Lightning Quotes

• The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Humorous

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.13, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• I am a being of Heaven and Earth, of thunder and lightning, of rain and wind, of the galaxies.

  Eden Ahbez

  Rain, Wind, Heaven

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• Life is a flash of lightning in the dark of night. It is a brief time of tremendous potential.

  B. Alan Wallace

  Short Life, Life Is Too Short, Life Is Short

  B. Alan Wallace (2001). “Buddhism with an Attitude: The Tibetan Seven-point Mind-training”, Snow Lion Publications, Incorporated

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• Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Life, Work

  Letter to HenryW. Ruoff, 28 Aug. 1908

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• Electricity is really just organized lightning.

  George Carlin

  Funny, Sarcastic, Sarcasm

  George Carlin (2002). “Napalm & Silly Putty”, Hyperion

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• And when I breathed, my breath was lightning.

  Black Elk

  Breaths

  Black Elk (2000). “Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux”, Bison Books

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• Genius unrefined resembles a flash of lightning, but wisdom is like the sun.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Sun, Genius, Flash

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• The more brilliant the lightning, the quicker it disappears.

  Avicenna

  Brilliant, Disappear

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• The reason lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn't there the second time.

  William Tyler

  Time, Reason, Strikes

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• Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.

  Samuel Butler

  Morning, Dew, Life Is

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• Lightning streaks like gunfire through the clouds, volleys of thunder shake the air.

  Edward Abbey

  Clouds, Air, Weather

  Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.107, University of Arizona Press

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• A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.

  James Dickey

  Rain, Poetry, Poetic

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Inspiration, Humor

  Mark Twain (2008). “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Penguin Enriched eBook Classic”, p.1053, Penguin

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• Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

  Chuck Close

  Work, Inspiration, Ideas

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• A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.

  Randall Jarrell

  Men, Poetry, Six

  1953 Poetry and the Age,'The Obscurity of the Poet'.

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• My dear sister, I hope, when God Almighty in his righteous providence shall take me out of time into eternity, that it will be by a flash of lightning.

  James Otis

  Sister, Dear God, Eternity

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• The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; High towers fall with a heavier crash; And the lightning strikes the highest mountain.

  Horace

  Fall, Fate, Light

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 261-65, Carmina, II. 10. 9, 1922.

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• The affections are like lightning: you cannot tell where they will strike till they have fallen.

  Lee Iacocca

  Affection, Economy, Strikes

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• Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Poetry Is

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1840). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.40

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• We sail across dominions barely seen, washed by the swells of time. We plow through fields of magnetism. Past and future come together on thunderheads and our dead hearts live with lightning in the wounds of the Gods.

  Norman Mailer

  Heart, Past, Together

  Norman Mailer (2013). “Ancient Evenings: A Novel”, p.793, Random House

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• I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.

  Ken Kesey

  Motivational, Literature, Kool Aid

  "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe, (Ch. I : Black Shiny FBI Shoes), 1968.

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• The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Art, Creativity

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• Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

  Joseph Addison

  Clouds, Break Through, Serenity

  'The Spectator' no. 381, 17 May 1712

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• The elements and majestic forces in nature, Lightning, Wind, Water, Fire, and Frost, were regarded with awe as spiritual powers, but always secondary and intermediate in character.

  Charles Alexander Eastman

  Spiritual, Fear, Character

  Charles Alexander Eastman (2003). “The Soul of the Indian”, p.4, Courier Corporation

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• Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.

  Charles Dickens

  Light, Alcohol, Cleaning

  'Nicholas Nickleby' (1839) ch. 49 (The Gentleman in the Small-clothes)

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