Calamity Quotes - Page 11

• Every calamity is to be overcome by endurance.

  Virgil

  Determination, Philosophical, Endurance

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• The stabbing horror of life is not contained in calamities and disasters, because these things wake one up and one gets very familiar and intimate with them and finally they become tame again. No, it is more like being in a hotel room in Hoboken let us say, and just enough money in one's pocket for another meal.

  Henry Miller

  Life, Pockets, Meals

  Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

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

  Richard Curtis

  Depressing, Real, Anxiety

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• Bear sorrows and calamities patiently, otherwise you will never be happy.

  Ali ibn Abi Talib

  Sorrow, Bears

  "'Nahj al-Balagha' ('The Peak of Eloquence')". Book by Ali, translated by Askari Jafri,

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• What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them. Doubtless many times these new possibilities were declared by a man who, quite unconscious of courage, bore the "sense of being an exile, a condemned criminal, a fugitive from mankind." Did every one so feel who, in order to travel on his own proper path had been obliged to leave the traditional highway?

  Jane Addams

  Men, Race, Order

  Jane Addams (2010). “Peace and Bread in Time of War”, p.85, University of Illinois Press

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

  James G. Frazer

  Hands, English History, America

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• The Athenians regularly maintained a number of degraded and useless beings at the public expense; and when any calamity, such as plague, drought, or famine, befell the city, they sacrificed two of these outcast scapegoats.

  James G. Frazer

  Cities, Two, Numbers

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• Yield not to calamity, but face her boldly.

  Virgil

  Courage, Yield, Faces

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• It may be the will of Heaven that America shall suffer calamities still more wasting, and distresses yet more dreadful. If this is to be the case, it will have the good effect at least. It will inspire us with many virtues, which we have not, and correct many errors, follies and vices. But I must submit all my hopes and fears to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe.

  John Adams

  Believe, America, Errors

  Letter to Abigail Adams, teachingamericanhistory.org. July 03, 1776.

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• War is to be ranked among the most dreadful calamities which fall on a guilty world; and, what deserves consideration, it tends to multiply and perpetuate itself without end. It feeds and grows on the blood which it sheds. The passions, from which it springs, gain strength and fury from indulgence.

  William Ellery Channing

  Spring, War, Fall

  William Ellery CHANNING (1816). “A Sermon on War: delivered before the Convention of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts, May 30, 1816, etc”, p.12

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• Whenever an important event, a revolution, or a calamity turns to the profit of the church, such is always signalised as the Finger of God.

  Voltaire

  Important Events, Atheism, Church

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

  Pericles

  Real, Cities, Mind

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• Save your wealth against future calamity. Do not say, "what fear has a rich man of calamity?" Wealth sometimes vanishes away and large accumulations perish.

  Chanakya

  Men, Sometimes, Wealth

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• Single misfortunes never come alone, and the greatest of all national calamities is generally followed by one greater.

  Boyle Roche

  Greater, Me Alone, Misfortunes

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• By an increase in anger, warfare arises. By an increase of greed, famine arises. By an increase of stupidity, pestilence arises. Because these three calamities occur, the people's earthly desires grow all the more intense, and their false views thrive and multiply.

  Nichiren

  Views, People, Stupidity

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• Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sympathy, Sadness, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.4, Courier Corporation

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• Woman is a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted ill.

  Saint John Chrysostom

  Evil, Scary, Temptation

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

  Cornel West

  Humility, Animal, Talking

  Source: blogs.ssrc.org

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• On all the walls, wherever walls exist, I will inscribe this eternal indictment of Christianity--I have letters to make even blindmen see.... I call Christianity the single great curse, the single great innermost depravity, the single great instinct of revenge, for which no means is poisonous, secretive, subterranean, small enough--I call it mankind's single immortal blemish.... And we reckon time from the dies nefastus with which this calamity arose--following Christianity's first day!--Why not following its last day, instead?--Following today?--Transvaluation of all values!

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Time, Wall, Revenge

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

  Rebecca West

  Real, Fake, Criticism

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.161, Open Road Media

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• Times of calamity and distress have always been producers of the greatest men. The hardest steel is produced from the hottest fire; the brightest star shreds the darkest night.

  Andy Andrews

  Motivational, Stars, Men

  Andy Andrews (2002). “The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success”, Thomas Nelson Incorporated

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• Socrates pointed out that we carry on as though death were the greatest of all calamities-yet, for all we know, it might be the greatest of all blessings. What are we going to call good? What are we going to call bad? Good or bad is never our choice, or even the issue.

  Steve Hagen

  Blessing, Issues, Choices

  Steve Hagen (2011). “Buddhism Plain and Simple”, p.47, Tuttle Publishing

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• If the Richter scale could measure human calamities, the loss of a child would register a ten.

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Death, Children, Loss

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin (2013). “How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick”, p.120, PublicAffairs

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• Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them; as in ascending the heights of ambition, which look bright from below, every step we rise shows us some new and gloomy prospect of hidden disappointment; so in our descent from the summits of pleasure, though the vale of misery below may appear, at first, dark and gloomy, yet the busy mind, still attentive to its own amusement, finds, as we descend, something to flatter and to please. Still as we approach, the darkest objects appear to brighten, and the mortal eye becomes adapted to its gloomy situation.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Disappointment, Ambition, Eye

  Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: Poetical works. Dramas. The vicar of Wakefield”, p.376

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

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Friendship, Disappointment, Tired

  Oliver Goldsmith (1856). “The Miscellaneous Works: Letters from a citizen of the world, to his friend in the East. A familiar introduction to the study of natural history”, p.116

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