Gales Quotes & Sayings

Knyghtwood, though the gales had stripped away most of its leaves, had not lost its fascination for Ben and the twins. Indeed, its spell seemed deeper than before. The trees all had faces now, the twins said, and fingers and toes. They dug their toes in hard when the wind blew, and stretched up their arms to the sky, and pulled down the clouds with their long, grey fingers, and made purple cloaks out of them that they wrapped about their bare limbs when the night fell coldly. — Elizabeth Goudge

All I could say, and much more, and much better, you will have said to yourself long ago. And I have so little light and wisdom in me, when it comes to such disaster, that I can see nothing for us but the old Earth turning onward and time feasting on our suffering along with the rest. Somewhere at the heart of the gales of grief (and of love too, I've been told) already they have blown themselves out. — Samuel Beckett

For my part, whether sailing in cruiser or dinghy, I shall remain myself. My sails are not puffed out with the north wind in my favour, nor am I beating into the southern gales of affliction. — Horace

"Screw the oath." I lean in until I feel her breath against my face, then I stop. I don't want to rush her. "You've done enough for them. You're protecting me. Who cares about the rest?"
"I do." She closes her eyes,and her jaw quivers. "I swore to get you safely through this-and I will. And then you'll return with the Gales and meet your betrothed."
"They can take their betrothal and shove it. I want you."
Audra and Vane — Shannon Messenger

He felt the need for something which he could attach his floating heart to; the heart that tugged at his side; the heart that seemed filled with spiced amorous gales every evening about this time. — Virginia Woolf

Like a bellowing beast, he howled her name, his raspy wails riding the gales like a ship on a roiling sea. — Fawn Bonning

I know my own soul, how feeble and puny it is: I know the magnitude of this ministry, and the great difficulty of the work; for more stormy billows vex the soul of the priest than the gales which disturb the sea. — John Chrysostom

I write a few lines in haste to say that I am safe - and well advanced on my voyage. This letter will reach England by a merchantman now on its homeward voyage from Archangel; more fortunate than I, who may not see my native land, perhaps, for many years. I am, however, in good spirits: my men are bold and apparently firm of purpose, nor do the floating sheets of ice that continually pass us, indicating the dangers of the region towards which we are advancing, appear to dismay them. We have already reached a very high latitude; but it is the height of summer, and although not so warm as in England, the southern gales, which blow us speedily towards those shores which I so ardently desire to attain, breathe a degree of renovating warmth which I had not expected. — Mary Shelley

Childhood is supposed to be a radiant springtime but mine seems to have been always autumn, the gales seething in the big beeches behind this old gate-lodge, as they're doing right now, and the rooks above them wheeling haphazard, like scraps of char from a bonfire, and a custard-coloured gleam having its last go low down in the western sky. — John Banville

Eros harrows my heart: wild gales sweeping desolate mountains, uprooting oaks. — Sappho

The first flash of color always excites me as much as the first frail, courageous bloom of spring. This is, in a sense, my season
sometimes warm and, when the wind blows an alert, sometimes cold. But there is a clarity about September. On clear days, the sun seems brighter, the sky more blue, the white clouds take on marvelous shapes; the moon is a wonderful apparition, rising gold, cooling to silver; and the stars are so big. The September storms
the hurricane warnings far away, the sudden gales, the downpour of rain that we have so badly needed here for so long
are exhilarating, and there's a promise that what September starts, October will carry on, catching the torch flung into her hand. — Faith Baldwin

These boys ride the gales in rapture at their own glory. But every now and then, a true storm rises. It shatters their masts and rips the hair from their heads. They do not last long till the sea swallows them whole. But their mothers have wept their deaths long before, as I wept for yours the first day we met." He — Pierce Brown

The virtuous to those mansions go
Where pleasures unembitter'd flow,
Where, leading up a jocund band,
Vigor and Youth dance hand in hand,
Whilst Zephyr, with harmonious gales,
Pipes softest music through the vales,
And Spring and Flora, gaily crown'd,
With velvet carpet spread the ground;
With livelier blush where roses bloom,
And every shrub expires perfume. — Charles Churchill

One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
Which tells us the way to go.
Like the winds of the seas are the ways of fate,
As we voyage along through the life:
Tis the set of a soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I want no thunder or lightning to remind me of my God, nor am I as apt to bethink on most of all His goodness in trouble and tribulations as on a calm, solemn, quiet day in a forest, when His voice is heard in the creaking of a dead branch or in the song of a bird, as much in my ears at least as it is ever heard in uproar and gales. — James Fenimore Cooper

I asked these Indians: "Do men ever make Chicha?" My question was met with gales of laughter. The women howled. Bent over in hilarity, one replied, "Men can't brew. Chicha made by men would only make gas in the belly. You are a funny man! Beer is women's work." — Alan D. Eames

He splayed his fingers in her hair and stared at her for a few moments. "I'm giving in to the need to do what I wanted the minute I saw ye exit the Land Rover with the Scottish gales blowing about yer golden hair."
"What?"
"I'm going to kiss ye. — Vonnie Davis

The only reason I have lived so long is that I let go of my past. Shut the door on grief on regret on remorse. If I let them in, just one self-indulgent crack, whap, the door will fling open gales of pain ripping through my heart blinding my eyes with shame breaking cups and bottles knocking down jars shattering windows stumbling bloody on spilled sugar and broken glass terrified gagging until with a final shudder and sob I shut the heavy door. Pick up the pieces one more time. — Lucia Berlin

Like a tree which does not hurry the flow of its sap and stands at ease in the spring gales without fearing that no summer may follow. — Rainer Maria Rilke

What do we plant when we plant the tree? We plant the ship that will cross the sea, we plant the mast to carry the sails, we plant the planks to withstand the gales
the keel, the keelson, and beam and knee
we plant the ship when we plant the tree. — Henry Abbey

Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' is not above sudden, disturbing, movements. Since its inception, capitalism has known slumps and recessions, bubble and froth; no one has yet dis-invented the business cycle, and probably no one will; and what Schumpeter famously called the 'gales of creative destruction' still roar mightily from time to time. To lament these things is ultimately to lament the bracing blast of freedom itself. — Margaret Thatcher

To be an artist means: not to calculate and count; to grow and ripen like a tree which does not hurry the flow of its sap and stands at ease in the spring gales without fearing that no summer may follow. It will come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are simply there in their vast, quiet tranquility, as if eternity lay before them. It is a lesson I learn every day amid hardships I am thankful for: patience is all! — Rainer Maria Rilke

It was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard frosts and heavy gales; — Robert Louis Stevenson

Lay not the blame on me, O sailor, but on the winds. By nature I am as calm and safe as the land itself, but the winds fall upon me with their gusts and gales, and lash me into a fury that is not natural to me. — Aesop

She what was honour knew, And with obsequious majesty approv'd My pleaded reason. To the nuptial bower I led her blushing like the morn; all heaven And happy constellations on that hour Shed their selectest influence; the earth Gave sign of gratulation, and each hill; Joyous the birds; fresh gales and gentle airs Whisper'd it to the woods, and from their wings Flung rose, flung odours from the spicy shrub. — John Milton

Rains driven by storms fall not perpetually on the land already sodden, neither do varying gales for ever disturb the Caspian sea. — Horace

Typhoons are a sort of violent whirlwinds. Before these whirlwinds come on ... there appears a heavy cloud to the northeast which is very black near the horizon, but toward the upper part is a dull reddish color. The tempest came with great violence, but after a while, the winds ceased all at once and a calm succeeded. This lasted ... an hour, more or less, then the gales were turned around, blowing with great fury from the southwest. — William Dampier

Oh, popular applause! what heart of man
Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?
The wisest and the best feel urgent need
Of all their caution in thy gentlest gales;
But swell'd into a gust
who then, alas!
With all his canvas set, and inexpert,
And therefore, heedless, can withstand thy power? — William Cowper

Understand, for instance, that having a sad thought, even having a continual succession of sad thoughts, is not the same as being a sad person. You can walk through a storm and feel the wind but you know you are not the wind.
That is how we must be with our minds. We must allow ourselves to feel their gales and downpours, but all the time knowing this is just necessary weather.
When I sink deep, now, and I still do from time to time, I try and understand that there is another, bigger and stronger part of me that is not sinking. It stands unwavering. — Matt Haig

Say, care-worn man, Whom Duty chains within the city walls, Amid the toiling crowd, how grateful plays The fresh wind o'er thy sickly brow, when free To tread the springy turf, - to hear the trees Communing with the gales, - to catch the voice Of waters, gushing from their rocky womb, And singing as they wander ... Spring-hours will come again, and feelings rise With dewy freshness o'er thy wither'd heart. — Robert Montgomery

[Sweet it is during a tempest when the gales lash the waves to watch from the shore another man's great striving.]3 — Michel De Montaigne

Our quest for safe harbor begins when we acknowledge our need to give up the independence and self-reliance of the orphan heart and humble ourselves willingly to be fathered and mothered by other men and women who have been there before, people who know how to find their way through the storms and the gales of life and who know where safe harbor lies. Safe harbor - the heart and love of the Father, along with all the riches and resources of His Kingdom - is our inheritance when we enter in with a heart of sons and daughters. Whose son are you? Whose daughter are you? Remember - no sonship, no inheritance. — Jack Frost

Felixstowe, the United Kingdom's largest port, stops work only for Christmas Day and for crane-toppling Force 9 gales. — Rose George

I live here as a fish in a vessel of water, only enough to keep me alive, ut in heaven I shall swim in the ocean. Here I have little air in me to keep me breathing, but there I shall have sweet and fresh gales; Here I have a beam of sun to lighten my darkness, a warm ray to keep me from freezing; yonder I shall live in light and warmth for ever. — Arthur Bennett

He loved, beneath all this summer transiency, to feel the earth's spine beneath him; for such he took the hard root of the oak tree to be; or, for image followed image, it was the back of a great horse that he was riding, or the deck of a tumbling ship
it was anything indeed, so long as it was hard, for he felt the need of something which he could attach his floating heart to; the heart that tugged at his side; the heart that seemed filled with spiced and amorous gales every evening about this time when he walked out. — Virginia Woolf

Passions are the gales of life. — Alexander Pope

With my husband, I have twice sailed across the Atlantic in a sailboat one third the length of the Mayflower. I know Atlantic gales inside and out. I endured one that lasted for three days with winds up to fifty knots. — Kathryn Lasky

The Four Horsemen whose Ride presages the end of the world are known to be Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence. But even less significant events have their own Horsemen. For example, the Four Horsemen of the Common Cold are Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril, and Lack of Tissues; the Four Horsemen whose appearance foreshadows any public holiday are Storm, Gales, Sleet, and Contra-flow. — Terry Pratchett

Erak belched quietly and leaned to one side so he could scratch his backside. He was sure that Slagor's crew had brought fleas with them into the hut. It was the one discomfort they had not had to bear so far. Cold, damp, smoke and smell. But now they could add fleas. He wished, not for the first time, that Slagor's wolfship had gone down in the gales on the Stormwhite Sea. — John Flanagan

We do not sustain ourselves in virtue by our own strength, but by the balancing of two opposed vices, just as we remain upright amidst two contrary gales. Remove one of the vices, and we fall into the other. — Blaise Pascal

In my head, when the gales are riding wild,
I steer towards catastrophe
then write about it. — Robin Robertson

Where'er you walk cool gales shall fan the glade, Trees where you sit shall crowd into a shade. Where'er you tread the blushing flowers shall rise, And all things flourish where you turn your eyes. — Alexander Pope

The passions are the gales of life; and it is religion only that can prevent them from rising into a tempest. — Isaac Watts

It was not very long after this that there occurred the first of the mysterious events that rid us at last of the captain, though not, as you will see, of his affairs. It was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard frosts and heavy gales; and it was plain from the first that my poor father was little likely to see the spring. He sank daily, and my mother and I had all the inn upon our hands, and were kept busy enough without paying much regard to our unpleasant guest. — Robert Louis Stevenson

We seldom question the purpose of life when our world is sunny and bright. This question tends to hide itself during pleasant sailing, only rearing its face during the deepest and darkest travails, when the gales of storm weather have fallen. — Donald L. Hicks

'I promise you calm seas,' " Sir Godfrey called, and raised his hands in benediction, " 'auspicious gales, and sail so expeditious that shall catch your royal fleet far off.' — Connie Willis

There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention- that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary- the sunshine, the memories, the future,- which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. — Joseph Conrad

Longbottom, the boy who kept losing his toad, was called, he fell over on his way to the stool. The hat took a long time to decide with Neville. When it finally shouted, "GRYFFINDOR," Neville ran off still wearing it, and had to jog back amid gales of laughter to give it to "MacDougal, Morag." Malfoy swaggered forward when his name was called and got his wish at once: the hat had — J.K. Rowling

One ship drives east and other drives west by the same winds that blow. It's the set of the sails and not the gales that determines the way they go. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

She comes majestic with her swelling sails, The gallant Ship: along her watery way, Homeward she drives before the favouring gales; Now flirting at their length the streamers play, And now they ripple with the ruffling breeze. — Robert Southey

Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade! Ah, fields beloved in vain! Where once my careless childhood stray'd, A stranger yet to pain! I feel the gales that from ye blow A momentary bliss bestow. — Thomas Gray

An almost eerie quiet hung over Washington; it had been that way ever since the British left. Pennsylvania Avenue stood broad and empty, with Joe Gales's type still scattered over the 7th Street intersection. General Ross's horse still lay, legs stiff in death, outside the ruins of Robert Sewall's house. The rubble of the Capitol still smoldered quietly in the sun. — Walter Lord