Disaster Quotes - Page 25

• On the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, New Year, Years

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Joy Luck Club”, p.240, Penguin

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• It is customary for columnists to complain about the excesses of Premiership footballers, whenever - as happens regularly - there is an incident involving some combination of sex, drugs, drink, violence and the constabulary. But modern footballers have a lot of both money and disposable time, a combination that has proved a recipe for personal disaster throughout history. And these incidents take place generally round night clubs rather than football clubs. The average Premiership player who turned up for work drunk would have a career-expectancy measurable in minutes.

  Matthew Engel

  Soccer, Football, Sex

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• One of the greatest disasters that happened to modern civilization was for democracy to inscribe "liberty" on its banners instead of "justice." Because "liberty" was considered the ideal it was not long until some men interpreted it as meaning "freedom from justice"; then when religion and decent government attempted to bring them back to justice, organized into "freedom groups" they protested that their constitutional and natural rights were being violated.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wisdom, Men, Rights

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• I can think of no greater disaster to this country than to have the voters of it divide upon religious lines.

  Al Smith

  Country, Religious, Thinking

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• You have no control [over natural disaster]. That's what's scary about it. You're helpless. That feeling of helplessness is really scary.

  R. L. Stine

  Scary, Feelings, Natural

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I write songs from the point of view I had at a time;I'm not tryingto write songs from a young person's point of view.That only ends in disaster.

  Nick Cave

  Song, Writing, Views

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• Corruption at every level, city, state, federal, all has helped in making New Orleans a disaster area, the most disappearing land mass on the planet Earth.

  Dr. John

  Land, Cities, New Orleans

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• So disasters come not singly; But as if they watched and waited, Scanning one another's motions, When the first descends, the others Follow, follow, gathering flock-wiseRound their victim, sick and wounded, First a shadow, then a sorrow, Till the air is dark with anguish.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Dark, Air, Sick

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Song Of Hiawatha Xix: The Ghosts”

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• Adventure books are my personal favorites. 'The Endurance,' a story about Ernest Shackleton's legendary Antarctica expedition, or 'Into Thin Air,' Jon Krakauer's personal account of the 1996 disaster on Mt Everest, are two notables.

  Dean Karnazes

  Book, Adventure, Air

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• Society proceeds like the ocean. After a disaster, it resume its wonted level and rhythms; its devouring interests efface all traces of damage.

  Honore de Balzac

  Ocean, Society, Levels

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• [Religion is a] primitive insurance against disaster. ... Originally religion was merely a function of the self-preservative instinct. Offer sacrifices to the gods and save your crops. And even Christianity, after all, insures heavily against the flaws in this life by belief in another.

  Rose Macaulay

  Sacrifice, Self, Belief

  Rose Macaulay (2011). “Told by an Idiot”, p.39, A&C Black

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• I do not know if Alice in Wonderland was an original story-I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it-but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen story-books have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'-is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.

  Lewis Carroll

  Believe, Flower, Book

  Lewis Carroll (2015). “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Other Tales”, p.208, Race Point Pub

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• There are some people who don't conform to the signals. An ordinary well-regulated locomotive slows down or pulls up when it sees the red light hoisted against it. Perhaps I was born color blind. When I see the red signal -- I can't help forging ahead. And in the end, you know, that spells disaster.

  Agatha Christie

  Light, Color, People

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• One of the greatest disasters of our time is our universal acceptance of the word "tolerance" as a great virtue.

  Zig Ziglar

  Acceptance, Tolerance, Virtue

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• where families suffer from disasters that are preventable, this is a measure of a whole nation's neglect. A society imperils its own future when, out of negligence or contempt, it overlooks the need of children to be reared in a family ... or when, in the midst of plenty, some families cannot give their children adequate food and shelter, safe activity and rest, and an opportunity to grow into full adulthood as people who can care for and cherish other human beings like themselves.

  Margaret Mead

  Family, Children, Opportunity

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• Why must you always try to be omnipotent, and shove things about? Tragic things happen sometimes that we just have to submit to.

  Rebecca West

  Acceptance, Loss, Trying

  Rebecca West (1977). “Rebecca West, a celebration”, Viking Adult

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• I used to think that communing with nature was a healing, positive thing. Now, I think I'd like to commune with other things - like room service and temperature control.

  Roseanne Barr

  Nature, Healing, Loss

  Roseanne, Roseanne Barr (1989). “Roseanne: my life as a woman”, Harpercollins

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• Any disaster is a learning process.

  Julia Child

  Failure, Process, Learning Process

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• Disasters are funny to me. As a comedian you learn from failure, so I'm always trying to put myself in a situation that does not seem ideal for my comedy and see how it works.

  Anthony Jeselnik

  Always Trying, Comedian, Doe

  "Comedian Anthony Jeselnik Is Eager To Offend You". Interview with Jordan Zakarin, www.buzzfeed.com. July 9, 2013.

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• If 'heartache' sounds exaggerated then surely you have never gone to your garden one rare morning in June to find that the frost, without any perceptible motive, any hope of personal gain, has quietly killed your strawberry blossoms, tomatoes, lima and green beans, corn, squash, cucumbers. A brilliant sun is now smiling at this disaster with an insenstive cheerfulness as out of place as a funny story would be if someone you loved had just died.

  Ruth Stout

  Morning, Garden, June

  Ruth Stout (1987). “How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back: A New Method of Mulch Gardening”, Fireside

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• Even disasters -- there are always disasters when you travel -- can be turned into adventures.

  Marilyn French

  Adventure

  Marilyn French (2016). “The Women of Marilyn French: Her Mother's Daughter, Our Father, and The Bleeding Heart”, p.753, Open Road Media

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• if we continue with what is surely our greatest Western temptation, and think that in some way history owes us a solution, that we can, by pursuing our own most parochial self-interest, achieve in some miraculous way a consummation of world order, then we are heading not simply towards great disappointments, but towards disaster and tragedy as well.

  Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth

  Disappointment, Thinking, Self

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• There are six myths about old age: 1. That it's a disease, a disaster. 2. That we are mindless. 3. That we are sexless. 4. That we are useless. 5. That we are powerless. 6. That we are all alike.

  Maggie Kuhn

  Age, Useless, Disease

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• Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man's periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for the monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Loss, Men, Order

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1954). “Memoirs of Hadrian”

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• The only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves at home on this earth.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Home, Earth, Feels

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