Tumult Quotes

Once in a while, we get the briefest of glimpses of the magnificent beauty that resides in this universe. Life which happens within incomprehensible tumult, occasionally transforms itself into a clear vision of pure ecstasy in a still transcendent moment. ~ Srini Chandra

She wonders sometimes if it's a sort of flaw or lack in her - the inability to lose herself in someone else ... she's never quite understood how people could trade in quiet spaces and solitary gardens and courtyards, thoughtful walks and the delicious rhythms of work, for the fearful tumult of falling in love. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

The early months of marriage often are times of critical tumult,
whether that of a shrimp pool or of deeper water,
which afterwards subside into cheerful peace. ~ George Eliot

He sang the brightness of mornings and green rivers,
He sang of smoking water in the rose-colored daybreaks,
Of colors: cinnabar, carmine, burnt sienna, blue,
Of the delight of swimming in the sea under marble cliffs,
Of feasting on a terrace above the tumult of a fishing port,
Of tastes of wine, olive oil, almonds, mustard, salt.
Of the flight of the swallow, the falcon,
Of a dignified flock of pelicans above the bay,
Of the scent of an armful of lilacs in summer rain,
Of his having composed his words always against death
And of having made no rhyme in praise of nothingness. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. ~ Thomas Paine

Of the ladies was just what he wished; that of Mrs. Bennet perhaps surpassing the rest; though, when the first tumult of joy was over, she began to declare that it was what she had expected ~ Jane Austen

And the pathetic part of it is that frequently those who have the least justification for a feeling of achievement bolster up their egos by a show of tumult and conceit which is truly nauseating. As Shakespeare put it: ... man, proud man, / Drest in a little brief authority, / ... Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven / As make the angels weep. ~ Dale Carnegie

She was coming. She was moving close to the hall. He felt himself slip away from his body into pure listening; yes, it was she. All the sounds of the night rose to confuse him, yet he caught it; a low irreducible sound which she could not veil, the sound of her breathing, of the beat of her heart, of a force moving through space at tremendous and unnatural speed, causing the inevitable tumult amid the visible and the invisible. ~ Anne Rice

Has the finger of death to be laid on the tumult of life from time to time lest it rend us asunder? Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living? And then what strange powers are these that penetrate our most secret ways and change our most treasured possessions without our willing it? Had Orlando, worn out by the extremity of his suffering, died for a week, and then come to life again? And if so, of what nature is death and of what nature life? Having waited well over half an hour for an answer to these questions, and none coming, let us get on with the story. ~ Virginia Woolf

And before my Soul took me to task I was hard of hearing; I heard only tumult and uproar. But now I am all ears listening to the silence and its choirs singing the hymns of time, intoning the praises of the firmament, revealing the secrets of the invisible. ~ Khalil Gibran

They did not use the sonic stunners but the foray gun, the ancient weapon that fires a set of metal fragments in a burst. They shot to kill him. He was dying when I got to him, sprawled and twisted away from his skis that stuck up out of the snow, his chest half shot away. I took his head in my arms and spoke to him, but he never answered me; only in a way he answered my love for him, crying out through the silent wreck and tumult of his mind as consciousness lapsed, in the unspoken tongue, once, clearly, 'Arek!' Then no more. I held him, crouching there in the snow, while he died. They let me do that. Then they made me get up, and took me off one way and him another, I going to prison and he into the dark. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Nothing on the horizon; nothing in heaven.

He implores the expanse, the waves, the seaweed, the reef; they are deaf. He beseeches the tempest; the imperturbable tempest obeys only the infinite.

Around him darkness, fog, solitude, the stormy and non- sentient tumult, the undefined curling of those wild waters. In him horror and fatigue. Beneath him the depths. Not a point of support. He thinks of the gloomy adventures of the corpse in the limitless shadow. The bottomless cold paralyzes him. His hands contract convulsively; they close, and grasp nothingness. Winds, clouds, whirlwinds, gusts, useless stars! What is to be done? The desperate man gives up; he is weary, he chooses the alternative of death; he resists not; he lets himself go; he abandons his grip; and then he tosses forevermore in the lugubrious dreary depths of engulfment.

Oh, implacable march of human societies! Oh, losses of men and of souls on the way! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets slip! Disastrous absence of help! Oh, moral death!

The sea is the inexorable social night into which the penal laws fling their condemned. The sea is the immensity of wretchedness.

The soul, going down stream in this gulf, may become a corpse. Who shall resuscitate it? ~ Victor Hugo

Then everything was normal again, except that the liner was speeding for the planet Krim at something more than thirty times the speed of light. Normality extended through all the galaxy so far inhabited by men. There were worlds on which there was peace, and worlds on which there was tumult. There were busy, zestful young worlds, and languid, weary old ones. From the Near Rim to the farthest of occupied systems, planets circled their suns, and men lived on them, and every man took himself seriously and did not quite believe that the universe had existed before he was born or would long survive his loss. Time passed. Comets let out vast streamers like bridal veils and swept toward and around their suns. Some of them - one in ten thousand, or twenty - were possibly seen by human eyes. The liner bearing Hoddan sped through the void. In time it made a landfall on the Planet Krim. ~ Murray Leinster

The audacity of a fine death always affects men. As soon as Enjolras folded his arms and accepted his end, the din of strife ceased in the room, and this chaos suddenly stilled into a sort of sepulchral solemnity. The menacing majesty of Enjolras disarmed and motionless, appeared to oppress this tumult, and this young man, haughty, bloody, and charming, who alone had not a wound, who was as indifferent as an invulnerable being, seemed, by the authority of his tranquil glance, to constrain this sinister rabble to kill him respectfully. His beauty, at that moment augmented by his pride, was resplendent, and he was fresh and rosy after the fearful four and twenty hours which had just elapsed, as though he could no more be fatigued than wounded. It was of him, possibly, that a witness spoke afterwards, before the council of war: "There was an insurgent whom I heard called Apollo." A National Guardsman who had taken aim at Enjolras, lowered his gun, saying: "It seems to me that I am about to shoot a flower. ~ Victor Hugo

The ant world is a tumult, a noisy world of pheromones being passed back and forth. ~ E. O. Wilson

There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, and sand eddies in a whirlwind. ~ Dante Alighieri

Stop your complaining, stop your doctoring; this tumult has arisen and is direct from above, and it will not cease till it makes all the adversaries of the Word like the mud on the streets. But it is sad to have to remind a theologian like you of these things, as if you were a pupil instead of one who ought to be teaching others. ~ Martin Luther

Nocturnă

Uitarea venea... a venit.
O lacrimă cade jos, totul tace,
Lampa obosită a clipit,
Orice obiect atins şopteşte: lasă-mă-n pace...

De-acum...
Auzi, ploaia plânge pe drum
Pe un adânc tumult,
Pe urma unui mic pantof într-un parc
de demult...

Adorm... ascult...
Afară, la fereastră, toamna a spus:
- Of!

Nocturne

Oblivion comes . . . came.
A tear falls; total silence,
The tired lamp twinkles,
Every touched thing whispers, let me alone.

Now...
Listen, outside the rain sheds its tears ―
A serious dispute centers on
A scrap of a small shoe in an old park . . .

I sleep . . . I listen . . .
Outside a window, autumn says:
Oh! ~ George Bacovia

In times of tumult, voters are likely to forgive a president, if not reward him, for compromises made in service of solutions. ~ Ron Fournier

In the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend. What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History? ~ Charles De Gaulle

Wuthering being a significant, provincial adjective descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. ~ Emily Bronte

This is an illustrious example which reminds us that good and saintly men sometimes run into the greatest of misfortunes and dangers not through their own but by someone else's fault. To the others, indeed, who are involved in the same danger no way of salvation or liberation appears, but they think that all is lost. But because there are some godly men, or only one godly man, in the same ship, the ship must reach port safe and sound, however much it has been tossed about by a heavy storm, even though a thousand devils have been fighting in opposition and causing tumult in the same ship. ~ Martin Luther

The world
this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly into this resounding tumult ... So much only of life as I know by experience ... The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The absence of tumult, more than its presence, is an enemy of the soul. God meets you in your weakness, not in your strength. He comforts those who mourn, not those who live above desperation. He reveals Himself more often in darkness than in the happy moments of life. ~ Dan B. Allender

Tis true that tho' People can transcend their Characters in Times of Tranquillity, they can ne'er do so in Times of Tumult. ~ Erica Jong

Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood.... ~ Edward Gibbon

Ours is the wild tumult of the unchained storm, the tumult of the army on the march, clashing its cymbals, rioting with excess of energy. Need we be ashamed of it? ~ Liam O'Flaherty

What is this all about,' asked Sai, but her mouth couldn't address her ear in the tumult; her mind couldn't talk to her heart. 'Shame on myself,' she said ... Who was she ... she with her self-importance, her demand for happiness, yelling it at fate, at the deaf heavens, screaming for her joy to be brought forth..?
How dare ... How dare you not ...
Why shouldn't I have ... How dare ... I deserve ... Her small greedy soul ... Her tantrums and fits ... Her mean tears ... Her crying, enough for all the sadness in the world, was only for herself. Life wasn't single in its purpose ... or even its direction ... The simplicity of what she'd been taught wouldn't hold. Never again could she think there was but one narrative and that this narrative belonged only to herself, that she might create her own tiny happiness and live safely within it. ~ Kiran Desai

Above all things I entreat you to preserve your faith in Christ. It is my wealth in poverty, my joy in sorrow, my peace amid tumult. For all the evil I have committed, my gracious pardon; and for every effort, my exceeding great reward. I have found it to be so. I can smile with pity at the infidel whose vanity makes him dream that I should barter such a blessing for the few subtleties from the school of the cold-blooded sophists. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Here is the faithful night, the cool night which I called for amid the noise of lights, drink and the tumult of desire. ~ Albert Camus

There was a glow of grim pride in her usually gentle face, approbation and a fierce joy in her smile that equaled the fiery tumult in Scarlett's own bosom.
'Why-why-she's like me! She understands how I feel'! ~ Margaret Mitchell

Pre-high tech, objects thunked and crashed and clopped, amid a thunder of drums, a tumult of trumpets. Today things beep and cheep and whistle. We have come from the roar of the lion to the chirp of the tree frog, ceaselessly bleating our identities while the frog-eating bats hover above us. ~ A.J. Orde

I do nothing, with as little shame as satisfaction. It is the state that suits me best. I write the odd poem when it is there, that is the only thing worth doing. There is an ecstasy of accidia - will-less in a grey tumult of idées obscures. There is an end to the temptation of light, its polite scorchings & consolations. It is good for children & insects. There is an end of making up one's mind, like a pound of tea, an end of patting the butter of consciousness into opinions. The real consciousness is the chaos, a grey commotion of mind, with no premises or conclusions or problems or solutions or cases or judgments. ~ Samuel Beckett

Now these [battles] too are over, and already we see once more in the dim light of the future the tumult of the fresh ones. We--by this I mean those youth of this land who are capable of enthusiasm for an ideal--will not shrink from them. We stand in the memory of the dead who are holy to us, and we believe ourselves entrusted with the true and spiritual welfare of our people. We stand for what will be and for what has been. Though force without and barbarity within conglomerate in sombre clouds, yet so long as the blade of a sword will strike a spark in the night may it be said: Germany lives and Germany shall never go under! ~ Ernst Junger

Strange that in the day of tumult, it should be something so innocuous as a dribble of water that prompts a person to tears. ~ Kate Morton

Loss.
A known absence.
If you didn't know it,
it would be nothing,
which it is, of course,
a nothing of another kind,
as acutely felt as a blister,
but a tumult, too,
in the region of the heart and lungs,
an emptiness with a name: You ~ Siri Hustvedt

Saudi Arabia is, of course, the keystone of OPEC. Saudi Arabia has had the distinction of remaining stable through all the escalating tumult of recent decades, reliably pumping out its roughly 10 million barrels a day like Bossy the cow in America's oil import barn. ~ James Howard Kunstler

I launch eagerly into this resounding tumult. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the beginning there was dust, and one day the great, improbable experiment of life will return to dust. We are not secure. Just as our ultimate genesis was entangled with the birth of suns, and the terrifying tumult of asteroids and meteorites, so we are still bound to the cosmos. ~ Richard Fortey

If an angel should be winged from Heaven, on an errand of mercy to our country, the first accents that would glow on his lips would be, Beware! Be cautious! You have everything to lose; nothing to gain. We live under the only government that ever existed which was framed by the unrestrained and deliberate consultations of the people. Miracles do not cluster. That which has happened but once in six thousand years cannot be expected to happen often. Such a government, once gone, might leave a void, to be filled, for ages, with revolution and tumult, riot and despotism. ~ Daniel Webster

Away from the tumult of motor and mill I want to be care-free; I want to be still! I'm weary of doing things; weary of words I want to be one with the blossoms and birds. ~ Edgar Guest

The patient suffers; the family threatens; the colleagues frown; the nurse laughs; Death grins; and the young doctor dances a crazy jig amid the tumult, though once he dreamed he would glide along the floor with Death in a perfectly controlled tango. ~ Bert Keizer

Glorious is the tumult of the waves that crash against a vessel, preparing it for the seas of life. ~ Don Williams

I like the smell of a dunged field, and the tumult of a popular election. ~ Augustus William Hare

...it is only in the darkness of the grave that man will find the peace which the wickedness of his fellows, the tumult of his own passions, and, above all, the inevitability of his fate shall eternally deny him in this life. ~ Marquis De Sade

I haven't been disingenuous in what I've said describing my perception of "truth" and "reality." Certainly, I understand what is generally meant to be the "truth," I understand this notion, but it's not something I trust in, OK?

The only answer that feels true (I said feels, not is) is that yes, the character Minnie is me, but she is not me. She is a projection of some tumult which originates within me, but she is not me. I use elements of myself, including my likeness, for the character, perhaps as Cindy Sherman uses herself in her work, but like Sherman's photographs, the work itself is not any more about the creator than it is about everyone. I won't deny that Minnie does things I have done, and that things happen to her that have happened to me, but she, unlike me, having been created, is who she is and will remain so, unchanged now. I make no attempt to create "documentary." There is a process of dissociation that takes place when I make a story, I make creative decisions in a fugue state that I could hardly describe to you, but the end result is, I hope, a story with some meaning or resonance, something created, with a beginning, a middle and an end, an encapsulation of feeling and impression, but in no way a documentary of anything other than an "emotional truth."

If I told most interviewers that my work is "true" and that it is based on real events that occurred in my life, they would more readily accept this than they do the explanation I try to ~ Phoebe Gloeckner

The islanders, while employed in erecting this tenement, reminded me of a colony of beavers at work. To be sure, they were hardly as silent and demure as those wonderful creatures, nor were they by any means as diligent. To tell the truth they were somewhat inclined to be lazy, but a perfect tumult of hilarity prevailed; and they worked together so unitedly, and seemed actuated by such an instinct of friendliness, that it was truly beautiful to behold. Not ~ Herman Melville

The summer day was spoiled with fitful storm; At night the wind died and the soft rain dropped; With lulling murmur, and the air was warm, And all the tumult and the trouble stopped. ~ Celia Thaxter

The world around them ceased to exist, and they stared at each other accross the tumult, communicating thoughts that could not be put into words. His eyes never strayed from her face, as if he were trying to read every line to understand what he saw there. She held her breath, almost unable to bear the intesne rush of ecstasy she felt when his eyes were upon her. "I love you." Her lips formed the words she was too overjoyed to speak. ~ Jennifer Beckstrand

Great were the lamentation and the cry when the news of this mischance was noised about the city. Such a tumult of mourning was never before heard, for the whole city was moved. ~ Marie De France

After midday, the rain eased, and the Land Rover rode into Pokhara on a shaft of storm light. Next day there was humid sun and shifting southern skies, but to the north a deep tumult of swirling grays was all that could be seen of the Himalaya. At dusk, white egrets flapped across the sunken clouds, now black with rain; on earth, the dark had come. Then four miles above these mud streets of the lowlands, at a point so high as to seem overhead, a luminous whiteness shone- the light of snows. Glaciers loomed and vanished in the grays, and the sky parted, and the snow cone of Machhapuchare glistened like a spire of a higher kingdom. In the night, the stars convened, and the vast ghost of Machhapuchare radiated light, although there was no moon. ~ Peter Matthiessen

The bodies of those that made such a noise and tumult when alive, when dead, lie as quietly among the graves of their neighbors as any others. ~ Jonathan Edwards

Woe to him who could look on and say: The fool! If she had waited, if she had let time do its work, her despair would surely have subsided, another man would have turned up to comfort her. - That's just like saying: The fool, dying of fever! If he had waited until his strength returned, his circulation improved, the tumult of his blood calmed down, everything would have turned out well and he would still be alive today! ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, 'tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared: he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain. ~ Samuel Johnson

A certain degree of solitude seems necessary to the full growth and spread of the highest mind; and therefore must a very extensive intercourse with men stifle many a holy germ, and scare away the gods, who shun the restless tumult of noisy companies and the discussion of petty interests. ~ Novalis

Heavenly Father has given a simple pattern for us to receive the Holy Ghost not once but continually in the tumult of our daily lives. The pattern is repeated in the sacramental prayer: We promise that we will always remember the Savior. We promise to take His name upon us. We promise to keep His commandments. ~ Henry B. Eyring

We have too much legislating by clamor, by tumult, by pressure. Representative government ceases when outside influence of any kind is substituted for the judgment of the representative. ~ Calvin Coolidge

From Oleg Cassini's memoirs... I learned that Cassini had also suffered from insomnia. One night, he woke from uneasy dreams with the opening of Dante's Inferno setting off 'a clamorous tumult in [his] subconscious: "Midway the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark forest."' When I read these terrible words, chills ran up my arms. I knew 'midway the journey' was supposed to mean midlife crisis. But it seemed to me one had always been midway the journey of our life, and would be maybe right up until the moment of death. ~ Elif Batuman

you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current - as ~ Charlotte Bronte

And Pilate seeing that he prevailed nothing, but that rather a tumult was made; taking water washed his hands before the people, saying: I am innocent of the blood of this just man; look you to it. ~ Anonymous

But however small it was [the thought], it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind -put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still. ~ Virginia Woolf

Hard Times

Music is silenced, the dark descending slowly
Has stripped unending skies of all companions.
Weariness grips your limbs and within the locked horizons
Dumbly ring the bells of hugely gathering fears.
Still, O bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.


It's not melodious woodlands but the leaps and falls
Of an ocean's drowsy booming,
Not a grove bedecked with flowers but a tumult flecked with foam.
Where is the shore that stored your buds and leaves?
Where the nest and the branch's hold?
Still, O bird, my sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.

Stretching in front of you the night's immensity
Hides the western hill where sleeps the distant sun;
Still with bated breath the world is counting time and swimming
Across the shoreless dark a crescent moon
Has thinly just appeared upon the dim horizon.
-But O my bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.


From upper skies the stars with pointing fingers
Intently watch your course and death's impatience
Lashes at you from the deeps in swirling waves;
And sad entreaties line the farthest shore
With hands outstretched and crooning 'Come, O come!'
Still, O bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.


All that is past: your fears and loves and ho ~ Rabindranath Tagore

But the stillness and the brightness of the day were as strange as the chaos and tumult of night, with the trees standing there, and the flowers standing there, looking before them, looking up, yet beholding nothing, eyeless, and so terrible. ~ Virginia Woolf

A few feet under the ground reigns so profound a silence, and yet so much tumult on the surface! ~ Victor Hugo

We're not going to waste our valuable space or your precious energy by giving equal time to stories of tragedy, failure, and tumult. They get far more that their fair share of attention everywhere else. Future historians might even conclude that our age suffered from a collective obsessive-compulsive disorder: the pathological need to repetitively seek out reasons for how bad life is. ~ Rob Brezsny

Toxic derivatives were underpinned by toxic economics, which, in turn, were no more than motivated delusions in search of theoretical justification; fundamentalist tracts that acknowledged facts only when they could be accommodated to the demands of the lucrative faith. Despite their highly impressive labels and technical appearance, economic models were merely mathematized versions of the touching superstition that markets know best, both at times of tranquility and in periods of tumult. ~ Yanis Varoufakis

Happy is the person who can keep a quiet heart, in the chaos and tumult of this modern world. ~ Patience Strong

You are a sorceress. In that moment, he was an innocent lad chasing after his first bit of skirt, desire and excitement and something far more base colliding deep within in a tumult of sensation. ~ Sarah MacLean

A young house painter who fails miserably in his choice of profession is capable, also for a period of twenty years, of having himself talked about the world over, without having accomplished a single, useful, objective, practical piece of work. In this case, also, it is a tremendous noise that one day quietly fades away into an "all to no avail." The world of work continues on its calm, quiet, vitally necessary course. Of the great tumult, nothing remains but a chapter in falsely oriented history books, which are only a burden to our children. ~ Wilhelm Reich

If people only knew what lies at the heart of my novels! What a tumult of desires these carefully written pages conceal! I sometimes have a loathing for the furious cravings that give me no peace except when I am working. ~ Julien Green

Cut," the journalist says, turning into the camera. "Just cut. The Babble
Brigade has started up again."
The soundtrack now consists of a thousand people speaking in tongues under the
high-pitched, shit-eating chuckles of L. Bob Rife.
"This is the miracle of tongues," Rife shouts above the tumult. "I can
understand every word these people are saying. Can you, brother? ~ Neal Stephenson

The train slows and lengthens, as we approach London, the centre, and my heart draws out too, in fear, in exaltation. I am about to meet
what? What extraordinary adventure awaits me, among these mail vans, these porters, these swarms of people calling taxis? I feel insignificant, lost, but exultant. With a soft shock we stop. I will let the others get before me. I will sit still one moment before I emerge into that chaos, that tumult. I will not anticipate what is to come. The huge uproar is in my ears. It sounds and resounds under this glass roof like the surge of a sea. We are cast down on the platform with our handbags. We are whirled asunder. My sense of self almost perishes; my contempt. I become drawn in, tossed down, thrown sky-high. I step on to the platform, grasping tightly all that I possess
one bag. ~ Virginia Woolf

Instantly a thick blackness seemed to enfold her and silence as of a dead world settled down upon her. Drowsy as she was she could not close her eyes nor refrain from listening. Darkness and silence were tangible things. She felt them. And they seemed suddenly potent with magic charm to still the tumult of her, to sooth and rest, to create thought she had never thought before. Rest was more than selfish indulgence. Loneliness was necessary to gain conciseness of the soul. ~ Zane Grey

On one side is everything he knows, the patterns of his existence as regular and banal as the steady plink of a dripping faucet, where he is alone but safe, and shielded from everything that could hurt him. On the other side are waves, tumult, rainstorms, excitement: everything he cannot control, everything potentially awful and ecstatic, everything he has lived his adult life trying to avoid, everything whose absence bleeds his life of colors. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

Muhammad may have been, there is one detail that should not be lost in the tumult and confusion ~ Reza Aslan

Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all. ~ Sun Tzu

The state of mind above which my distraction floats like fog is suddenly perfectly clear, though the right word for it is less immediately available. Grief is too sharp and immediate; maybe it's the high pitch of the vowel sound, or the monosyllabic impact of the word, as quick a jab as knife or cut.
Sadness is too ephemeral, somehow; it sounds like something that comes and goes, a response to an immediate cause which will pass in a little while as another cause arises to generate a different feeling.
Mourning isn't bad, but there's something a little archaic about it. I think of widows keening, striking themselves- dark-swathed years, a closeting of self away from the world, turned inward toward an interior dark.
Sorrow feels right , for now. Sorrow seems large and inhabitable, an interior season whose vaulted sky's a suitable match for the gray and white tumult arched over these headlands. A sorrow is not to be gotten over or moved through in quite the way that sadness is, yet sorrow is also not as frozen and monochromatic as mourning. Sadness exists inside my sorrow, but it's not as large as sorrow's realm. This sorrow is capacious; there's room inside it for the everyday, for going about the workaday stuff of life. And for loveliness, for whatever we're to be given by the daily walk. ~ Mark Doty

Lend your ear then to this tutti of steeples; diffuse over the whole the buzz of half a million of human beings, the eternal murmur of the river, the infinite piping of the wind, the grave and distant quartet of the four forests placed like immense organs on the four hills of the horizon; soften down, as with a demi-tint, all that is too shrill and too harsh in the central mass of sound, and say if you know any thing in the world more rich, more gladdening, more dazzling than that tumult of bells; than that furnace of music; than those ten thousand brazen tones breathed all at once from flutes of stone three hundred feet high; than that city which is but one orchestra; than that symphony rushing and roaring like a tempest. ~ Victor Hugo

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty
Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
- Till elevators drop us from our day ... ~ Hart Crane

Christ is already in that place of peace, which is all in all. He is on the right hand of God. He is hidden in the brightness of the radiance which issues from the everlasting throne. He is in the very abyss of peace, where there is no voice of tumult or distress, but a deep stillness
stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods which we can fancy; that most perfect of joys, the utter profound, ineffable tranquillity of the Divine Essence. He has entered into His rest. That is our home; here we are on a pilgrimage, and Christ calls us to His many mansions which He has prepared. ~ John Henry Newman

Silence. First it's a cloud of apricot trees in flower, yellow or ivory, like a thousand little butterflies sown in the fresh grass, moving in the glow of lamplight when night ascends. Fragments of dreams. You can see the red sun setting on the foliage, like an enormous mass of incandescent steel.

Then there were the trees a little farther off, straightening their fragile frames, the woolen blue pincushion flower like an eye and that tumult of milk in the deep stone, and finally the moan of the air beaten by a flock of blue woodpigeons– a silken challenge perhaps, or one of crackled leather. ~ Deborah Heissler

Happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult. ~ Ann Radcliffe

I open the books on Right and on ethics; I listen to the professors and jurists; and, my mind full of their seductive doctrines, I admire the peace and justice established by the civil order; I bless the wisdom of our political institutions and, knowing myself a citizen, cease to lament I am a man. Thoroughly instructed as to my duties and my happiness, I close the book, step out of the lecture room, and look around me. I see wretched nations groaning beneath a yoke of iron. I see mankind ground down by a handful of oppressors, I see a famished mob, worn down by sufferings and famine, while the rich drink the blood and tears of their victims at their ease. I see on every side the strong armed with the terrible powers of the Law against the weak.

And all this is done quietly and without resistance. It is the peace of Ulysses and his comrades, imprisoned in the cave of the Cyclops and waiting their turn to be devoured. We must groan and be silent. Let us for ever draw a veil over sights so terrible. I lift my eyes and look to the horizon. I see fire and flame, the fields laid waste, the towns put to sack. Monsters! where are you dragging the hapless wretches? I hear a hideous noise. What a tumult and what cries! I draw near; before me lies a scene of murder, ten thousand slaughtered, the dead piled in heaps, the dying trampled under foot by horses, on every side the image of death and the throes of death. And that is the fruit of your peaceful institutions! Indignat ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I am apprehensive, therefore - perhaps too apprehensive - that the Government of these States may in futures times end in a monarchy. But this catastrophe, I think, may be long delayed, if in our proposed system we do not sow the seeds of contention, faction, and tumult, by making our posts of honor places of profit. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Take heed of the wrath of a mighty man, and the tumult of the people. ~ George Herbert

The gods approve The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul. ~ William Wordsworth

Shall hope prevail where clamorous hate is rife,
Shall sweet love prosper or high dreams have place
Amid the tumult of reverberant strife
'Twixt ancient creeds, 'twixt race and ancient race,
That mars the grave, glad purposes of life,
Leaving no refuge save thy succoring face? ~ Sarojini Naidu

Usually, the murmur that rises up from Paris by day is the city talking; in the night it is the city breathing; but here it is the city singing. Listen, then, to this chorus of bell-towers - diffuse over the whole the murmur of half a million people - the eternal lament of the river - the endless sighing of the wind - the grave and distant quartet of the four forests placed upon the hills, in the distance, like immense organpipes - extinguish to a half light all in the central chime that would otherwise be too harsh or too shrill; and then say whetehr you know of anything in the world more rich, more joyous, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes - this furnace of music - these thousands of brazen voices, all singing together in flutes of stone three hundred feet high, than this city which is but one orchestra - this symphony which roars like a tempest. ~ Victor Hugo

Father!
My father knows the proper way
The nation should be run;
He tells us children every day
Just what should now be done.
He knows the way to fix the trusts,
He has a simple plan;
But if the furnace needs repairs,
We have to hire a man.
My father, in a day or two
Could land big thieves in jail;
There's nothing that he cannot do,
He knows no word like "fail."
"Our confidence" he would restore,
Of that there is no doubt;
But if there is a chair to mend,
We have to send it out.

All public questions that arise,
He settles on the spot;
He waits not till the tumult dies,
But grabs it while it's hot.
In matters of finance he can
Tell Congress what to do;
But, O, he finds it hard to meet
His bills as they fall due.

It almost makes him sick to read
The things law-makers say;
Why, father's just the man they need,
He never goes astray.
All wars he'd very quickly end,
As fast as I can write it;
But when a neighbor starts a fuss,
'Tis mother has to fight it.

In conversation father can
Do many wondrous things;
He's built upon a wiser plan
Than presidents or kings.
He knows the ins and outs of each
And every deep transaction;
We look to him for theories,
But look to ma for action ~ Edgar A. Guest

It would have been difficult to say what was the nature of this look, and whence proceeded the flame that flashed from it. It was a fixed gaze, which was, nevertheless, full of trouble and tumult. And, from the profound immobility of his whole body, barely agitated at intervals by an involuntary shiver, as a tree is moved by the wind; from the stiffness of his elbows, more marble than the balustrade on which they leaned; or the sight of the petrified smile which contracted his face, - one would have said that nothing living was left about Claude Frollo except his eyes. ~ Victor Hugo

Independence isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know. What country could be more independent than Russia? And in Russia now there isn't a squeak or a pinpoint of light. I have nowhere to publish. The Contemporary has stuck its head up out of harm's way. So I've stopped quarrelling with the world. I sat in this chair the first morning I woke up in this house ... and for the first time ... for a long time, there was silence. I didn't have to talk or think or move, nothing was expected of me, I knew nobody and nobody knew where i was, everything was behind me, all the moving from place to place, the quarrels and celebrations, the desperate concerns of health and happiness, love, death, printer's errors, picnics ruined by rain, the endless tumult of life ... and I just sat quiet and alone all day, looking at the tops of trees on Primrose Hill through the mist. ~ Tom Stoppard

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds. ~ William Butler Yeats

O Thou who art my quietness, my deep repose,
My rest from strife of tongues, my holy hill,
Fair is Thy pavilion, where I hold me still.
Back let them fall from me, my clamorous foes,
Confusions multiplied;
From crowding things of sense I flee, and Thee I hide.
Until this tyranny be overpast,
Thy hand will hold me fast;
What though the tumult of the storm increase,
Grant to Thy servant strength, O Lord, and bless with peace. ~ Amy Carmichael

All through the night, like the tumult of a river when it races between the cliffs of a canyon, in my sleep I could hear the steady roar of the passing army. ~ Richard Harding Davis

In the din and tumult of the age, the still small voice of Jerusalem remains our only music. ~ Israel Zangwill

Like a long sighing of wind in trees it begins, then they sweep into sight, borne now upon a cloud of phantom dust. They rush past, forwardleaning in the saddles, with brandished arms, beneath whipping ribbons from slanted and eager lances; with tumult and soundless yelling they sweep past like a tide whose crest is jagged with the wild heads of horses and the brandished arms of men like the crater of the world in explosion. ~ William Faulkner

But now at last the sacred influence
Of light appears, and rom the walls of Heav'n
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night
A glimmering dawn; here Nature first begins
her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire
As from her outmost works a broken foe
With tumult less and with less hostile din, ~ John Milton

Sometimes in those moments of greatest abandonment when we feel utterly deserted a sign appears where we least expect it and shows us the way. Those who dare to advance into darkness, expecting nothing, will at last find their shining goal. On a page torn from a book, which an autumn wind blew around my feet, I read the words that showed me I was on the right path: "The initiate who sets out in good faith to find the Truth, only to find, on all sides, the inexorable barrier that throws him back into the 'ordinary tumult,' will hear the Master say: 'Watch out, there is a wall.' 'But is this wall temporary?' asks the restless soul, 'can I pass through it or demolish it? Is it an adversary? Is it a friend?' 'I cannot tell you. You must discover it for yourself. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

Like the vain curlings of the watery maze,
Which in smooth streams a sinking weight does raise,
So Man, declining always, disappears
In the weak circles of increasing years;
And his short tumults of themselves compose,
While flowing Time above his head does close. ~ Andrew Marvell

(...) I ducked once underwater and holding my breath until movement was an agony, blundered painfully ahead, under the surface, for as long as I could. The water was in a tumult about me. ~ H.G.Wells