Calamity Quotes

In the midst of calamity, we build our inner strength. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

So ... I feel in regard to this aged England ... pressed upon by transitions of trade and ... competing populations,-I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before;-indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that, in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most people try to keep what they're losing or become depressed about what they can't maintain, but the right attitude is to accept change and have faith in a bright new future, because you must be aware of the opportunities that any calamity brings. ~ Daniel Marques

History conditioned you for epic-scale calamity. Once, when she was studying the death tolls of battles in World War I, she'd caught herself thinking, Only eight thousand men died here. Well, that's not many. Because next to, say, the million who died at the Somme, it wasn't. The stupendous numbers deadened you to the merely tragic, and history didn't average in the tame days for balance. On this day, no one in the world was murdered. A lion gave birth. Ladybugs launched on aphids. A girl in love daydreamed all morning, neglecting her chores, and wasn't even scolded. ~ Laini Taylor

Birth is a dream, spontaneous and innate. Death, on the other hand, is a slow, false, divine calamity. It is like love. ~ Kevin Moffett

At a time of multiple calamities in the world, we cannot allow the loss of essential antimicrobials, essential cures for many millions of people, to become the next global crisis. ~ Margaret Chan

Calamity was ordained for man. ~ Bill Vaughan

We are all such egotists that a sorrow or hardship - provided it is great enough - flatters our self-importance. We feel that a calamity by overtaking us has distinguished us above our fellows. A man likes not to be ignored even by a railway accident. A man with a grievance is always happy. ~ W.N.P. Barbellion

form light and create darkness; I make well-being and a create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things. ~ Anonymous

This society [Jesuits] has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed the progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally.

{Letter to Thomas Jefferson, November 4, 1816. Adams wrote an anonymous 4 volume work on the destructive history of the Jesuits} ~ John Adams

One of the advantages or disadvantages of the way in which we live in these modern days is that we are ceasing to feel. That is to say we do not permit ourselves to be affected by either death or misfortune, provided these natural calamities leave our own persons unscathed. ~ Marie Corelli

It is a strange thing, looking at the sea. When it is calm, or with only gentle ripples, it gives an impression of being soft and kind. But often, on such a calm, the wind suddenly blows, thrusting the water back into angry waves. At such times, in a certain sense, one feels sorry for the sea. Never of itself offensive to others, it is all too often attacked by wind and rain, the rain falling densely upon it, shaming the beauty of its calm face with a million bouncing bubbles. Were the wind to stop blowing, the ocean, surely, would never afflict the land with any calamity, nor would any human beings suffer. ~ Tan Kok Seng

I detest guilt as a motivating factor for anything, and as for the promises made between lovers, well, they are a blueprint for calamity, a writ of divorce rendered point by point. ~ Evan Fallenberg

I had pledged my heart to someone, your Highness - '
'What happened?'
'Nothing,' Jahan said, Those who grew up with stories of love that inevitably ended in rapture, revelry, chivalry or calamity could not fathom why for many people love amounted to naught, eventually. 'She was beyond my reach and did not love me. It was not meant to be.'
'There're plenty of women,' the Shah said.
Jahan would have liked to say the same thing to him. Why did he still mourn his wife? What he could not put into words, the Shah understood. A thin smile etched on his lips as he said, 'Maybe not. ~ Elif Shafak

As many of the riders before me had been held up and robbed of their packages, mail and money that they carried, for that was the only means of getting mail and money between these points. ~ Calamity Jane

There is no better recreation for the mind than the study of the ancient classics. Take any one of them into your hand, be it only for half an hour, and you will feel yourself refreshed, relieved, purified, ennobled, strengthened; just as if you had quenched your thirst at some pure spring. Is this the effect of the old language and its perfect expression, or is it the greatness of the minds whose works remain unharmed and unweakened by the lapse of a thousand years? Perhaps both together. But this I know. If the threatened calamity should ever come, and the ancient languages cease to be taught, a new literature shall arise, of such barbarous, shallow and worthless stuff as never was seen before. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities. Unmeddling with the affairs of other nations, we had hoped that our distance and our dispositions would have left us free, in the example and indulgence of peace with all the world. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Do I dream you? Or you dream me? Or does someone, something bigger than all' - her hands swept the vast constellations above them - 'this beauteous calamity, dream everything we see and more? ~ David Hewson

The best crime novels are all based on people keeping secrets. All lying - you may think a lie is harmless, but you put them all together and there's a calamity. ~ Alafair Burke

Even if it cannot be
proven that a fetus is an actual living human person, there is no doubt that it is a potential living human person. In other words, a fetus is a developing person. It is not in a frozen state of potentiality. The fetus is in dynamic process-without interference or unforeseen calamity, it surely will become a fully actualized living human person. ~ R.C. Sproul

No greater mischief can happen to a Christian people, than to have God's word taken from them, or falsified, so that they no longer have it pure and clear. God grant we and our descendants be not witness to such a calamity. ~ Martin Luther

If we'd never met, you might have had a more peaceful life without calamity.

And I would have quietly grown old without challenge or interest. How dull! ~ Thomas Thorpe

wasn't no bit of me willing to ride shotgun to my own funeral. ~ J.D. Jordan

But once a fool always a fool, and the greater the power in his hands the more disastrous is likely to be the use he makes of it. The heaviest calamity in English history, the breach with America, might never have occurred if George the Third had not been an honest dullard. ~ James G. Frazer

O friendship! thou fond soother of the human breast, to thee we fly in every calamity; to thee the wretched seek for succor; on thee the care-tired son of misery fondly relies; from thy kind assistance the unfortunate always hopes relief, and may be sure of
disappointment. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

The humanity and the humility, which are very different than the biological species homo sapiens. Humanity versus homo sapiens - very different things. We are biological creatures, we are animals, no doubt, but when you talk about "humando," you're talking about that particular kind of animals who are aware of their impending extinction, who have the capacity to be sensitive to catastrophe and disaster and calamity and profound crisis. ~ Cornel West

If Gladstone fell in the Thames, that would be a misfortune. But if someone fished him out again, that would be a calamity. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

In my errant life I roamed
to learn the secrets of women and men,
of gods and dreams.
I lived in wealth and poverty,
in fame and calamity.
I saw every country of our world,
I lived a thousand lives.
Many lives I spent, other lives I squandered,
for in my life I never traveled, all I did was wander. ~ Roman Payne

A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige throughbeing mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity. ~ Rebecca West

Bread without butter or coffee without milk is an awful calamity, as if everything before being put in our mouth must first be held under a cow. ~ John Muir

Unable to rid myself of it, since I heard your song humming ever in my head, beheld your feet dancing always on my breviary, felt even at night, in my dreams, your form in contact wih my own, I desired to see you again, to touch you, to know who you were, to see whether I should really find you like the ideal image which I had retained of you, to shatter my dream, perchance with reality. At all events, I hoped that a new impression would efface the first, and the first had become insupportable. I sought you. I saw you once more. Calamity! When I had seen you twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I wanted to see you always. Then - how stop myself on that slope of hell? - then I no longer belonged to myself. ~ Victor Hugo

A calamity that makes you turn to Allah is better for you then a blessing which makes you forget the remembrance of Allah ~ Ibn Taymiyyah

The instantaneous shift from calm to calamity. The slowing of time. Every sense suddenly wire-taut and screaming. ~ Robert Galbraith

He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

We can be serene even in the midst of calamities and, by our serenity, make others more tranquil. ~ Swami Satchidananda

Her mind still worked, her feet still moved, she could walk, though only with the help of a walker, but walk she did, and she was a human being who knew for certainty that beans are best in salad and that old age is a terrible calamity. ~ Dubravka Ugresic

To face calamity with a mind as unclouded as may be, and quickly to react against it-that in a city and in an individual-is real strength. ~ Pericles

If nothing else will do to sever me from my sins, Lord, send me such sore and trying calamities as shall awake me from earthly slumbers. It must always be best to be alive to Thee, whatever be the quickening instrument. ~ Robert Murray McCheyne

The newspaper headlines may shout about global warming, extinctions of living species, the devastation of rain forests, and other worldwide catastrophes, but Americans evince a striking complacency when it comes to their everyday environment and the growing calamity that it represents. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Society considers the sex experiences of a man as attributes of his general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that is good and noble in a human being. This double standard of morality has played no little part in the creation and perpetuation of prostitution. It involves the keeping of the young in absolute ignorance on sex matters, which alleged "innocence," together with an overwrought and stifled sex nature, helps to bring about a state of affairs that our Puritans are so anxious to avoid or prevent. ~ Emma Goldman

It occurred to her, in a moment of sudden clarity, that what had always caused her anxiety, or stress, or worry, was not any one force, nothing independent and external- it wasn't danger to herself or the constant calamity of other people and their problems. It was internal: it was subjective: it was not knowing. ~ Dave Eggers

It is to be feared that about a hundred detective stories have begun with the discovery that an American millionaire has been murdered; an event which is, for some reason, treated as a sort of calamity. ~ G.K. Chesterton

When the world smiles upon us, and we have got a warm nest, how do we prophesy of rest and peace in those acquisitions, thinking with good Baruch, great things for ourselves, but Providence by a particular or general calamity overturns our plans (Jer. 45:4,5), and all this to turn our hearts from the creature to God. ~ John Flavel

On October 28th, 1887, I became the mother of a girl baby, the very image of its father, at least that is what he said, but who has the temper of its mother. ~ Calamity Jane

What calamity is greater than no contentment,
and what flaw greater than the passion for gain. ~ Lao-Tzu

About me as a drinker: I wasn't much of one and had a short, bad history of doing it. The few times I'd tried drinking I either became too much like myself or not enough, but either way it was always calamity on top of calamity and I found myself saying way too much about too little and doing the wrong things in the wrong places. Once, at my boss's Christmas party, I passed out for a minute - passed out but still, like a zombie, remained fully ambulatory and mostly functional - and when I came to, I found myself in my boss's kitchen, the refrigerator door open and me next to it at the counter, spreading mayonnaise onto two slices of wheat bread and licking the knife after each pass before I stuck it back in the jar. I heard someone cough or gag, looked up, and saw the kitchen's population staring at me, all of their mouths open and slack, obviously wondering what I thought I was doing, exactly, and all I could think to say was, "Sandwich." Which is what I said. And then, to prove my point, whatever the point was, I ate it. The sandwich, that is. ~ Brock Clarke

The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream ... It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is sin. ~ Benjamin E. Mays

I look down at the city again. From here the city resembles a severed head, incinerated and discarded by the side of the river; its cavernous eye sockets are empty, bundles of dead nerves dangle from its neck, its shattered mouth gapes, a few desolate wires hang from its stark, scorched skull and, suddenly and incomprehensibly and so foreign to my body I could weep, I feel my heart expand with what I can only describe as a sensation of hope. Is there a word for that? Hope in the face of grand calamity. ~ Nick Cave

A man of prayer regards what are known as physical calamities as divine chastisement. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war, or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it. ~ Will Rogers

Great calamity met with great spirit can create great strength. ~ Eric Greitens

Staring at herself in the mirror, she found that she'd lost the ability to see herself through her own eyes. She was only what humans would see. Not a girl or a woman or someone in between. They wouldn't see her loneliness or fear or courage, let alone her humanity. They would see only obscenity. Calamity. ~ Laini Taylor

It is the common calamity of old age to lose whatever might have rendered it desirable ... ~ Edward Gibbon

It is true fortitude to stand firm against
All shocks of fate, when cowards faint and die
In fear to suffer more calamity. ~ Philip Massinger

I learned that it is possible for us to create light, sound and order within us no matter what calamity befall us in the outer world. ~ Helen Keller

Boredom is an evil that is not to be estimated lightly. It can come in the end to real despair. The public authority takes precautions against it everywhere, as against other universal calamities. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and
actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

Every calamity should lead to a thorough cleansing of individual as well as social life. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

He who runs away from a fearful calamity, a foreign invasion, a terrible famine, and the companionship of wicked men is safe. ~ Chanakya

Your right standing with God and your connection to Him remains your strongest defense in the day of calamity. ~ Jaachynma N.E. Agu

One is ashamed to say how little is needed for all men to be delivered from those calamities which now oppress them; it is only needful not to lie. ~ Leo Tolstoy

For the perversely minded, simply killing the trinkets of your greatest amusement and nutritional satisfaction produces at best only temporary elation, a dazzling sensation that is over in a flash, but to permit your prey to fear calamity and to live through catastrophes large and small, to hope and to weep and to lament, to feel anguish over things lost, to regret things found, and to suffer with physical discomfort, emotional injuries and psychological lesions is the wellhead of enduring pleasure. ~ John Zande

The calamities of tragedy do not simply happen, nor are they sent; they proceed mainly from actions, and those the actions of men.We see a number of human beings placed in certain circumstances; and we see, arising from the co-operation of their characters in these circumstances, certain actions. These actions beget others, and these others beget others again, until this series of inter-connected deeds leads by an apparently inevitable sequence to a catastrophe. ~ A. C. Bradley

Warned by the disaster of the last great war, the statesmen of all nations have been taking measures to prevent the return of another such calamity. ~ Frank B. Kellogg

I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck and selfish woman. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Can you tell me which is yours?" Standing at Bird's side, the nurse spoke as if she were addressing the father of the hospital's healthiest and most beautiful baby. But she wasn't smiling, she didn't even seem sympathetic; Bird decided this must be the standard intensive care ward quiz. Not only the nurse who had asked the question but two young nurses who were rinsing baby bottles beneath a huge water heater on the far wall, and the older nurse measuring powdered milk next to them, and the doctor studying file cards at a cramped desk against the smudgy poster-cluttered wall, and the doctor on this side of him, conversing with a stubby little man who seemed, like Bird, to be the father of one of the seeds of calamity gathered here - everybody in the room stopped what he was doing and turned in expectant silence to look at Bird. ~ Kenzaburo Oe

Bear calamities with meekness. ~ Euripides

It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions. ~ Robert Bly

Yield not to calamity, but face it boldly. ~ Corban Addison

Job 29 is about Job reflecting on his past before the calamity hit him to say this is the type of man I was. So, you want to know what God calls perfect and upright? Read Job 29, and you will understand what kind of man God esteems. ~ Eric Ludy

Children seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy, discounting and keeping hidden the true horrors of their short lives, humbly imagining real calamity to be some prestigious drama of the grown-up world. ~ Shirley Hazzard

When we are moved primarily by fear, sooner or later we precipitate the very calamity we dread. If we fear condemnation, we behave in ways that ultimately elicit disapproval. If we fear anger, eventually we make people angry. ~ Nathaniel Branden

And so we drifted towards calamity. At times, Cicero was shrewd enough to see it. "Can a constitution devised centuries ago to replace a monarchy, and based upon a citizens' militia, possibly hope to run an empire whose scope is beyond anything ever dreamed of by its framers? Or must the existence of standing armies and the influx of inconceivable wealth inevitably destroy our democratic system? ~ Robert Harris

The calamity of war, wherever, whenever and upon whomever it descends, is a tragedy for the whole of humanity. ~ Raisa Gorbacheva

No. Some you put to the bullet. Some to the tongue. Reckon we'll have to see, yet, which way this is going to turn. ~ J.D. Jordan

That got me to laughing too. His laughter, like his yelling, got into you until you was right soaked with it. So you couldn't help yourself. But it felt good. Light. I tell you, I hadn't felt like that in a long while. ~ J.D. Jordan

My face is rather like a collision waiting to happen: head-on I can be borne, but turn sideways, and it is all calamity. ~ Michelle Franklin

The stock actor is a stage calamity ~ George Bernard Shaw

True devotion must not get dispirited; nor elated or satisfied with lesser gains; it must fight against failure, loss, calumny, calamity, ridicule and against egoism and pride , impatience and cowardice . ~ Sathya Sai Baba

I can scarcely contemplate a greater calamity that could befall this country, than be loaded with a debt exceeding their ability ever to discharge. If this be a just remark, it is unwise and improvident to vest in the general government a power to borrow at discretion, without any limitation or restriction. ~ Marcus Junius Brutus The Younger

When democratic governments create economic calamity, free markets get the blame. ~ Jack Kemp

Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another. What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations. ~ Kofi Annan

The real effect of the WTC calamity has been depressed spirits, anxiety, and uncertainty among publishers, and of course those emotions are not restricted to publishers. ~ Richard Curtis

The true calamity of clean eating is not that it is entirely false. It is that it contains a kernel of truth. Underneath all the nutribabble talk of 'glowing' and wellness, the gurus of clean eating are completely right to say that most modern eaters would benefit from consuming less refined sugar and processed meat and more vegetables and meals cooked from scratch. The problem is that it's near impossible to pick out the sensible bits of clean eating and ignore the rest. Whether the term clean is used or not, there is a new puritanism about food that has taken root widely. ~ Bee Wilson

Sometimes I think together we are the worst kind of calamity." Thayer grinned back. Severine's lips burned. "Then I've never wanted to be destroyed so bad. ~ Calia Read

He who faces no calamity gains no courage. ~ Rudyard Kipling

A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.There is no greater guilt than discontentment.And there is no greater disaster than greed. ~ Lao-Tzu

May God protect us from every calamity. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

There are times on Earth when extraordinary consciousness invades everyday life. There are times on Earth when unseen forces make a calamity of the status quo. There are times on Earth when it seems as though a divine arsonist has set fire to the world as we know it.
- We live in such times. ~ Jacob Nordby

She was not a rebel princess, shattering enemy castles and killing kings. She was a force of nature. She was a calamity and a commander of immortal warriors of legend. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Anybody who does not know how to manage his own body, his own mind, his own emotion and his energies, if he is managing outside situations, he is only managing them by accident, not by intent the way he wants it. When you manage situations by accident, you exist as an accident. When you exist as an accident, you are a potential calamity. When you exist as a potential calamity, being anxious all the time becomes a natural part of life. ~ Jaggi Vasudev

WHAT EES ALL DEES STUFF? IN AFRICA WE DOAN HAVE ALL DEES STUFF!! WE HAVE DEE BABEE!!!"

His message was simple. It goes to the heart of what we in HypnoBirthing frequently puzzle over: Why has all the "stuff" that denies the normalcy of birth and portrays it as an inevitably risky and dangerous medical event become a routine part of most childbirth education classes? Why are couples in a low- or no-risk category being prepared for circumstances that only rarely occur? Even more puzzling, why do parents accept the negative premise that birth is a dangerous, painful ordeal at best or a medical calamity at worst? Why do they blindly accept the "one-size-fits-all" approach?"

If what couples are hearing in childbirth classes is far removed from what they want their birthing experiences to be, why do they spend so much time entertaining negative outcomes that can color and shape their birth expectations and ultimately affect their birth experience? In other words, if it's not what they're wanting, why would they "go there"? In HypnoBirthing, we doan have all dees stuff, and deliberately so."

HypnoBirthing helps you to frame a positive expectation and to prepare for birth by developing a trust and belief in your birthing body and in nature's undeniable orchestration of birthing. By teaching you the basic physiology of birth and explaining the adverse effect that fear has upon the chemical and physiological responses of your body we help you to learn s ~ Marie F. Mongan

He dragged me back - just in time. A tree had crashed down on to the side walk, just missing us. Poirot stared at it, pale and upset.
"It was a near thing that! But clumsy, all the same - for I had no suspicion - at least hardly any suspicion. Yes, but for my quick eyes, the eyes of a cat, Hercule Poirot might now be crushed out of existence - a terrible calamity for the world. And you, too, mon ami - though that would not be such a national catastrophe."
"Thank you," I said coldly. ~ Agatha Christie

During the fall and winter we built Fort Meade and the town of Sturgis. ~ Calamity Jane

An event of great agony is bearable only in the belief that it will bring about a better world. When it does not, as in the aftermath of another vast calamity in 1914-18, disillusion is deep and moves on to self-doubt and self-disgust. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

I ain't much of a church man, Mark. Guess you might say I'm an agnostic. I don't know."
"There's a good bit of agnostic in all of us, Calamity. None of us knows how much - only enough to trust to reach out a hand in the dark. ~ Margaret Craven

But wasn't time for what was. Was time to settle up the future. ~ J.D. Jordan

This is how people behave when their dailiness is destroyed, when for a few moments they see, plain and unadorned, one of the great shaping forces of life. Calamity fixes them with her mesmeric eye, and they begin to scoop and paw at the rubble of their days, trying to pluck the memory of the quotidian - a toy, a book, a garment, even a photograph - from the garbage heaps of the irretrievable, of their overwhelming loss. ~ Salman Rushdie

It is incumbent on us diligently to remember that the kingdom of heaven was promised to the poor in spirit, and that minds afflicted by calamity and the contempt of mankind cheerfully listen to the divine promise of future happiness; while, on the contrary, the fortunate are satisfied with the possession of this world; and the wise abuse in doubt and dispute their vain superiority of reason and knowledge. ~ Edward Gibbon