Ominous Quotes

• What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Libertarian Party, Long

  Thomas Sowell (1993). “Is Reality Optional?: And Other Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

  50 Copy quote

  Show source

• For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old fashioned

  George Santayana

  Fashion, Ideas, Investing

  1913 Winds of Doctrine,'Modernism and Christianity'.

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

  James Thurber

  Past, Sound, Comedy

  17 Copy quote

• Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts.

  Haruki Murakami

  Fate, Storm, Adjusting

  "Kafka on the Shore". Book by Haruki Murakami. Chapter One, September 12, 2002.

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mainstream politicians will continue to protect existing systems of power, corporate executives will continue to maximize profit without concern, and the majority of people will continue to avoid these questions. It’s the job of people with critical sensibilities—those who consistently speak out for justice and sustainability, even when it’s difficult—not to back away just because the world has grown more ominous.

  Robert Jensen

  Jobs, Speaks Out, People

  11 Copy quote

• In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.

  Tracy Kidder

  Order, Goes On, Strange

  Tracy Kidder (2009). “Strength in What Remains”, p.111, Random House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel-dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Heart, Angel, Dark

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1854). “The complete works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an introductory essay upon his philosophical and theological opinions”, p.588

  2 Copy quote

  Show source

• Materialism has never been so ominous as now in North America, as management takes over.

  Arthur Erickson

  Artist, America, Management

  5 Copy quote

• The most ominous of fallacies - the belief that things can be kept static by inaction

  Freya Stark

  Mistake, Belief, Fear Of Failure

  Freya Stark (1964). “The Journey's Echo: Selections”

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• Under the ominous shadow which the second World War and its attendant circumstances have cast on the world, peace has become as essential to civilized existence as the air we breathe is to life itself.

  Cordell Hull

  War, Air, Shadow

  3 Copy quote

• Americans have discovered the fragility of life, that ominous fragility that the rest of the world either already experienced or is experiencing now with terrible intensity.

  Jose Saramago

  Fragility, World, Intensity

  4 Copy quote

• I like to think that I'm not as ominous in real life.

  Daniel Dae Kim

  Real, Thinking, Real Life

  3 Copy quote

• To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.

  Gore Vidal

  Evil, Greed, Mind

  "Comment, July 1961" by Gore Vidal, www.esquire.com. May 19, 2008.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never has good weather felt so bad. Never have flowers inspired so much fear. Never has the warm caress of a sunbeam seemed so ominous. The weather is sublime, it's glorious, it's the end of the world.

  Joel Achenbach

  Flower, Weather, Sublime

  1 Copy quote

• Just keep playing, mastering as you do the step Into disorder this one meant. Don't you see It's all we can do? Meanwhile, great fires Arise, as of haystacks aflame. The dial has been set And that's ominous, but all your graciousness in living Conspires with it, now that this is our home: A place to be from, and have people ask about.

  John Ashbery

  Home, Fire, People

  John Ashbery (1985). “A Wave: Poems”, p.2, Ardent Media

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• Something deathless and dangerous in the world sweeps past you...It is something fearful and ominous, something turbulent and to be dreaded, which distends the drama to include the life of nations as well as of men. It is an ageless warning.

  John Mason Brown

  Drama, Past, Men

  0 Copy quote

• The Earth swirls down through the ominous moons of preconsidered generations.

  Mervyn Peake

  Moon, Generations, Earth

  0 Copy quote

• Fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step.

  Haruki Murakami

  Eye, Fate, Play

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Mar 11, 2012

  63 Copy quote

  Show source

• Raoden turned to regard the large Dula. "What does it matter? It's not like we have anything pressing to do. It's actually quite pleasant up here—you should just sit back and enjoy it." An ominous crash came from the clouds above them, and Raoden felt a wet drop splat against his head. "Fantastic," Galladon grumbled. "I'm enjoying myself already.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Clouds, Doe, Matter

  Brandon Sanderson (2007). “Elantris: Tenth Anniversary Author's Definitive Edition”, p.84, Macmillan

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• And see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Clouds, Sky, Inferiority

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2011). “Why We Can't Wait”, p.59, Beacon Press

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• It would be, in fact, very ominous if Iraq were to be able to get weapon-usable material, hydro-plutonium or highly enriched uranium from abroad.

  Mohamed ElBaradei

  Iraq, Would Be, Weapons

  0 Copy quote

• There is no task of greater importance than to give our children the very best preparation for the demands of an ominous future, a preparation which aims at the methodical cultivation of their spiritual and their moral gifts. As long as the exemplary work of the Waldorf School Movement continues to spread its influence as it has done over the past decades, we can all look forward with hope. I am sure that Rudolf Steiner’s work for children must be considered a central contribution to the twentieth century and I feel it deserves the support of all freedom-loving thinking people.

  Bruno Walter

  Spiritual, Children, School

  6 Copy quote

• Philosophy gets on my nerves. If we analyze the ultimate ground of everything, then everything finally falls into nothingness. But I have decided to resume my lectures again and look the Hydra of doubt straight into the eye, and it be quite ominous if one values one's life.

  Ludwig Boltzmann

  Philosophy, Fall, Eye

  44 Copy quote

• To me the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war...I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict.

  Hans Blix

  Military, War, Climate

  0 Copy quote

• Dreamworlds can maintain themselves only as glimpses. Once the writer transports the reader across the threshold, nothing that was promised can be delivered. What was ominous becomes ordinary; what was bizarre, quotidian. Unless you simply keep upping the ante, piling on the bullshit, the only way to revive things is to switch perspectives as quickly as you can.

  M. John Harrison

  Perspective, Bullshit, Glimpse

  0 Copy quote