Cosy Catastrophe Quotes

Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe. The painter's art is more confined, and has nothing that corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this power and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is totally engaged. What is done by Painting, must be done at one blow; curiosity has received at once all the satisfaction it can ever have. ~ Joshua Reynolds

We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Without collective awakening the catastrophe will come. I think people in the mass media, journalists, film makers and others, you can contribute to the collective awakening if you are awake and then your life will embody that awakening. ~ Nhat Hanh

As it turns out, the ecological catastrophe Kirk feared that would be the consequence of our impiety appears not to be one of radically diminished resources, but of potentially catastrophic climate change. It comes from an arrogant refusal by a modern consumerist society to accept limits on its desires. Kirk's idea of the "eternal society" evaporates before the insatiable demands of the Everlasting Now. ~ Rod Dreher

If he had said otherwise. To admit that a thermonuclear catastrophe would be the end of civilization and of the biosphere would be, in religious terms, profane and defeatist. All religions must, at their core, look forward to the end of this world and ~ Christopher Hitchens

But it must be seen that the term 'catastrophe' has this 'catastrophic' meaning of the end and annihilation only in a linear vision of accumulation and productive finality that the system imposes on us. Etymologically, the term only signifies the curvature, the winding down to the bottom of a cycle leading to what can be called the 'horizon of the event,' to the horizon of meaning, beyond which we cannot go. Beyond it, nothing takes place that has meaning for us - but it suffices to exceed this ultimatum of meaning in order that catastrophe itself no longer appear as the last, nihilistic day of reckoning, such as it functions in our current collective fantasy. ~ Jean Baudrillard

Lament is the language that helps you believe catastrophe can become eucatastrophe. It vocalizes the pain of the moment while believing that help is on the way. Lament gives us hope because it gives us a glimpse of truth. ~ Mark Vroegop

Man's civility is lagging behind his technological ability. It could mean disaster and catastrophe for the whole world. We're all sinners, everyone of us, and a radical change is needed for all of us. ~ Billy Graham

The adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. ~ Jared Diamond

We naturally take in the catastrophes of our friends a pleasure which genuinely does not preclude friendship. This is partly but not entirely because we enjoy being empowered as helpers. The unexpected or inappropriate catastrophe is especially piquant. ~ Iris Murdoch

For similar folly, our own country, in the transition from the colonial period, also paid a fearful price; and from a like catastrophe the United States has been twice saved in our time by the arguments formulated by Turgot. ~ Andrew Dickson White

The Pandemic Sonnet

This ain't the first time you've come to haunt us,
And it won't be the last either.
You thought you could break the species,
But all you did is bring us together.
You brought the world to almost a standstill,
Yet we never stood still to let inaction take over.
Each one of us did the best we could,
And we'll keep on doing till your traces wither.
We may have our differences at times,
But when trouble knocks on our door we all stand one.
We may act selfish sometimes,
But in catastrophe we refrain from helping no one.
However thanks for reminding us to leave wildlife alone,
Otherwise all we'll have left to do is mourn. ~ Abhijit Naskar

I saw clearly how those who saved the state so heroically and courageously in the War of Independence would be capable of bringing a catastrophe upon it if they are given the chance in normal times. ~ Moshe Sharett

Christianity, unlike any other religion in the world, begins with catastrophe and defeat. Sunshine religions and psychological inspirations collapse in calamity and wither in adversity. But the Life of the Founder of Christianity, having begun with the Cross, ends with the empty tomb and victory. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

When adversity entered his room, he bowed to his old acquaintance cordially; he tickled catastrophe in the ribs. ~ Victor Hugo

These were happy, cheerful moments, innocent in appearance but hiding the growing possibility of disaster: this is what makes the life of lovers the most unpredictable of all, a life in which it can rain sulphur and pitch a moment after the sunniest spell and where, without having the courage to learn from our misfortunes, we immediately start building again on the slopes of the crater which can only spew out catastrophe. ~ Marcel Proust

I am a big fan of cosy. I get very excited by a roaring fire and even a perfectly made cup of tea. And being married really is the ultimate in cosy, so I couldn't be more content. ~ Sophie Winkleman

Nobody had to say it; everyone could see it with their eyes and know it in their hearts. In a way all those afternoons down on the sandbar at Thompson Creek, late evenings of margaritas at Que Pasa, nights of pool parties and barn dances and Ronnie Morgan's campfires followed by pancakes and kitchen camaraderie, and church on Sunday morning--these things were like a levee the people of Starhill had spent a lifetime building together. Now, facing a catastrophe that felt like it had the power to wash them away, the levee was holding. ~ Rod Dreher

It took a catastrophe of socialized medicine to wake a lot of people up because it affects every single person in America, either directly or indirectly. That's when you get people's attention - when it directly affects them. ~ Monica Crowley

Sometimes, I have a dared dream to myself that one day, history may even say that my voice--which disturbed the white man's smugness, and his arrogance, and his complacency--that my voice helped to save America from a grave, possibly even a fatal catastrophe. ~ Malcolm X

Everyone who owns a home recognizes the need for fire insurance. We hope and pray that there will never be a fire. Nevertheless, we pay for insurance to cover such a catastrophe, should it occur. We ought to do the same with reference to family welfare. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Since at least the Great Depression, we've been hearing warnings that automation was or was about to be throwing millions out of work - Keynes at the time coined the term "technological unemployment," and many assumed the mass unemployment of the 1930s was just a sign of things to come - and while this might make it seem such claims have always been somewhat alarmist, what this book suggests is that the opposite was the case. They were entirely accurate. Automation did, in fact, lead to mass unemployment. We have simply stopped the gap by adding dummy jobs that are effectively made up. A combination of political pressure from both right and left, a deeply held popular feeling that paid employment alone can make one a full moral person, and finally, a fear on the part of the upper classes, already noted by George Orwell in 1933, of what the laboring masses might get up to if they had too much leisure on their hands, has ensured that whatever the underlying reality, when it comes to official unemployment figures in wealthy countries, the needle should never jump too far from the range of 3 to 8 percent. But if one eliminates bullshit jobs from the picture, and the real jobs that only exist to support them, one could say that the catastrophe predicted in the 1930s really did happen. Upward of 50 percent to 60 percent of the population has, in fact, been thrown out of work. ~ David Graeber

You could argue that Barack Obama faced in '08 a situation as bad as any president since the Great Depression. What Obama inherited from the Bush administration, we all remember, was just an absolute global catastrophe. ~ Tony Kushner

We are not alone. We have many brothers who in this moment of catastrophe came to help. And we too, because of this, we feel more like brothers and sisters because we helped each other. ~ Pope Francis

And Leonard had reached the destination. He had visited the county of Surrey when darkness covered its amenities, and its cosy villas had re-entered ancient night. Every twelve hours this miracle happens, but he had troubled to go and see for himself. ~ E.M. Forster

I could feel Monika nudging me furiously at this point, but I refused to look at her. I wasn't feeling particularly reverent about my mother's deadness, or about the vicar, but I do despise that ghastly, 'You've got to laugh, haven't you?' approach to religious occasions. As a young man, I often goaded my believing friends with crudely logical questions about God. But as the years have passed, I have found myself hankering more and more for a little cosy voodoo in my life. Increasingly, I regard my atheism as a regrettable limitation. It seems to me that my lack of faith is not, as I once thought, a triumph of the rational mind, but rather, a failure of the imagination - an inability to tolerate mystery: a species, in fact, of neurosis. There is no chance of my being converted, of course - it is far too late for that. But I wish it wasn't. ~ Zoe Heller

Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse. ~ Cornel West

It's useless to wait-for a breakthrough, for the revolution, the nuclear apocalypse or a social movement. To go on waiting is madness. The catastrophe is not coming, it is here. We are already situated within the collapse of a civilization. It is within this reality that we must choose sides. ~ The Invisible Committee

The fear of climatic catastrophes is an ancient one and not unlike our fear of strangers. In the past, people believed that the climate almost always changes for the worse, and only rarely for the better - God's punishment for sinful behavior. ~ Hans Von Storch

In this midst of this catastrophe, more than looking in to find serenity we need to look out for one another to practice humanity. ~ Abhijit Naskar

She understood the genre constraints, the decencies were supposed to be observing. The morally cosy vision allows the embrace of monstrosity only as a reaction to suffering or as an act of rage against the Almighty. Vampire interviewee Louis is in despair at his brother's death when he accepts Lestat's offer. Frankenstein's creature is driven to violence by the violence done to him. Even Lucifer's rebellion emerges from the agony of injured price. The message is clear: By all means become an abomination - but only while unhinged by grief or wrath. ~ Glen Duncan

Washington's adventuristic policy, whipping up international tension to the utmost, is pushing mankind towards nuclear catastrophe. ~ Konstantin Chernenko

Before the boiling of blood and the searing of skin comes the secret catastrophe: Before Life on Earth becomes finally merely impossible, it will for a long time before have become completely unbearable. ~ Tony Kushner

As for the role of France and Germany: French politics is often more self-confident then German politics due to the catastrophe in the first half of the last century. If Berlin and Paris don't agree, then it is difficult to make progress in Europe. ~ Wolfgang Schauble

Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations. ~ Rebecca West

Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics. To us a single act of injustice
cheating in business, exploitation of the poor
is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence: to us, an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

By neglecting our garden, we are storing up for ourselves, in the not very distant future, a world catastrophe as bad as any atomic war, and we are doing it with all the bland complacency of an idiot child chopping up a Rembrandt with a pair of scissors. ~ Gerald Durrell

Time is running out fast. I think we have maybe a few months
it could be weeks, it could be days
before there is a material risk of a fundamentally unnecessary default by a country like Spain or Italy which would be a financial catastrophe dragging the European banking system and North America with it. So they have to act now. ~ Willem Buiter

Obamacare is a program designed to shift control of the health care industry from the private sector to the public sector, from doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies to the federal government. The program was sold by Obama feigning outrage over insurance companies refusing to grant insurance to people with "preexisting conditions." But this is the same as an insurance company not granting fire insurance to a guy whose house has already burned down. The whole point of insurance is to share the risk before the catastrophe occurs, not to have a catastrophe and then get other people to pay for your losses. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

Self-destructive patterns cause as much suffering as outer catastrophes. ~ Anais Nin

So love is rest? The cosy corner? The little nook?
Sometimes it ought to be.
Sometimes it is. ~ Doris Lessing