When Lightning Strikes Quotes

But now I gotta pay,' he said.
To pay?'
For my sin. That's why I'm here, right? Justice?'
The Blue Man smiled. 'No, Edward. You are here so I can teach you something. All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you...That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more seperate a breeze from the wind.'
...'It was my stupidity, running out there like that. Why should you have to die on account of me? It ain't fair.'
The Blue Man held out his hand. 'Fairness,' he said, 'does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young...Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should?
It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.
You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.'
... 'I still don't understand,' Eddie whispered. 'What good came from your death?'
You lived,' the Blue Man answered.
But we barely knew each other. I might as well ~ Mitch Albom

You'll blow up a helicopter, but you won't go out with me? What is wrong with you? ~ Meg Cabot

My funeral," the Blue Man said. "Look at the mourners. Some did not even know me well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should?
"It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.
"You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.
"It is why we are drawn to babies ... " He turned to the mourners. "And to funerals. ~ Mitch Albom

Time changed in an instant. One minute, you're drinking a beer with your friends, talking about the increasingly scary storm outside; the next, you're flying through the air with your body slamming into the nearest wall when lightning strikes. Or rather, when lightning strikes inside the room and hits you and six of your friends dead center.
Eliana Sawyer's life changed the moment she felt the energy of the gods ricochet through her body. The world as she knew it became grey, and the things that went bump in the night became all too real. The paranormal world wasn't that of fiction anymore; now, she lived it. The way she saw the world, the way she saw life and fate changed. She couldn't plan a future the same way she had. She couldn't fall in love the way she'd thought to in the past.
After the lightning strike, six of her friends had found out the hard way what happened when they fell in love with someone paranormal - they became paranormal themselves.
Now, years later, here Eliana was - alone, all too human, and on the outside looking in.
Of course, she wasn't that alone anymore. She never would be again. While her friends had fallen for angels, demons, dragons, and wolves, she'd fallen for a mere human. A human that had taken her heart and shattered it into a thousand pieces, all the while leaving her with nothing but an echo of what he had once been, what they had once been together.
That wasn't the only thing he'd left her with.
He'd also le ~ Carrie Ann Ryan

When primitive man heard thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in the various other changes in nature. ~ Emma Goldman

I review all I know, but can synthesize no meaning. When I doze, the Fact, the certain accomplished calamity, wakes me roughly like a brutal nurse. I see it crouching inflexibly in a corner of the ceiling. It comes down in geometrical diagonal like lightning.
It says, I remain, I AM, I shall never cease to be: your memory will grow a deathly glaze: you will forget, you will fade out, but I cannot be undone.
Thus every quarter hour it puts the taste of death in my mouth, and shows me, but not gently, how I go whoring after oblivion. ~ Elizabeth Smart

Maybe before a big storm rolls in, you'll use it to catch fireflies (see, I did remember something, city mouse. But they're still lightning bugs down here). And if you do, just remember, the storm doesn't last forever. It can scare you; it can shake you to your core. But it never lasts. The rain subsides, the thunder dies, and the winds calm to a soft whisper. And that moment after the storm clouds pass, when all is silent and still, you find peace. Quiet, gentle peace. That's what I wish for you. Even if you couldn't find it with me. ~ S.L. Jennings

Early impressions are like glimpses seen through the window by night when lightning is about. ~ E.F. Benson

Arin had warned her that when she had a high chance of winning, her very lack of tells showed her confidence. I don't think most people notice, he'd said. Your expression doesn't change. You've no tic or gesture. I just get the sense that there's an energy inside you I can't reach, and that if I did, it'd strike like lightning. ~ Marie Rutkoski

It's a real lightning bolt, this Science of Phrenology. I've found out more in the last three days than I knew in my whole life before. Mrs. Guilbert has always been a nasty one, but now I know that she can't help it - she's got a big pit in her Benevolence spot. She fell in the quarry when she was a girl, and my guess is she cracked her Benevolence and was never the same since. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

How do people get to this clandestine Archipelago? Hour by hour planes fly there, ships steer their course there, and trains thunder off to it--but all with nary a mark on them to tell of their destination. And at ticket windows or at travel bureaus for Soviet or foreign tourists the employees would be astounded if you were to ask for a ticket to go there. They know nothing and they've never heard of the Archipelago as a whole or any one of its innumerable islands.

Those who go to the Archipelago to administer it get there via the training schools of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Those who go there to be guards are conscripted via the military conscription centers.

And those who, like you and me, dear reader, go there to die, must get there solely and compulsorily via arrest.

Arrest! Need it be said that it is a breaking point in your life, a bolt of lightning which has scored a direct hit on you? That it is an unassimilable spiritual earthquake not every person can cope with, as a result of which people often slip into insanity?

The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you: "You are under arrest."

If you are arrested, can anything else remain unshattered by this cataclysm?

But the darkened mind is incapable of embracing these dis­placements in our universe, and both the mo ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Well, it's a choice like any other, even though it's stupid to believe we can control the world and to allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security that leaves us totally unprepared for life; because then, when you least expect it, an earthquake throws up a range of mountains, a bolt of lightning kills a tree that was preparing for its summer rebirth, or a hunting accident puts paid to the life of an honest man. ~ Paulo Coelho

I thank you, Wilhelm, for your heartfelt sympathy, for your well-intentioned advice, but beg you to be quiet. Let me stick it out. Blessedly exhausted as I am, I have strength enough to carry through. I honor religion, you know that, I feel it is a staff for many weary souls, refreshment for many a one who is pining away. But--can it be, must it be, the same thing for everyone? If you look at the great world, you see thousands for whom it wasn't, thousands for whom it will not be the same, preached or unpreached, and must it then be the same for me? Does not the son of God Himself say that those would be around Him whom the Father had given Him? But if I am not given? If the Father wants to keep me for Himself, as my heart tells me?--I beg you, do not misinterpret this, do not see mockery in these innocent words. What I am laying before you is my whole soul; otherwise I would rather have kept silent, as I do not like to lose words over things that everyone knows as little about as I do. What else is it but human destiny to suffer out one's measure, drink up one's cup?--And if the chalice was too bitter for the God from heaven on His human lips, why should I boast and pretend that it tastes sweet to me? And why should I be ashamed in the terrible moment when my entire being trembles between being and nothingness, since the past flashes like lightning above the dark abyss of the future and everything around me is swallowed up, and the world perishes with me?--Is that not the vo ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Halia looked at the sky and watched the stars dancing to the song of the wind and rain. A spotlight of lightning always came before the chorus of thunder. She wondered if there were anyone else like her, sitting at their window and listening to the choir of dark, grey clouds. When time paused for as long as the rain fell, when the city of lights was blacked out, and Ameral Alley was quiet, dark, and wild, and all but a city of tall buildings and people working their lives away. But then she'd realised… maybe she just saw magic in times when others saw nothing. ~ Bree Lenehan

Today, suddenly, I reached an absurd but unerring conclusion. In a moment of enlightenment, I realized that I'm nobody, absolutely nobody. When the lightning flashed, I saw that what I had thought to be a city was in fact a deserted plain and, in the same sinister light that revealed me to myself, there seemed to be no sky above it. I was robbed of any possibility of having existed before the world. If I was ever reincarnated, I must have done so without myself, without a self to reincarnate.
I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book. I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love. I'm a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breathe life into me.
I'm always thinking, always feeling, but my thoughts lack all reason, my emotions all feeling. I'm falling through a trapdoor, through infinite, infinitous space, in a directionless, empty fall. My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool.
And I, I myself, am the centre that exists only because the geometry of the abyss demands it; I am ~ Fernando Pessoa

Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking! 'It's all right for him, he's an internationally famous wizard already!' But when I was twelve, I was just as much of a nobody as you are now. In fact, I'd say I was even more of a nobody! I mean, a few people have heard of you, haven't they? All that business with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!" He glanced at the lightning scar on Harry's forehead. "I know, I know - it's not quite as good as winning Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award five times in a row, as I have - but it's a start, Harry, it's a start. ~ J.K. Rowling

rained for three days. Thunder rumbled like cannon fire, lightning cracked and spit in the darkness. Then, when the storm's fury had weakened, the horizon lay ~ Lisa Bingham

I fall in love. More figuratively speaking, I am walking along the road one day when out of nowhere I am struck by lightning. ~ Ali Smith

Lightning, your presence from ground to sky, no one knows what becomes of me, when you take me so quickly. ~ Rumi

As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard. ( ... ) You don't pick out the rain that soaks you to the skin when you come out of a concert. ~ Julio Cortazar

God stirs the air and raises the winds; He makes the lightning flash and thunders out of heaven, to move the inhabitants of the earth to fear Him, and to remind them of judgement to come. He shatters their conceit and subdues their presumption by recalling to their minds that awful Day when heaven and earth will flame as He comes in the clouds with great power and majesty to judge the living and the dead. Therefore we should respond to His heavenly warnings with the fear and love we owe Him,' said Chad. 'And whenever He raises His hands in the trembling air as if to strike, yet spares us still, we should hasten to implore His mercy, examining our inmost hearts and purging the vileness of our sins, watchful over our lives lest we incur His just displeasure. ~ Bede

You threw everything away."I bring a hand up to touch her face,to wipe the rain from her eyelashes."Your entire life-your beliefs ... Why would you do that for me?"
June has never looked more beautiful than she does now,unadorned and honest,vulnerable yet invincible.When lightning streaks over the sky,her dark eyes shine like gold."Because you were right,"she whispers."About all of it. ~ Marie Lu

Younger love, it seemed, was mainly about the idea of potential
the illusion that magical transformations were bound to occur when the person you think you love has a miraculous impromptu awakening after some metaphorical lightning bolt, made out of your wishes and projections, suddenly brings them to their senses. On the other hand, older love is all about what you are hoping is still possible, after you have mourned the death of the idea of yourself as manufacturer of miracles. Older love starts with the unpleasant truth that expecting a person to change for the better spontaneously, simply because you wish it, makes as much sense as counting on the lottery for next month's rent. ~ Merrill Markoe

All I know is that my life is filled with little pockets of silence. When I put a record on the turntable, for example, there`s a little interval-between the time the needle touches down on the record and the time the music actually starts-during which my heart refuses to beat. All I know is that between the rings of the telephone, between the touch of a button and the sound of the radio coming on, between the dimming of the lights at the cinema and the start of the film, between the lightning and the thunder, between the shout and the echo, between the lifting of a baton and the opening bars of a symphony, between the dropping of a stone and the plunk that comes back from the bottom of a well, between the ringing of the doorbell and the barking of the dogs I sometimes catch myself, involuntarily, listening for the sound of my mother`s voice, still waiting for the tape to begin. ~ Robert Hellenga

The schizophrenic... will suddenly burst out with the most incredible details of your life, things that you would never imagine anyone could know and he will tell you in the most abrupt way truths that you believed to be absolutely secret," Félix said in an interview with Caroline Laure and Vittorio Marchetti (Chaosophy). Schizophrenics aren't sunk into themselves. Associatively, they're hyperactive. The world gets cremy like a library. And schizophrenics are the most generous of scholars because they're emotionally right there, they don't just formulate, observe. They're willing to become the situated person's expectations. "The schizophrenic has lightning access to you," Félix continued. "He internalizes all the links between you, makes them part of his subjective system." This is empathy to the highest power: the schizophrenic turns into a seer, then enacts that vision through his or her becoming. But when doen empathy turn into dissolution? ~ Chris Kraus

Heretofore my life has been calm as a summer's day; but who knows when winter storms may rise, and often I have thought that I was born to know wind and rain and lightning as well as peace and sunshine. ~ H. Rider Haggard

When you're soulmates, it hits you like lightning, and you know that's the one person in the world you were meant to be with. You don't think you're soulmates; you just know it's your destiny whether you like it or not. ~ L.J.Smith

MOTHER – By Ted Kooser

Mid April already, and the wild plums
bloom at the roadside, a lacy white
against the exuberant, jubilant green
of new grass and the dusty, fading black
of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet,
only the delicate, star-petaled
blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume.

You have been gone a month today
and have missed three rains and one nightlong
watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar
from six to eight while fat spring clouds
went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured,
a storm that walked on legs of lightning,
dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.

The meadowlarks are back, and the finches
are turning from green to gold. Those same
two geese have come to the pond again this year,
honking in over the trees and splashing down.

They never nest, but stay a week or two
then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts,
burning in circles like birthday candles,
for this is the month of my birth, as you know,
the best month to be born in, thanks to you,
everything ready to burst with living.

There will be no more new flannel nightshirts
sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card
addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand.

You asked me if I would be sad when it happened
and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house
now hold in the dusty dry fists of the ~ Ted Kooser

Man will be on the path to perfection when he feels that he is one with space that knows no bounds and with the ocean that has no shores; when he becomes that undying fire, that ever-gleaming light, that still air or that violent storm, those clouds charged with lightning, thunder and rain, those rivers merry or sad, those trees in bloom or shedding their leaves, those lands that rise up into mountains or slope down into valleys, those fields under seed or lying fallow. ~ Kahlil Gibran

I guess I always thought it would be bigger, when a terrible thing happened. Didn't you think so? Doesn't it seem like houses ought to be caving in, and lightning and thunder, and people tearing their hair in the street? I never - I never thought it would be this small, did you? ~ Dan Chaon

My great-grandmother grew up in a sod house in Nebraska. When she was a tiny girl - in other words, only four human generations ago - there were still enough wild bison on the Plains that she was afraid lightning storms would spook them and they would trample her home. ~ Derrick Jensen

That was uncanny in an eerie way, Hawk calling you right when we started talking about him."
"Lee Nightingale is a supreme badass. Hawk's a bona fide superhero who doesn't wear a ridiculous suit. This is no joke. He probably sensed our discussion thought powers he got when his mom was pushin' him out and got struck by lightning or something. I don't ask. He's an ally. He's also a brother of Tack's. I'm just happy he isn't an enemy."
"I kinda wanna meet him now ~ Kristen Ashley

Why Do I Love You. Sir?

'Why do I love'You. Sir?
Because-
The Wind does not require the Grass
To answer-Wherefore when He pass
She cannot keep Her place.

Because He knows-and
Do not You-
And We know not-
Enough for Us
The wisdom it be so-

The Lightning-never asked an Eye
Wherefore it struck-when He was by
Because He knows it cannot speak-
And reason not contained-
-Of Talk-
There he preferred by Daintier Folk-

The Sunrise-Sir-compelleth Me-
Because He's Sunrise-and I see-
Therefore-Then-
I love Thee- ~ Emily Dickinson

The phosphorous smell which is developed when electricity (to speak the profane language) is passing from the points of a conductor into air, or when lightning happens to fall upon some terrestrial object, or when water is electrolysed, has been engaging my attention the last couple of years, and induced me to make many attempts at clearing up that mysterious phenomenon. Though baffled for a long time, at last, I think, I have succeeded so far as to have got the clue which will lead to the discovery of the true cause of the smell in question. ~ Christian Friedrich Schonbein

They couldn't talk. They were not good talkers, either of them. And once, long ago now, she had bought a notebook for a course. It lay empty and forgotten on the kitchen table until one afternoon, when she had gone out to the shops and he was worried that she would be killed by a bus or by lightning, he opened the notebook and he wrote lines about how he loved her, the way he loved her, about his fucking heart and crap like that, about his body brimful and his scrambled head. All that. She came back from the shops. He left the notebook where it was, and he didn't mention it. And it wasn't until about a week later that he noticed it again, and he flicked it open, and he saw his lines followed by lines from her. She'd written words that she had never said. He sat down. He read them over and over for a long time. Then he wrote a paragraph for her to find. ~ Keith Ridgway

Lindsay strode to the door and picked up his overcoat from the back of the couch, where he'd tossed it when they came in. She wheeled around to hand him his coat; once again, as expected, Fred was standing right behind her. But this time he wasn't looking at her. He was looking up.
At the mistletoe, directly over their heads.
He met her eyes with a look that glimmered with promise. Then he took the overcoat from her hand and tossed it, lightly, onto the back of the sofa once again.
Everything seemed to slow. His intentions were clear, and she had plenty of time to step back. Yet Lindsay did nothing to stop him when he took her chin in his hand, tipped it upward, and brought his lips down to hers, as purposefully as if he'd meant to do it all along.
Lindsay could have sworn she heard bells....
Still dazed, she followed his eyes upward. "And what's the penalty for ignoring mistletoe?"
"Struck by lightning, I think. ~ Sierra Donovan

Apply extreme caution when wearing red in the workplace. Even a simple demure red outfit -- a cashmere twinset -- can turn you into the office lightning rod. If you are crafty, you can use this to your advantage. To gain the upper hand in an upcoming negotiation, try wearing a flaming red silk blouse and painting your nails red. ~ Simon Doonan

She reached toward the chessboard, and he caught her hand in his. "Believe me," he whispered. "When I wish to be, I can be very convincing." He followed the seam of her fingers with this thumb, tracing slowly upward until he reached the soft cleft below her knuckles. He watched as her eyes widened and her lips parted. Then he stroked the spot lightly - a quick, circular caress - and she made a little sound, half gasp and half sigh. That little sound - that tiny, panting breath - was very nearly his undoing. Jeremy knew that sound. It was the tumbler of a lock falling in place, the charged crackle between lightning and thunderbolt, the hiss of a candlewick the instant before it comes alive with flame. An incomplete sound. A sound that promised - and begged for - more. ~ Tessa Dare

Opinions. Ideas. Possibilities. So many! How can I choose? Between bursts of lightning-swift energy, I enjoy peaceful moments when the whole world seems to be a flowing river of verse and all I have to do is learn how to swim. ~ Margarita Engle

I guess falling in love with mermaids is pretty dangerous," he finally said.
"Did you?" Ariel asked in a small voice. "Fall for me? At all?"
Eric gave her a measured look, treating the question seriously as she had his. "I did fall for you, just not in the way I expected it would happen. And maybe not in the way you hoped. It wasn't a lightning bolt. As I got to know you, I realized you were the most... energetic, fun, enthusiastic... alive girl I had ever met." He smiled at the memory- and Ariel felt her breath catch. "You know, for a boy who's all about sailing and running around with his dog and exploring, you were just about as perfect a companion as he could ever want. And beautiful, to boot. I would have been very lucky."
He said this wistfully.
Ariel wasn't sure when she was going to start breathing again. ~ Liz Braswell

Rachel left," he says, sighing. "Says she's never coming back."
Galen nods. "She always says that. It's probably for the better tonight, though." They both wince as Rayna plants the ball of her foot in Emma's back, splaying her across the sea of shards.
"I taught her that," Toraf says.
"It's a good move."
Neither of the combatants seem to care about the rain, lightning, or the whereabouts of their hostess. The storm billows in, drenching the furniture, the TV, the strange art on the wall. No wonder Rachel didn't want to see this. She fussed over this stuff for days.
"So, it kind of threw me when she said she didn't like fish," Toraf says.
"I noticed. Surprised me, too, but everything else is there."
"Bad temper."
"The eyes."
"That white hair is shocking though, isn't it?"
"Yeah, I like it. Shut up." Galen throws a sideways glare at his friend, whose grin makes him ball his fists.
"Hard bones and thick skin, obviously. There's no sign of blood. And she took some pretty hard hits from Rayna," Toraf continues neutrally.
Galen nods, relaxes his fists.
"Plus, you feel the pull-" Toraf is greeted with a forceful shove that sends him skidding on one foot across the slippery marble floor. Laughing, he comes back to stand beside Galen again.
"Jackass," Galen mutters.
"Jackass? What's a jackass?"
"Not sure. Emma called me that today when she was irritated with me."
"You're insulting me in human-talk no ~ Anna Banks

A firefly landed on Honor's sleeve and began walking up her shoulder, its tail still blinking. As she craned her neck to look down at it, Jack chuckled. "Don't be scared. It's just a lightning bug." He placed his finger in its path. Honor tried not to think about the pressure of his touch. When the firefly crawled onto his finger, he lifted it up and let it fly off, signaling its escape route with sparks of light. ~ Tracy Chevalier

Like that lightning that comes out of the blue when there's not even a storm going on, just a crazy crack in the sky. With something like that right in front of you, you can't help but feel there's new possibilities out there. ~ Marisha Pessl

He told stories to help Two Mothers overcome childish fear. "Now,my son, why do you fear the storm? It is only the warriors of thunder and lightning. When you are tempted to be afraid, remember that God tells the lightning where it may go.Pretend that the noise and the light are from two warriors called Thunder and Lightning. They ride beautiful, swift ponies and carry lightning in their hands.As they race the wind,their ponies' hooves strike the clouds.That is the thunder.When they throw their lightning sticks, it flashes brightly in the sky.When God says 'Enough!' the warriors ride down to the earth, bringing the rain to water their ponies."
"Have you ever seen the ponies, Father?"
"Once, when I was hunting in the Black Hills, I thought I caught a glimpse of them. But before Wind and I could catch them, they rose again into the sky, taking the thunder and lightning with them to another place. ~ Stephanie Grace Whitson

When I was little, I used to run out into the rain and let the water run all over me. Then one day I saw lightning split a tree nearly in half. That pretty much took the joy out of prancing around in thunderstorms. ~ Wendy Mass

I won't let him hurt you again." His breath makes me shiver. A strange sensation, when surrounded with such blazing warmth. "I believe you," I tell him, lying. Because I am weak, I turn in his arms. Because I am weak, I press my lips to his, searching for something to make me stop running, to make me forget. We are both weak, it seems. As his hands run over my skin, I feel a different sort of pain. Worse than Maven's machine, deeper than my nerves. It aches like a hollow, like an empty weight. I am a sword, born of lightning, of this fire - and of Maven's. One already betrayed me, and the other might leave at any moment. But I do not fear a broken heart. I do not fear pain. ~ Victoria Aveyard

Love, she felt, ought to come all at once, with great thunderclaps and flashes of lightning; it was like a storm bursting upon life from the sky, uprooting it, overwhelming the will, and sweeping the heart into the abyss. It did not occur to her that rain forms puddles on a flat roof when the drainpipes are clogged, and she would have continued to feel secure if she had not suddenly discovered a crack in the wall. ~ Gustave Flaubert

There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini's cast Perseus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. Whether that mark was born with him, or whether it was the scar left by some desperate wound, no one could certainly say. ~ Herman Melville

In today's climate, it is considered to be rational and
scientific when some material cause is ascribed to the origin of life: lightning, molecules on crystals, aliens who came from non-life. Ascribing a non-material cause to life's origin, such as intelligence, on the other hand, is said to be irrational and unscientific. Intelligence is unintelligence, because only non-intelligence can be intelligent. ~ Paul Athanasius Robinson

Marooned by all but one of his new disciples, the busker complete his act unfazed. The perfumed air seems to be replaced by a faint electrical smell like ozone after a lightning strike. When the man becomes a sterling tableau in the setting sun, Leah stares into his unblinking moonstone eye. ~ Laura Treacy Bentley

Even though Beethoven wrote this song when he was depressed about his hearing and was sleeping around with girls, it sounds like a happy song. Bright with... Youthful joy... Lightning... ~ Tomoko Ninomiya

Marxism must abhor nothing so much as the possibility that it becomes congealed in its current form. It is at its best when butting heads in self-criticism, and in historical thunder and lightning, it retains its strength. ~ Rosa Luxemburg

Bilbo had never seen or imagined anything of the kind. They were high up in a narrow place, with a dreadful fall into a dim valley at one side of them. There they were sheltering under a hanging rock for the night, and he lay beneath a blanket and shook from head to toe. When he peeped out in the lightning-flashes, he saw that across the valley the stone-giants were out, and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them down into the darkness where they smashed among the trees far below, or splintered into little bits with a bang. Then came a wind and a rain, and the wind whipped the rain and the hail about in every direction, so that an overhanging rock was no protection at all. Soon they were getting drenched and their ponies were standing with their heads down and their tails between their legs, and some of them were whinnying with fright. They could hear the giants guffawing and shouting all over the mountainsides. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien