blow up when they try. I did an inventory of every deal I've ever done and it turned out that every single deal I made money on was a partnership, and every colossal failure, where I lost millions, was something I tried to do by myself. — Kevin O'Leary

Harry went closer and could see she was attractive. And there was something about the relaxed way she spoke, the way she looked him straight in the eye, that suggested that she was also self-assured. A professional woman, he guessed. Something requiring a cool, rational mind. Estate agent, head of a department in a bank, politician or something like that. Well-off at any rate, of that he was fairly sure. It wasn't just the coat and the colossal house behind her, but something in the attitude and the high, aristocratic cheekbones. She walked down the steps as if walking along a straight line, made it seem easy. Ballet lessons, Harry thought. — Jo Nesbo

Man's desire to be remembered is colossal. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

New struggles.
After Buddha was dead, they still showed his shadow in a cave for centuries
a colossal, horrible shadow. God is dead, but given the way people are, there may still be caves for millennia in which his shadow is displayed.
And we
we must still defeat his shadow as well! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Just as the results of inebriety are most painful to the habitually sober, and just as the greatest saints have often been the greatest sinners, so, when the first class brain does something stupid, the stupidity of that occasion is colossal. — Stanley Baldwin

No divine terror will ever be found in the work of the man who wastes a colossal strength in elaborating toys; for the first lesson that terror is sent to teach us is, the value of the human soul, and the shortness of mortal time. — John Ruskin

Mom was all about hellfire and brimstone. Her Old Testament God was a colossal, ancient brute, a maelstrom of blood and fire, of appetite and wrath. — Laird Barron

There are only two possible forms of control: one internal and the other external; religious control and political control. They are of such a nature that when the religious barometer rises, the barometer of [external, i.e., political control] falls and likewise, when the religious barometer falls, the political barometer, that is political control and tyranny, rises. That is the law of humanity, a law of history. If civilized man falls into disbelief and immorality, the way is prepared for some gigantic and colossal tyrant, universal and immense. — Juan Donoso Cortes

'A Princess of Mars' may not have exerted the same colossal pull that Tarzan had on the global imagination, but its influence on generations of readers cannot be underestimated. — Junot Diaz

The bourgeois during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. — Karl Marx

World War I was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied, So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought. — Ernest Hemingway,

If you can't laugh at yourself, you may be missing the colossal joke of the century. — Barry Humphries

I love skyscrapers. Visiting cities lush with tall buildings has always been a treat for me. The implications of these immense towers are tremendous - a representation of the power of mind over matter. It never ceases to amaze me that within our minds exist the power to transform earthly materials into these colossal giants. For me, a walk among skyscrapers is a pleasant reminder of the boundless potential of human thought. — Todd William

I narrowed my eyes, making a colossal effort to keep them on his face and not stray down his glistening ... I slipped just once ... yes, glistening chest. Seriously? — Natasha Boyd

Gays have become colossal bores. Once interesting and iconoclastic, all they seem to crave nowadays is the State's pension and seal of approval. They ought to go back to the days of the Stonewall Riots, when the police's violations of privacy and private property were the object of their anger and activism. — Ilana Mercer

Markets are interested in profits and profits only; service, quality, and general affluence are different functions altogether. The universal, democratic prosperity that Americans now look back to with such nostalgia was achieved only by a colossal reigning in of markets, by the gargantuan effort of mass, popular organizations like labor unions and of the people themselves, working through a series of democratically elected governments not daunted by the myths of the market. — Thomas Frank

Spider rubs his eyes in a way that makes it clear that the weight of both life's experience and the immutability of youth's colossal dumbassedness is presently crushing his very soul.
Wise Young Fool — Sean Beaudoin

When the country's indebtedness is so colossal and where the budget deficit is so huge, there is a moral obligation on people to pay their fair and reasonable dues. — John Caudwell

Ascendant Frontier had actually been so efficient that it had finished building the Titan before CCP Games had finished all of the code to implement Titans into the game. These ships were such colossal undertakings that CCP assumed they had time to complete the code before anybody could actually build one. The bit of code that allowed Titans to be launched from a capital shipyard hadn't been written yet. Within — Andrew Groen

The great thing about using the past is that it gives you the most colossal freedom to invent. The research is necessary, of course, but no one writes a novel to dramatically illustrate what everybody already knows. — Peter Carey

I don't think people realise how vital libraries are or what a colossal danger it would be if we were to lose any more. Having had a truncated school life myself, all of my education from the age of 17 has been self-taught. I wouldn't be the person I am today if it wasn't for the opportunities the library gave me. — Alan Moore

If I wholly unleash my imagination and forcefully stretch it out beyond its own edges, even at such a point I can only imagine a thin shard of this most immense God. And even though it is but a thin shard, it will nonetheless be mesmerizingly colossal. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Marvellous!" he repeated, looking up at me.
"Look! The beauty
but that is nothing
look at the accuracy, the harmony. And so fragile! And so strong! And so exact!
This is Nature
the balance of colossal forces. Every star is so
and every blade of grass stands
so
and the mighty Kosmos il perfect equilibrium produces
this.
This wonder; this masterpiece of Nature
the great artist. — Joseph Conrad

He was colossal (apparently they felt behemoth was easier to spell). — Emily Devenport

Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State's inhabitants, or subjects. — Murray N. Rothbard

Then a sound came. It was like the grinding of gears on a colossal ship engine. The sound was like mountains of iron scraping and rubbing against each other, forced together by some godlike impulse. Uselessly, I covered my ears. It went on and on, and I felt as though I would never again know peace. My senses were consumed by the light and heat and sound, their power interrupted only by the tactile sensation of my heart pounding against my chest. It will be very difficult for you to really grasp what happened next. I warn you that my description will inevitably fall far from conveying the astonishing sight I witnessed. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to convey some sense of what happened. — Alec Merta

At first there would be an American cast to the congress, almost Rotarian in its forms and ceremonies, then the closer-knit European vitality would fight through, and finally the Americans would play their trump card, the announcement of colossal gifts and endowments, of great new plants and training schools, and in the presence of the figures the Europeans would blanch and walk timidly. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The most colossal display of wise, inspiring,
and humorous metaphors ever exhibited in one place. — Richard Lederer

Possibly it had occurred to him the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. [ ... ] It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before him rose the black night of Space, like a wall. His mighty bulk towered rugged and mountain-like into the zenith, and His divine head blazed there like a distant sun. At His feet stood three colossal figures, diminished to extinction, almost, by contrast
archangels
their heads level with His ankle-bone. When the Creator had finished thinking, He said, "I have thought. Behold!" He lifted His hand, and from it burst a fountain-spray of fire, a million stupendous suns, which clove the blackness and soared, away and away and away, diminishing in magnitude and intensity as they pierced the far frontiers of Space, until at last they were but as diamond nail heads sparkling under the domed vast roof of the universe. — Mark Twain

Our moon was born too small to harbor life. It came from the collision of a Mars-sized world into the primordial Earth. From that colossal crunch spun a disk of rocks that condensed into a satellite. — Gregory Benford

What we find is that our brains have colossal things happening in them all the time. — David Eagleman

Whatever else it was, Adolf Hitler's short-lived regime was also a colossal industrial process by which the wealth and productive power of much of Europe was wrenched from its normal purposes and converted into a machine for killing. — James Buchan

The State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime. It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or of alien. — Albert J. Nock

A colossal event is upon us, the birth of a New World Order. — Brent Scowcroft

puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting — Jack London

Myron looked at her. "Quite a coup," he said. "Thank you," she said. "We'll see how big a coup it is," Zuckerman said. "Zoom is moving into golf in a very big way. Huge. Humongous. Gigantic." "Enormous," Myron said. "Mammoth," Win added. "Colossal." "Titantic." "Bunyanesque." Win smiled. "Brobdingnagian," he said. "Oooo," Myron said. "Good one." Zuckerman — Harlan Coben

Again I insist upon the point. The whole of the sexual revolution has been a colossal failure, and has wrought untold human misery. The move for same-sex pseudogamy is inextricable from that revolution; it is grafted upon it and cannot survive or even appear to make sense without it. We cannot have a good nation unless we are a good people. We cannot be a good people when we throw contempt upon manhood and womanhood and the virtue that honors their beauty and their being for one another; it is like asking for clean sleaze, or cold love. — Anthony M. Esolen

If I had a Volkswagon Beetle. I'd paint the front to resemble Glenn Langdon in War Of The Colossal Beast. Why? Two words: The Ladies. — Dana Gould

In New Zealand we had this colossal squid, which was discovered just off the shores of New Zealand, between New Zealand and Antarctica back in 2003. It's the biggest squid ever found, and I know that there's things living down in the depths of the ocean that do explain the Kraken - you know, these giant things that people saw back in the day, that could take ships down - and so I know that there's stuff out there, and I like the idea that we haven't solved everything yet. — Rhys Darby

The heavy eyelids snapped open. Jack froze.
A huge gold-and-amber eye, as big as a dinner plater, stared at him. The dark pupil shrank, focusing.
Jack stood very still.
The colossal head turned, the scaled lip only three feet from Jack. The golden eyes gazed at him, wirling with fiery color.
Jack breathed in tiny, shallow breaths.
Dont blink. Don't blink ...
Two gusts of wind erutped from the wyvern's nostrils Jack jumped straight up, bounced off the ground into another jump, and scrambled up the nearest tree.
In the clearing, Gaston bent over, guffawing like an idiot.
'It's not funny! — Ilona Andrews

Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars ... The stakes are immense, the task colossal the time is short. But we may hope- we must hope- that man's own creation, man's own genius, will not destroy him. — Albert Einstein

He was the proud owner of a quite colossal member, which on the many awestruck occasions it had been exposed to public view had been compared variously to a giant frankfurter, an overfed python, a length of led piping, the trunk of a rogue elephant, a barrage balloon, an airport-sized Toblerone and a roll of wet wallpaper. — Jonathan Coe

The more we heat up the planet, the more it costs all of us, not just in money, but in colossal famines, displacements, deaths, and species extinctions, as well as in the loss of some of the things that make this planet a blue-green jewel, including its specialized habitats from the melting Arctic to bleaching coral reefs. — Rebecca Solnit

On increasingly warm nice days I liked to sit toward noon on the bench encircling the cherry tree and look at the bare trees, the freshly plowed fields, the green strips of winter planting, the meadows that were already sprouting, and through the fragrance which swells out of the ground with the advent of spring contemplate the mountains, gleaming with the colossal quantities of snow still on them. — Adalbert Stifter

Short, square, cleanshaven, his head seemed carved out of an elephant's tusk, the whole massive cone of ivory left more or less complete in its original shape, eyes hollowed out deep in the roots, the rest of the protuberance accommodating his other features, terminating in a perfectly colossal nose that stretched directly forward from the totally bald cranium. The nose was preposterous, grotesque, slapstick, a mask from a Goldoni comedy. — Anthony Powell

Insights are everything. They play central parts in the actualization of destiny. A dangerous insights becomes a colossal executioner. Latching your fate with noble thoughts spares you a life of self-limitation. — Darmie Orem

All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let loose depend upon one thing that is forbidden. — G.K. Chesterton

Most / of those he interviewed for the science project had to admit they did not hear the cries of the roses / being burned alive in the noonday sun. Like horses, Geryon would say helpfully, / like horses in war. No, they shook their heads./ Why is grass called blades? he asked them. Isn't it because of the clicking? / They stared at him. You should be / interviewing roses not people, said the science teacher. Geryon liked this idea. / The last page of his project / was a photograph of his mother's rosebush under the kitchen window. / Four od the roses were on fire. / They stood up straight and pure on the stalk, gripping the dark like prophets / and howling colossal intimacies / from the back of their fused throats. — Anne Carson

A gap will yawn, achingly, day by day, it will turn into a colossal pit, an abyss without foundation, a gradual invasion of words by margins, blank and insignificant, so that all of us, to a man, will find nothing to say. — Georges Perec

Of all the queer and fabulous denizens of the Shivering Sea, however, the greatest are the ice dragons. These colossal beasts, many times larger than the dragons of Valyria, are said to be made of living ice, with eyes of pale blue crystal and vast translucent wings through which the moon and stars can be glimpsed as they wheel across the sky. Whereas common dragons (if any dragon can truly be said to be common) breathe flame, ice dragons supposedly breathe cold, a chill so terrible that it can freeze a man solid in half a heartbeat. — George R R Martin

I suppose it was the worst book any man has ever written. It was a colossal tome and faulty from start to finish. But it was my first book and I was in love with it. If I had had the money, as Gide had, I would have published it at my own expense. If I had had the courage that Whitman had, I would have peddled it from door to door. Everybody I showed it to said it was terrible. I was urged to give up the idea of writing. I had to learn, as Balzac did, that one must write volumes before signing one's own name. I had to learn, as I soon did, that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, that one must write and write and write, even if everybody in the world advises you against it, even if nobody believes in you. Perhaps one does it just because nobody believes; perhaps the real secret lies in making people believe. That the book was inadequate, faulty, bad, terrible, as they said, was only natural. — Henry Miller

In recent years, as personal memories have faded, another perspective is beginning to make a tentative appearance in China. This view acknowledges the colossal wrongs committed during the Cultural Revolution, but it begins to inquire whether perhaps Mao raised an important question, even if his answer to it proved disastrous. The problem Mao is said to have identified is the relationship of the modern state - especially the Communist state - to the people it governs. In largely agricultural - and even incipient industrial - societies, governance concerns issues within the capacity of the general public to understand. Of course, in aristocratic societies, the relevant public is limited. But whatever the formal legitimacy, some tacit consensus by those who are to carry out directives is needed - unless governance is to be entirely by imposition, which is usually unsustainable over a historic period. — Henry Kissinger

A strong, vague persuasion that it was better to go forward than backward, and that I could go forward - that a way, however narrow and difficult, would in time open - predominated over other feelings: its influence hushed them so far, that at last I became sufficiently tranquil to be able to say my prayers and seek my couch. I had just extinguished my candle and lain down, when a deep, low, mighty tone swung through the night. At first I knew it not; but it was uttered twelve times, and at the twelfth colossal hum and trembling knell, I said: I lie in the shadow of St. Paul's. — Charlotte Bronte

You have to take risks if you want to master a craft. Taking risks means screwing up. Show me someone who's never made a colossal mistake, and I'll show you someone who's never created a masterpiece. If — L.A. Witt

I was amazed! I never would have guessed that a colossal transparent golden sphere holds the insides of Heaven. Enclosed inside this sphere is God's house, New Jerusalem. The sphere is of Biblical proportions; to stand and gawk at it; to try to take it all in, and try to understand what the Master of this universe has accomplished. Awesome; just awesome. — Ed Gaulden

Condoms should be marked in 3 sizes: jumbo, colossal and super colossal, so that men do not have to go in and ask for the small. — Barbara Seaman

I'm no expert, no natural-born talent, definitely no guru. As you'll soon learn, only through a colossal experiment in trial and error did I reach the sexual summit. Although I own up to having worn a cape in a few intimate scenarios, I don't possess supernatural powers of any kind. Perhaps my IQ is slightly above average, but Mensa isn't busting down my door. If pressed to define myself, I'd say I'm Horatio Alger between the sheets: a self-made swinging single male. . . with a hefty dose of Buster Keaton mixed in. — Daniel Stern

I believe that the rising of the proletariat, if it ever comes in this country, will end in a colossal victory for capitalism - that capitalism, as at present and in the past, will play off one mob against another, and pick the pockets of both. — Franklin Foer