Johnstown Flood Quotes

It goes to show you how we in the press so often miss the big stories that are right under our noses. There is a famous journalistic legend about the time a young reporter covered the Johnstown flood of 1889. The kid wrote: God sat on a hillside overlooking Johnstown today and looked at the destruction He had wrought. His editor cabled back: Forget flood. Interview God. ~ Roger Ebert

Life streamed through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant, until it seemed that it would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy and pour forth generously over the world. ~ Jack London

Looking at old photographs inundates you with a flood of nostalgic emotions! And you can't be sure where you want to swim in the deluge of memories! ~ Avijeet Das

No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed. ~ Helen Keller

Our glass train, on fragile tracks
Beneath bombs that fall like the flood
To wash away the shards
- But all this sorrow will recede
And we will leave
Two by two
And until then, I will only think of you. ~ Danny M. Cohen

Mankind must worship God to attain righteousness and the spiritual status necessary to enter paradise. This means human beings have to comprehend that worship is as indispensable as eating and breathing - and not a favour they are doing for God. ~ Donald W. Flood

And then I cried a flood of tears as if I really were a mermaid who had absorbed too much sea into herself. The tears spilled like a balm, like a potion, like a charm. In them swam a little girl whose father was dying without ever having seen her. In them swam a girl whose mother's magic – the only thing the girl envied more than anything else in the world, the thing that had made her invisible, the most precious thing –might be dying too. In them swam a green-haired girl who had never been touched by the boy to whom she was so devoted that she would have lived with him forever in a shack by the sea or a ruined sand castle even if he never made love to her. My tears were for me, but they were also for him. They were to wash away the thing that had frightened him so much so long ago. The wound inside his thigh. My tears poured out of me and he drank them down his throat. He drank them in gulps deep into himself, swallowing sorrow.
Someday," he said, "when we are ready, I will give you back your tears. ~ Francesca Lia Block

This radical stance of prioritizing love over law could be said to be the baseline of Jesus' exegetical method. It is absolutely central to how Jesus understood and interpreted Scripture. ~ Derek Flood

Even at that time the hope of leaving behind messages in bottles on the flood of barbarism bursting on Europe was an amiable illusion: the desperate letters stuck in the mud of the spirit of rejuvenesence and were worked up by a band of Noble Human-Beings and other riff-raff into highly artistic but inexpensive wall-adornments. Only since then has progress in communications really got into its stride. Who, in the end, is to take it amiss if even the freest of free spirits no longer write for an imaginary posterity, more trusting, if possible, than even their contemporaries, but only for the dead God? ~ Theodor W. Adorno

Imagine a culture in which everything is geared toward helping all individuals become the best human beings they can be; in which individuals are driven to devoting their lives to becoming enlightened by the natural flood of compassion for others that arises from their wisdom. ~ Robert A.F. Thurman

Thoughts are like burning stars, and ideas, they flood, they stretch the universe. ~ Criss Jami

Language as a Prison

The Philippines did have a written language before the Spanish colonists arrived, contrary to what many of those colonists subsequently claimed. However, it was a language that some theorists believe was mainly used as a mnemonic device for epic poems. There was simply no need for a European-style written language in a decentralized land of small seaside fishing villages that were largely self-sufficient.

One theory regarding language is that it is primarily a useful tool born out of a need for control. In this theory written language was needed once top-down administration of small towns and villages came into being. Once there were bosses there arose a need for written language. The rise of the great metropolises of Ur and Babylon made a common written language an absolute necessity - but it was only a tool for the administrators. Administrators and rulers needed to keep records and know names - who had rented which plot of land, how many crops did they sell, how many fish did they catch, how many children do they have, how many water buffalo? More important, how much then do they owe me? In this account of the rise of written language, naming and accounting seem to be language's primary "civilizing" function. Language and number are also handy for keeping track of the movement of heavenly bodies, crop yields, and flood cycles. Naturally, a version of local oral languages was eventually translated into symbols as well, and nonadmi ~ David Byrne

But this is the only account hand-copied and tacked to my bulletin board, the testimony of a Dutch pilot caught on shore near Anjer, a city now gone: 'The moment of greatest anguish was not the actual destruction of the wave. The worst part by far was afterwards, when I knew I was saved, and the receding flood carried back past me the bodies of friends and neighbors and family. And I remember clawing past other arms and legs as you might fight through a bramble. And I thought, 'The world is our relentless adversary, rarely outwitted, never tiring.' And I thought, 'I would give all these people's lives, once more, to see something so beautiful again. ~ Jim Shepard

Come when the rains
Have glazed the snow and clothed the trees with ice,
While the slant sun of February pours
Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach!
The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps
And the broad arching portals of the grove
Welcome thy entering. ~ William C. Bryant

You remind me of the man that lived by the river. He heard a radio report that the river was going to rush up and flood the town, and that the all the residents should evacuate their homes.

But the man said, "I'm religious. I pray. God loves me. God will save me." The waters rose up. A guy in a rowboat came along and he shouted, "Hey, hey you, you in there. The town is flooding. Let me take you to safety." But the man shouted back, "I'm religious. I pray. God loves me. God will save me."

A helicopter was hovering overhead and a guy with a megaphone shouted, "Hey you, you down there. The town is flooding. Let me drop this ladder and I'll take you to safety." But the man shouted back that he was religious, that he prayed, that God loved him and that God will take him to safety.

Well... the man drowned. And standing at the gates of St. Peter he demanded an audience with God. "Lord," he said, "I'm a religious man, I pray, I thought you loved me. Why did this happen?"

God said, "I sent you a radio report, a helicopter and a guy in a rowboat. What the hell are you doing here?

He sent you a priest, a rabbi and a Quaker. Not to mention his son, Jesus Christ. What do you want from him? ~ Aaron Sorkin

So the fire and its subsequent flood, wich destroyed everything left that was not flammable and added a particularly noisome flux to the survivors'problems, did not mark its end. Rather it was a fiery punctuation mark, a coal-like comma, or salamander semicolon, in a continuing story. ~ Terry Pratchett

Does he expect the flood to just move out of his way if he asks nicely? ~ Tanya Huff

I pressed my forehead to Mal's and heard him whisper, "I'll meet you in the meadow." Something inside me gave way, in fury, in hopelessness, in the certainty of my own death. I felt Mal's blood beneath my palms, saw the pain in his beloved face. A volcra screeched in triumph as its talons sank into my shoulder. Pain shot through my body. And the world went white. I closed my eyes as a sudden, piercing flood of light exploded across my vision. It seemed to fill my head, blinding me, drowning me. From somewhere above, I heard a horrible shriek. I felt the volcra's claws loosen their grip, felt the thud as I fell forward and my head connected with the deck, and then I felt nothing at all. ~ Leigh Bardugo

And in the middle of the flood I felt my worth when you held onto me like I was your little life raft. Please know that you were mine as well. ~ Snow Patrol

The door creaked as it began to open.
Gray moved like lightning, slapping his left palm against the door and slamming it shut before it had
opened more than a fraction of an inch. "Hey!" a woman squawked indignantly from the other side.
"This one's occupied," he said hoarsely, not missing a beat with his plunging hips. "Go somewhere else."
Faith couldn't say anything. Her eyes widened with alarm, but all she could do was look helplessly up at
him.
Gray's lips drew back over his teeth and his head dropped forward as he began hammering faster. His
face was flushed, satisfaction only a few moments away.
Faith shuddered wildly as the coil of tension suddenly released and the fierce, pulsing flood of sensation
swept through her. Shivering and pushing hard against him, she buried her face against his chest and bit
his shirt to muffle her gasping cries.
He kept his hand flat against the door, gripping her bottom with his right hand to anchor himself. He
shoved hard into her, twice, three times, again, then bucked violently. His head fell back and a harsh,
guttural cry rumbled up from his chest.
There was an insistent banging on the door. "What are you doing in there?" the woman said in shrill,
grating tones. "That's the lady's room! You aren't supposed to be in there!"
Slowly Gray's head came up. The expression in his eyes was indescribable, as if he couldn't believe
what was happening. He took a de ~ Linda Howard

As the wicked flee when none pursueth, so does the middle-class wrestle when none contendeth. They cried out for freedom, it came down on them in a flood. Nothing remains but a few floating timbers of psychotherapy. ~ Saul Bellow

soon after, a Friend in company began to talk in support of the slave-trade, and said the negroes were understood to be the offspring of Cain, their blackness being the mark which God set upon him after he murdered Abel his brother; that it was the design of Providence they should be slaves, as a condition proper to the race of so wicked a man as Cain was. Then another spake in support of what had been said. To all which I replied in substance as follows: that Noah and his family were all who survived the flood, according to Scripture; ~ Various

Music eliminates my gravity. When I'm singing, I'm a ravenous pterodactyl. I'm alive and free and hungry, and I know who I am. But the flood is coming; it's weighing me down, making me prisoner to my loneliness and pain.
-character Joanna (Broken) ~ J. Matthew Nespoli

Real education starts when you genuinely feel the pain and sufferings of the people and living beings in flood, famine, poverty, disease, exploitation, and hunger. Spirituality begins when you take positive actions to remove that pain and suffering. ~ Amit Ray

His overactive charm poured out like a lone drainage pipe after a flash flood. ~ Lida Sideris

We Californians are constantly accused of not having seasons, but we do. We have fire, flood, mud, and drought. ~ Phyllis Diller

Tears impress no one. But, oh yeah, there's no one here to impress. So I go ahead and let tears fall. Rain. Storm. Flood. My pillow soaks with the salt of regret, and I rest my head against it ... ~ Ellen Hopkins

All passion is childish. It's banal and naive. It's nothing we learn; it's instinctive, and so it overwhelms us. Overturns us. It bears us away in a flood. All other emotions belong to the earth, but passion inhabits the universe. That is the reason why passion is worth something, not for what it gives us but for what it demands that we risk. ~ Fredrik Backman

In more than 500 instances, from the Gulf of Alaska to Bar Harbor, Maine, FEMA has remapped waterfront properties from the highest-risk flood zone, saving the owners as much as 97 percent on the premiums they pay into the financially strained National Flood Insurance Program. ~ Bill Dedman

When I first saw you, you were like a flood of sunshine. All the others wanted to kill you. They thought I was crazy. They laughed ... "
He means the other Shadow Men, Jenny thought.
"But I knew, and I watched you. You grew up and got more beautiful. You were so different from anything in my world. The others just watched, but I wanted you. Not to kill or to use up the way
the way they do with humans sometimes here. I needed you."
[ ... ]
"I couldn't see anything else, couldn't hear anything else. All I could think about was you. I wouldn't let anyone else hurt you, ever. I knew I had to have you, no matter what happend. They said I was crazy with love. ~ L.J.Smith

How is this happening? It'd been so long, and for years he'd deliberately chosen not to remember. But now, a flood of details storming back into his mind in an incredibly intimate wave. And her, looking even more beautiful than he had been able to remember. The love of his life, though he hadn't known it back in this moment, twenty-one long years ago. If he'd had any idea, he was convinced he wouldn't have given up so goddamn easily. ~ Keith C. Meyer

But grief still has to be worked through. It is like walking through water. Sometimes there are little waves lapping about my feet. Sometimes there is an enormous breaker that knocks me down. Sometimes there is a sudden and fierce squall. But I know that many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Ours is a fall into greed: why do we think that everything on Earth belongs to us, while in reality we belong to Everything? We have betrayed the trust of the Animals, and defiled our sacred task of stewardship. ~ Margaret Atwood

I do not know where Viktor and Rudolf were taken. I cannot find the records. I never Elisabeth or Iggie.

It is possible that they were taken to the Hotel Metropole, which has been sequestered as the headquarters of the Gestapo. There are many other lock-ups for this flood of Jews. They are beaten, of course; but they are also forbidden to shave or wash so that they look even more degenerate. This because it is important to address the old affront of Jews not looking like Jews. This processing of stripping away your respectability, taking away your watch-chain, or your shoes or your belt, so that you stumble to hold up your trousers with one hand, is a way of returning everyone to the shtetl, stripping you back to your essential character - wandering, unshaven, bowed with your possessions on your back. You are supposed to end up looking like a cartoon from Der Stuermer, Streicher's tabloid that is now sold on the streets of Vienna. They take away your reading glasses. ~ Edmund De Waal

The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless. ~ Nicolas Chamfort

Love, being in love, isn't a constant thing. It doesn't always flow at the same strength. It's not always like a river in flood. It's more like the sea. It has tides, it ebbs and flows. The thing is, when love is real, whether it's ebbing or flowing, it's always there, it never goes away. And that's the only proof you can have that it is real, and not just a crush or an infatuation or a passing fancy ~ Aidan Chambers

Were floods of tears to be unloosed In tribute to my grief, The doves of Noah ne'er had roost Nor found an olive-leaf. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

I'm in love with you," I whisper.
He tries to smile but his eyes flood instead. "Don't love me more than your dreams, myshka. Because I love you too much to let you give them up for me. ~ Krista Ritchie