Tempestuous Quotes & Sayings

Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to him, Why have you done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them. Then they said to him, What shall we do to you that the sea may be calm for us?; for the sea was growing more tempestuous. And he said to them, Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will become calm for you. For I know that this great tempest is because of me." (Jonah 1:10-12) Jonah — Val Waldeck

Just as a waterfall grows slower and more lightly suspended as it plunges down, so the great man of action tends to act with greater calmness than his tempestuous desires prior to the deed would lead one to expect. — Friedrich Nietzsche

When life throws difficulties at us and the mind is restless, emotional resilience will see us through challenging times. We can work through tempestuous emotions and self-doubt and come through them unharmed and avoid self-sabotage and self-harm. — Christopher Dines

Darcy's got the tempestuous masculinity and brooding looks, but Knightley is a kinder, softer man with no pretense or dissimilation. — Katherine Reay

A SWEET disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness :
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction :
An erring lace which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher :
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly :
A winning wave (deserving note)
In the tempestuous petticoat :
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility :
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part. — Robert Herrick

Sometimes I read a biography of some tempestuous artist and find myself longing for fireworks! booze! bloody fights!; I do think that life must be so much more thrilling when you're actively miserable. — Lauren Groff

The sea was a tempestuous woman, roughly angry one day, silkily soothing another. No other natural phenomenon reflected their moods as deeply as the sea. It was beauty. It was wrath. It was everything. — Tricia O'Malley

As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast - alternately tempestuous and serene - so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain. — Edmund Burke

To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence. — Joseph Conrad

Has anyone ... any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration? ... There is an ecstasy such that the immese strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, along with which one's steps either rush or involuntarily lag, alternately. There is the feeling that one is completely out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and quiverings to the very toes ... Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Tennis is like a wonderful, longstanding relationship with a husband. Golf is a tempestuous, lousy lover; it's totally unpredicatable, a constant surprise. — Dinah Shore

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty. — Thomas Jefferson

Though Alec had never seen the occupants of the first floor loft, they seemed to be engaged in a tempestuous romance. Once there had been a bunch of someone's belongings strewn all over the landing with a note attached to a jacket lapel addressed to "A lying liar who lies." Right now there was a bouquet of flowers taped to the door with a card tucked among the blooms that read I'M SORRY. That was the thing about New York: you always knew more about your neighbors' business than you wanted to. — Cassandra Clare

I grazed her from head to toe: black high heels, dark red lipstick, sleek brown pony and those tyrannical yellow-green eyes, burning holes into the glass. I was sharing an elevator with a tempestuous, electric storm that I refused to calm. I always wished to be swept into madness, if only for a moment, to truncate the mundane, ordinary moments of my existence. — Krista Ritchie

The course of my long life hath reached at last in fragile bark over a tempestuous sea the common harbor, where must rendered be account for all the actions of the past. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Perhaps I had never had a grip on myself to start with, living life on cruise-control while I waited for a home that would never be mine. It would be warm. Loving. Wonderfully chaotic, occasionally tempestuous, but full of good intentions and laughter. It would be all of the great things embodied by your run-of-the-mill greeting card, and it was still the last thing that I thought of each night as I let myself believe for a moment or two that such things were possible. — Alice Yi-Li Yeh

Her virtues, graced with external gifts, Do breed love's settled passions in my heart; And like as rigour of tempestuous gusts Provokes the mightiest hulk against the tide, So am I driven by breath of her renown Either to suffer shipwreck or arrive Where I may have fruition of her love. — William Shakespeare

If in some cases a bit of a nautical Murat in setting forth his person ashore, the Handsome Sailor of the period in question evinced nothing of the dandified Billy-be-Dam, an amusing character all but extinct now, but occasionally to be encountered, and in a form yet more amusing than the original, at the tiller of the boats on the tempestuous Erie Canal or, more likely, vaporing in the groggeries along the towpath. — Herman Melville

The world is like a vast sea: mankind like a vessel sailing on its tempestuous bosom ... [T]he sciences serve us for oars. — Oliver Goldsmith

The tempestuous stretch of river below that dam, however, represents something no less central to the national ethos: the fact that another aspect of our character as a people derives from an extended encounter with wilderness. — Kevin Fedarko

Historically, maritime travelers had to pass around the entire mass of North and South America, including the bottom tip, the tempestuous Cape Horn, which was littered with shipwrecks. — Alan Huffman

A life without a storm would lack drama. Pounding waves of a tempestuous sea test a person's mettle. A fearless sailor climbs the rigging and shouts out at the top of their lungs into the wind and rain whipping across their face that they will not go quietly into the good night without a fight. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Even the ablest pilots are willing to receive advice from passengers in tempestuous weather. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

In this snug, over-safe corner of the world ... we may realize that our comfortable routine is no eternal necessity of things, but merely a little space of calm in the midst of the tempestuous, untamed and streaming world. — George F. Will

Romance is tempestuous. Love is calm. — Mason Cooley

Hollywood always had a streak of the totalitarian in just about everything it did. The old moguls were essentially hard-fisted authoritarians who had created a system of linked dictatorships to control the creative people. We were supposed to be the children; mad, tempestuous, brilliant, talented, not terribly smart children. — Shirley Maclaine

You said,' Camille protested, 'that when you wanted to get on terms with Gabrielle you cultivated her mother. It's true, everybody saw you doing it, boasting in Italian and rolling your eyes and doing your tempestuous southerner impersonation. — Hilary Mantel

Talents are nurtured best in solitude, But character on life's tempestuous seas! — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The evening was cold and tempestuous, the rain poured in torrents, and the distant thunders rolled with tremendous noise round the adjacent mountains, whilst the pale lightning added horrors to the scene. — Eliza Parsons

There had been very little in Douglas Ashton's life that he ever wanted. Most of it he could obtain, the rest of it, a loving mother and father, his sister back from the dead, was unobtainable.
At that moment, he found himself wanting something.
And what he wanted was for Julia to lose herself with him.
He wanted this stubborn, tempestuous Julia Fairfax to disappear and an acquiescent, but still tempestuous, Julia Ashton to take her place. He wanted to brand her with his name and shackle her with his ring.
Did she not understand that was a good thing? — Kristen Ashley

Men who have a tempestuous inner life and do not seek to give vent to it by talking or writing are simply men who have no tempestuous inner life. Give company to a lonely man and he will talk more than anyone. — Cesare Pavese

Follow your passion, we're often told. But how do you find your passion? Let me put it another way: what is it that breaks your heart about the world? It's there that you begin to find what moves you. If you want to find your passion, surrender to your heartbreak. Your heartbreak points towards a truer north - and it's the difficult journey towards it that is, in the truest sense, no mere passing idyllic infatuation, but enduring, tempestuous passion. — Umair Haque

It was a wild, tempestuous night, towards the close of November. Holmes and I sat together in silence all the evening, he engaged with a powerful lens deciphering the remains of the original inscription upon a palimpsest, I deep in a recent treatise upon surgery. Outside the wind howled down Baker Street, while the rain beat fiercely against the windows. It was strange there, in the very depths of the town, with ten miles of man's handiwork on every side of us, to feel the iron grip of Nature, and to be conscious that to the huge elemental forces all London was no more than the molehills that dot the fields. I walked to the window, and looked out on the deserted street. The occasional lamps gleamed on the expanse of muddy road and shining pavement. A single cab was splashing its way from the Oxford Street end. — Arthur Conan Doyle

A true recognition of God's sovereignty will avow God's perfect right to do with us as He wills. The one who bows to the pleasure of the Almighty will acknowledge His absolute right to do with us as seemeth Him good. If He chooses to send poverty, sickness, domestic bereavements, even while the heart is bleeding at every pore, it will say, Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right! Often there will be a struggle, for the carnal mind remains in the believer to the end of his earthly pilgrimage. But though there may be a conflict within his breast, nevertheless, to the one who has really yielded himself to this blessed truth there will presently be heard that Voice saying, as of old it said to the turbulent Gennesaret, "Peace be still"; and the tempestuous flood within will be quieted and the subdued soul will lift a tearful but confident eye to Heaven and say, "Thy will be done. — Arthur W. Pink

I worship pianos like they are prize diamonds, and I never willfully do damage to them. But I grew up playing guitars, and you treat a guitar like a best friend or a little brother or a lover you have a tempestuous relationship with. — Jamie Cullum

A rugged but sensitive but tough but loving but horny but smart hero having his way with a protesting but willing but struggling but yielding tempestuous female. — Neal Stephenson

There was a typhoon the day you were born ... It is said that a Dragon born in a storm will have a particularly tempestuous fate. You always believe you are right, and this makes you do things you shouldn't ... You're a Dragon, and of all the signs only a Dragon can tame the fates. Only a Dragon can wear all the horns of destiny, duty, and power. Your sister is merely a Sheep ... — Lisa See

If you let that tempestuous girl order you around or insult you again, I'll turn you over my knees and spank you. If she's going to treat my wife like that, then she'd best get the hell out of my home. The first time she ordered you out of your own kitchen, you should have flung a skillet at her, preferably a hot one."

-Lynx — Janelle Taylor

Inside my heart there is
A temple, a synagogue,
a church, a mosque,
A monastery, a fish market
A serene lake, a tempestuous sea
Agreements and disagreements
Glory and failure
A big bang at dawn and
a little bang at dusk
All the cries, aspirations and
silent prayers
Yearning and seeking
Everything disintegrates
and dissolves
In a tempestuous ocean
Finally unifies
Collapses on one altar
In one Breath
In God — Gabriel Iqbal

In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again. — John Maynard Keynes

And it's not red, it's auburn, and I'm not feisty or tempestuous or any of the other things red hair is supposed to signify. Anyways, as I said, it's auburn. — Kate Alcott

Divine Wisdom, intending to detain us some time on earth, has done well to cover with a veil the prospect of the life to come; for if our sight could clearly distinguish the opposite bank, who would remain on this tempestuous coast of time? — Madame De Stael

Loud roars the wild tempestuous sea, Your presence, Lord, shall comfort me. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Texas history is a varied, tempestuous, and vast as the state itself. Texas yesterday is unbelievable, but no more incredible than Texas today. Today's Texas is exhilarating, exasperating, violent, charming, horrible, delightful, alive. — Edna Ferber

Grant-"
But he barely touched her, only cupping her face as they stood beside the bed. "You're beautiful." His eyes were on hers,intense,searching. "The first time I saw you,you took my breath away. You still do."
As moved by the long look and soft words as she had been by the tempestuous kisses, she reached up to take his wrists. "I don't need the words unless you want to give them. I just want to be with you."
"Whatever I tell you will be the truth, or I won't tell you at all. — Nora Roberts

I am not of the opinion that one can ever lack the power to express perfectly what one wants to write or say. Observations on the weakness of language, and comparisons between the limitations of words and the infinity of feelings, are quite fallacious. The infinite feeling continues to be as infinite in words as it was in the heart. What is clear within is bound to become so in words as well. This is why one need never worry about language, but at sight of words may often worry about oneself. After all, who knows within himself how things really are with him? This tempestuous or floundering or morasslike inner self is what we really are, but by the secret process by which words are forced out of us, our self-knowledge is brought to light, and though it may still be veiled, yet it is there before us, wonderful or terrible to behold. — Franz Kafka

Bears, dragons, tempestuous on mountain and river, Startle the forest and make the heights tremble. Clouds darken beneath the darkness of rain, streams pale with a pallor of mist. The gods of Thunder and Lightning Shatter the whole range. — Li Bai

The wind,
Tempestuous clarion, with heavy cry,
Came bluntly thundering, more terrible
Than the revenge of music on bassoons. — Wallace Stevens

Hence when lightning fires the arch of heaven, and thunders rock the ground, when furious whirlwinds rend the howling air, and ocean, groaning from his lowest bed, heaves his tempestuous billows to the sky; amid the mighty uproar, while below the nations tremble, Shakespeare looks abroad from some high cliff, superior, and enjoys the elemental war. — Mark Akenside

I'm probably less volatile and tempestuous than a lot of Aries, but I think I'm probably quite loud and outgoing and passionate. Maybe a bit difficult or stubborn. — Mackenzie Davis

Love is a tempestuous mistress.
And none of us shall ever master her. — Lisa Ann Sandell

Mama, before she got married, according to Aunt Emilia, was a firecracker, a tempestuous redhead, with thoughts of her own about liberty and equality for women. But then along came Papa, very serious and tall, with thoughts of his own too, about... liberty and equality for women. The trouble was in the coinciding subject matter. There was a collision. And nowadays Mama sews and embroiders and sings at the piano and makes little cakes on Saturdays, all like clockwork and cheerfully, She has ideas of her own, still, but they all come down to one: a wife should always go along with her husband, as the accessory goes along with the principal (my analogy, the result of Law School classes). — Clarice Lispector

The world is a great ocean, upon which we encounter more tempestuous storms than calms. — Edgar Allan Poe

Friends and family argue and fight, but it means nothing. It's human nature. Love isn't perfectly patient or kind or sunny. Love is volatile and tempestuous and forgiving. — Alyssa Day

The sacrificial part of the Greek religion had to do with submitting to the wild chaotic world beyond one's own will; getting used to the idea that your rational plans will be knocked around by larger forces. The ecstatic-ritual part of ancient Greek religion was a kind of throwing oneself into the chaos, not pitting your rationality against the tempestuous world, but rather leaving your rationality on the shore, letting the waves toss you about, and coming to identify with the waves, with the storm, with the weather. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

It is of no use to hope that we shall be well rooted if no rough winds pass over us. Those old gnarlings on the root of the oak tree, and those strange twistings of the branches, all tell of the many storms that have swept over it, and they are also indicators of the depth into which the roots have forced their way. So the Christian is made strong, and firmly rooted by all the trials and storms of life. Shrink not then from the tempestuous winds of trial, but take comfort, believing that by their rough discipline God is fulfilling this benediction to you. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

To some Germans and, no doubt, to most foreigners it appeared that a charlatan had come to power in Berlin. To the majority of Germans Hitler had - or would shortly assume - the aura of a truly charismatic leader. They were to follow him blindly, as if he possessed a divine judgment, for the next twelve tempestuous years. — William L. Shirer

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

Lead us, Heavenly Father, lead us
O'er the world's tempestuous sea;
Guard us, guide us, keep us, feed us,
For we have no help but Thee. — James Edmeston

Who to a woman trusts his peace of mind, Trusts a frail bark, with a tempestuous wind. — George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne

The storm may be tempestuous, but it is only temporary. — William Gurnall

God's affairs are accomplished gradually and almost imperceptibly and His spirit is neither violent nor tempestuous. — Vincent De Paul

But Mithgar ... Mithgar is yet wild, tempestuous, unkept, savage, turbulent, exciting. We come here to feel alive. — Dennis L. McKiernan

She had the theory of youth about love, that it was a violent thing, tempestuous and passionate. She thought that love demanded, not knowing that love gives first, and then asks. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

That That a man is beloved of God, should melt him all into esteem and holy veneration. It should make him so courageous as an angel of God. It should make him delight in calamities and distresses for God's sake. By giving me all things else, He hath made even afflictions themselves my treasures. The sharpest trials, are the finest furbishing. the most tempestuous weather is the best seed-time. A Christian is an oak flourishing in winter. God hath so magnified and glorified His servant, and exalted him so highly in His eternal bosom, that no other joy should be able to move us but that alone. — Thomas Traherne

This is how to de-fang an over-tempestuous customer!" Vicky told her sister. "This was what I was taught by Doris at the Health Centre! Once a man has been disarmed, he will go away quietly like a lamb! Or a dog, with his tail between his legs! He! He! He!" she burbled, unable to contain her mirth.
And this was how Venus outwitted Mars to save Psyche's virginity. Mars was defeated by a simple manoeuvre known in the massage parlour industry as a "Hand Job"![MMT] — Nicholas Chong