Tempests Quotes & Sayings

Character is constructed amidst the tempests of the World — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

In excessive griefs, as in great tempests, the abyss is found between the tops of the loftiest waves — Alexandre Dumas

Tempests, and bright lightnings, are to be sung; their nature is to be told, and from what cause they pursue their course; lest, having foolishly divided the heaven into parts, you should be anxious as to the quarter from which the flying flame may come, or to what region it may betake itself; and tremble to think how it penetrates through walled enclosures, and how, having exercised its power, it extricates itself from them. Of which phenomena the multitude can by no means see the causes, and think that they are accomplished by supernatural power. — Lucretius

Lots of people are born into lives that feel like a journey in the very middle of a big ship on familiar seas; they sit comfortably, crossing their legs, they know when the sun will rise and when the moon will wane, they have plans that they follow, they have a map! But then there are those of us, a few, who are born into lives that feel like standing at the very top of the ship's stern; we have to stand up, hold on tight for dear life, we never know when the waves will rock and we never know where the sun will set or when the moon will wane! Nothing follows the laws of common nature and we live in a wild, wild awakening and the only map we have is the map of the stars! We're called to see the lighting tear at the horizon, we're chosen to roar with the tempests, but we're also the first ones to see the suns rise, the first ones to watch the moons form anew! There is nothing ordinary, nothing at all. But neither are we! And we wouldn't want it any other way! — C. JoyBell C.

My fine visions are all very well, but I must not forget they are absolutely unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden in my brain; but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a rough tract to travel, and around me gather black tempests to encounter. — Charlotte Bronte

I don't have deal breakers," Alan said. "I look on tempests, and am never shaken. — Sarah Rees Brennan

It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth ... and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below. — Francis Bacon

Carnal apple, Woman filled, burning moon,
dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light,
what secret knowledge is clasped between your pillars?
What primal night does Man touch with his senses?
Ay, Love is a journey through waters and stars,
through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain:
Love is a war of lightning,
and two bodies ruined by a single sweetness.
Kiss by kiss I cover your tiny infinity,
your margins, your rivers, your diminutive villages,
and a genital fire, transformed by delight,
slips through the narrow channels of blood
to precipitate a nocturnal carnation,
to be, and be nothing but light in the dark. — Pablo Neruda

I love you for what you are
Though your heart bears scars
From life's harsh tempests
I would not wish it unblemished
Each wound carved your strength
Suffering gave you wisdom
These flaws make you perfect — Mark Caney

The dream clung to her. Her sleep had been full of Jupiter ever since the survey last week: that overwhelming, unstoppable girth; the swirling patterns of the atmosphere, dark belts and light stripes rolling in circular rivers of ammonia crystal clouds; every shade of orange in the spectrum, from soft, sand-coloured regions to vivid streams of molten vermilion; the breathtaking speed of a ten-hour orbit, whipping around and around the planet like a spinning top; the opaque surface, simmering and roaring in century-old tempests. And the moons! The ancient, pockmarked skin of Callisto and the icy crust of Ganymede. The rusty cracks of Europa's subterranean oceans. The volcanoes of Io, magma fireworks leaping up from the surface. — Lily Brooks-Dalton

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools. — John Muir

For friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections, from storm and tempests; but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts. — Francis Bacon

Love is not love which alters it when alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: O no! It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out, even to the edge of doom.
(Sonnet 116) — William Shakespeare

Shakespeare's plays were a great Teutonic Valhalla with brilliant sunshine at times and violent tempests at others. The world to him was a battlefield, but his sense of poetic justice, his sublime faith in life and its infinite resources, guided the battles. — Bjornstjerne Bjornson

Fortune is the best school of courage when she is fraught with anger, in the same way as winds and tempests are the school of the sailorboy. — Pietro Metastasio

Her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love; we cannot call her winds and waters, sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report ... — William Shakespeare

Self-esteem is a balloon filled with wind, from which great tempests surge when it is pricked — Voltaire

He was a locked box inside which tempests roiled. He was a man enshadowed by himself. — John Connolly

I know a rock in a highland's ravine,
On which only eagles might ever be seen,
But a black wooden cross o'er a precipice reigns,
It rots and it ages from tempests and rains.
And many years have gone without any hints,
From times when it was seen from faraway hills.
And its every arm is raised up to the sky,
As if catching clouds or going to fly.
Oh, if I were able to rise there and stay,
Then how I'd cry there and how I'd pray;
And then I would throw off real life's chains
And live as a brother of tempests and rains! — Mikhail Lermontov

Marriage makes a man more vulnerable by doubling the expanse of sail exposed to the tempests of social life. — Andre Maurois

The Golden Mean. Who founded firm and sure Would ever live secure, In spite of storm and blast Immovable and fast; Whoso would fain deride The ocean's threatening tide; - His dwelling should not seek On sands or mountain-peak. Upon the mountain's height The storm-winds wreak their spite: The shifting sands disdain Their burden to sustain. Do thou these perils flee, Fair though the prospect be, And fix thy resting-place On some low rock's sure base. Then, though the tempests roar, Seas thunder on the shore, Thou in thy stronghold blest And undisturbed shalt rest; Live all thy days serene, And mock the heavens' spleen. — Anonymous

He whose life is one even and smooth path, will see but little of the glory of the Lord, for he has few occasions of self-emptying, and hence, but little fitness for being filled with the revelation of God. They who navigate little streams and shallow creeks, know but little of the God of tempests; but they who "do business in great waters," these see his "wonders in the deep. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

After long stormes and tempests sad assay, Which hardly I endured heretofore: in dread of death and daungerous dismay, with which my silly barke was tossed sore: I doe at length descry the happy shore, in which I hope ere long for to arryue: fayre soyle it seemes from far and fraught with store of all that deare and daynty is alyue. Most happy he that can at last atchyue the ioyous safety of so sweet a rest: whose least delight sufficeth to depriue remembrance of all paines which him opprest. All paines are nothing in respect of this, all sorrowes short that gaine eternall blisse. — Edmund Spenser

I freeze and burn, love is bitter and sweet, my sighs are tempests and my tears are floods, I am in ecstasy and agony, I am possessed by memories of her and I am in exile from myself. — Francesco Petrarca

Claiming to be a unique divinely guided state, destined by the Almighty to bring Christian civilization to the entire globe, lost most of its force after two-thirds of the empire had been conquered by the standard-bearers of a different religion. Fortunately, Judaeo-Christian texts offered another, now more apposite model. From divinely ordained world conquerors, emperors were able to use the Old Testament to morph themselves into the leaders of a Chosen People, riding the Constantinopolitan Ark of salvation through besetting tempests towards final Salvation and Triumph, with apocalypse a recurrently popular genre. — Peter Heather

We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies; but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils? — Michel De Montaigne

What if in Scotland's wilds we viel'd our head, Where tempests whistle round the sordid bed; Where the rug's two-fold use we might display, By night a blanket, and a plaid by day. — Oliver Goldsmith

The blue sky, the brown soil beneath, the grass, the trees, the animals, the wind, and rain, and stars are never strange to me; for I am in and of and am one with them; and my flesh and the soil are one, and the heat in my blood and in the sunshine are one, and the winds and the tempests and my passions are one. I feel the 'strangeness' only with regard to my fellow men, especially in towns, where they exist in conditions unnatural to me, but congenial to them ... In such moments we sometimes feel a kinship with, and are strangely drawn to, the dead, who were not as these; the long, long dead, the men who knew not life in towns, and felt no strangeness in sun and wind and rain. — William Henry Hudson

If hush'd the loud whirlwind that ruffled the deep, The sky if no longer dark tempests deform; When our perils are past shall our gratitude sleep? No! Here's to the pilot that weather'd the storm! — George Canning

Admittedly, man is small and insignificant in nature's scheme; but he is part of it. And are we to think less of the man who exposes himself to nature's forces than of him who just delights in looking at her, safe from dangers and tempests? Even those ridiculous earthworms know that an icicle can "sneeze"; but they have learned by obervation when and where it happens, and will do their best to avoid the danger with clear-eyes alertness and which they owe to their own daring. They are not deaf; they too hear the mighty voice of the mountains, but they understand and interpret it in a different way from those who enjoy it so passively and with such self-satisfaction. — Heinrich Harrer

The immortal mind, superior to his fate, amid the outrage of external things, firm as the solid base of this great world, rests on his own foundation. Blow, ye winds! Ye waves! ye thunders! roll your tempests on! Shake, ye old pillars of the marble sky! Till at its orbs and all its worlds of fire be loosen'd from their seats; yet still serene, the unconquer'd mind looks down upon the wreck; and ever stronger as the storms advance, firm through the closing ruin holds is way, when nature calls him to the destin'd goal. — Mark Akenside

Ignorance and prejudice are the ballast of our ship of state - however, ships without ballast are not seaworthy and cannot sail in the tempests, nor reach a safe harbor. — George Orwell

As long as the firmament of the You is spread over me, the tempests of causality cower at my heels, and the whirl of doom congeals.
The human being to whom I say You I do not experience. But i stand in relation to him, in the sacred basic word. Only when I step out of this do I experience him again. Experience is remoteness from You. — Martin Buber

The tempests of youth are mingled with days of brilliant sunshine. — Luc De Clapiers

Where billows never break, nor tempests roar. — Samuel Garth

What I did know was that as we sheltered from our own private tempests, something immutable happened to the bond between Finn Strachan and me, and our unnamed relationship shifted into something far stronger than either of us knew how to control. If I'd had the energy, I might have halted it there, kept my face turned away and driven on through the storm. But right then, I needed the haven that Finn offered more than oxygen. — Tabitha McGowan

He that marries is like the dogs who was married to the Adriatic. He knows not what there is in that which he marries; mayhap treasures and pearls, mayhap monsters and tempests, await him. — Heinrich Heine

What is required is the finding of that Immovable Point within one's self, which is not shaken by any of those tempests which the Buddhists call 'the eight karmic winds': 1-fear of pain, 2-desire for pleasure; 3-fear of loss; 4-desire for gain; 5-fear of blame, 6-desire for praise; 7-fear of disgrace; [and] 8-desire for fame. — Joseph Campbell

Better to sink with tempests raging o'er
Masts all dismantled and hull gaping wide
Than rest and rot on some unclouded shore
The idle plaything of the listless tide.

Better the grime of battle on the brow,
With grim defeat to crush thy dying hand
Than through long years of peace to tyrant bow
Or dwell captive in a strangers land.

Better the castle with beleaguered gate,
By battle's lightning shivered in a day
Than peaceful walls in pomp of sullen state,
Through centuries sinking to a dull decay.

Better resolve to win thy heart's desire,
And striving bravely, die in the endeavor
Than have the embers of some smothered fire
Lie smouldering in thy saddened soul forever. — Sam Davis

I was dancing with an immortal august woman, who had black lilies in her hair, and her dreamy gesture seemed laden with a wisdom more profound than the darkness that is between star and star, and with a love like the love that breathed upon the waters; and as we danced on and on, the incense drifted over us and round us, covering us away as in the heart of the world, and ages seemed to pass, and tempests to awake and perish in the folds of our robes and in her heavy hair.
Suddenly I remembered that her eyelids had never quivered, and that her lilies had not dropped a black petal, or shaken from their places, and understood with a great horror that I danced with one who was more or less than human, and who was drinking up my soul as an ox drinks up a wayside pool; and I fell, and darkness passed over me. — W.B.Yeats

Bursts as a wave that from the clouds impends, And swell'd with tempests on the ship descends; White are the decks with foam; the winds aloud Howl o'er the masts, and sing through every shroud: Pale, trembling, tir'd, the sailors freeze with fears; And instant death on every wave appears. — Homer

I talk about any number of things on my Facebook space. Politics. Current events. The writing life. The latest tempests in a teapot centering on fandom. Daily doings from my own life. My cats, for crying out loud. Flights of humorous fantasy. Books, both those I've read and those I've written. Movies. And occasionally, TV shows. — Adam-Troy Castro

A few more years shall roll,
A few more seasons come;
And we shall be with those that rest,
Asleep within the tomb.
A few more storms shall beat
On this wild rocky shore;
And we shall be where tempests cease,
And surges swell no more.
A few more struggles here,
A few more partings o'er,
A few more toils, a few more tears,
And we shall weep no more.
Then, O my Lord, prepare
My soul for that blest day;
Oh, wash me in Thy precious blood,
And take my sins away. — Horatius Bonar

Every ship sailing the sea of life needs to have the divine Pilot on board; but when storms arise, when tempests threaten, many persons push their Pilot overboard, and commit their bark into the hand of finite man, or try to steer it themselves. — Ellen G. White

Lily knew what he meant. She loved places that people had forgotten, like the old gas station rotting on the edge of the forest in Pelt, all gray wood and brown metal. She liked to walk there sometimes and imagine that during tempests the king of the forest, dry leaves swirling around his motorcycle, would skid to a halt and demand unleaded gas from shadowy attendants while a mossy-faced knight sat in his sidecar. — M T Anderson

Ah, believer, it is only Heaven that is above all winds, storms, and tempests; God did not cast man out of Paradise that he might find another paradise in this world. — Thomas Brooks

Bring me an axe and spade,
Bring me a winding-sheet;
When I my grave have made
Let winds and tempests beat:
Then down I'll lie as cold as clay.
True love doth pass away! — William Blake

Without constant restoration we are not ready for the perpetual assaults of hell, or the stern afflictions of heaven, or even for the strifes within. When the whirlwind shall be loosed, woe to the tree that has not sucked up fresh sap, and grasped the rock with many intertwisted roots. When tempests arise, woe to the mariners that have not strengthened their mast, nor cast their anchor, nor sought the haven. If we allow the good to grow weaker, the evil will surely gather strength and struggle desperately for the mastery over us; and so, perhaps, a painful desolation, and a lamentable disgrace may follow. Let us draw near to the footstool of divine mercy in humble entreaty, and we shall realize the fulfillment of the promise, Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

After vindictive winter, apple blossoms seem all the more heaven-sent.
Among flashing forsythia and budding rose, dogwood and daffodil,
The allure of magnolia, azalea and wisteria to lovers' dreams are lent.
Resolve is recompense as seedtime's blush dispenses with the chill,
How sweet-scented is New England now as winter tempests are through.
My darling girl, the divinest bloom in cherry blossom time just happens to be you. — David B. Lentz

Build no barricades when no one attacks you. Don't excite tempests of heart and conscience merely to pacify your conscience and quiet your heart, now ruffled only by a tiny breeze. — Honore De Balzac

It is a common failing of man not to take account of tempests during fair weather. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Howling duststorms of nuclear ashes. Human and animal bone powder. Flakes and fragments of the destroyed world. Filthy tempests of death. I am in Hell, he said. — C.J. Anderson

The wild sea roars and lashes the granite cliffs below,And round the misty islets the loud strong tempests blow. — Mary Howitt

Brother,you who have the light, tell me mine.
I am like a blind man. I go without direction and fumble along.
I go under tempests and storms,
blind with fantasy and crazy with harmony.
That is my malady. Dreaming. Poetry
is the iron jacket with a thousand bloody points
I wear upon my soul. The bloodstained thorns
spill the drops of my melancholy.
And so I go, blind and crazy, through this bitter world;
at times it seems to me that the path is very long,
and at times that it's very short ...
And in this back-and-forth between eagerness and agony,
I am full of woes I can hardly bear.
Don't you hear the drops of my melancholy falling? — Ruben Dario

Men could not part us with their worldly jars,
Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;
Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars,
And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,
We should but vow the faster for the stars. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I cannot too often repeat that Democracy is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has yet to be enacted. — Walt Whitman

When you with velvets mantled o'er, Defy December's tempests frore, Oh! spare one garment from your store, To clothe the poor at Christmas. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

But there were certain early days in Casterbridge- days of firmamental exhaustion which followed angry south-westerly tempests-when, if the sun shone, the air was like velvet. — Thomas Hardy

Outward attacks and troubles rather fix than unsettle the Christian, as tempests from without only serve to root the oak faster; while an inward canker will gradually rot and decay it. — Hannah More

We have a friend and protector, from whom, if we do not ourselves depart from Him, nor power nor spirit can separate us. In His strength let us proceed on our journey, through the storms, and troubles, and dangers of the world. However they may rage and swell, though the mountains shake at the tempests, our rock will not be moved: we have one friend who will never forsake us; one refuge, where we may rest in peace and stand in our lot at the end of the days. That same is He who liveth, and was dead; who is alive forevermore; and hath the keys of hell and of death. — Reginald Heber

The mind's pleasures are made to calm the tempests of the heart. — Madame De Stael

It was not that the youth had turned again from the hope of rest in the Son of Man; but that, as everyone knows who knows anything of the human spirit, there must be in its history days and seasons, mornings and nights, yea deepest midnights. It has its alternating summer and winter, its storm and shine, its soft dews and its tempests of lashing hail, its cold moons and prophetic stars, its pale twilights of saddest memory, and its golden gleams of brightest hope. — George MacDonald

Sleep, with her tender balm, her touch so kind, Has passed me by; Afar I see her vesture, velvet-lined, Float silently; O! Sleep, my tired eyes had need of thee! Is thy sweet kiss not meant to-night for me? Peace, with the blessings that I longed for so, Has passed me by; Where'er she folds her holy wings I know All tempests die; O! Peace, my tired soul had need of thee! — E. Pauline Johnson

We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value of our glorious hope. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Tess took a deep breath. 'You are not marrying me for love, Lord Mayne. Nor-as far as I can see-due to any overwhelming feeling of a less...less proper nature.' She could feel color rising into her cheeks.
'Now that's not true,' Mayne said. There was a hint of wicked laughter in his eyes, and his fingers tightened on hers. 'I feel quite improperly toward you.'
Goodness, but he was attractive when he wasn't hedging, when he was being honest. 'Are you not disturbed by the fact that we do not feel warmer emotions for each other?' she asked him.
'I would be disturbed if we /did/ ... I do not wish for a tempestuous marriage, although I am quite certain that there will be sufficient warmth between us.'
'And in your estimation, tempests must accompany love,' she said, raising an eyebrow. — Eloisa James

The best thing is to go from nature's God dawn to nature; and if you once get to nature's God, and believe Him, and love Him, it is surprising how easy it is to hear music in the waves, and songs in the wild whisperings of the winds; to see God everywhere in the stones, in the rocks, in the rippling brooks, and hear Him everywhere, in the lowing of cattle, in the rolling of thunder, and in the fury of tempests. Get Christ first, put Him in the right place, and you will find Him to be the wisdom of God in your own experience. — Charles Spurgeon

Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report: this cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove. — William Shakespeare