Calamity Quotes - Page 4

• Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.

  Samuel Johnson

  Advice, Debt, Inconvenience

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson”, p.110

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• It is only from the belief of the goodness and wisdom of a supreme being, that our calamities can be borne in the manner which becomes a man.

  Henry Mackenzie

  Men, Belief, He Man

  Henry Mackenzie (1815). “The Works of Henry Mackenzie, Esq. ...: The man of feeling, and miscellaneous pieces.-v.II. The man of the world.-v.III. Julia de Roubigné”, p.192

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• It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.

  Robert Bly

  Obsession, Humans, Human Beings

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• He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.

  Harry Emerson Fosdick

  Love, Courage, Strong

  "The Christian Herald", Vol. 92, p. 72, 1969.

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• Know, he that foretells his own calamity, and makes events before they come, twice over, doth endure the pains of evil destiny.

  Bill Vaughan

  Pain, Destiny, Evil

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• Law has been unjustly charged with the whole blame of the calamities resulting from the scheme that bears his name.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Names, Law, Bears

  Jean Baptiste Say, Clement Cornell Biddle (1851). “A treatise on political economy”, p.281

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• Poverty, labor, and calamity are not without their luxuries, which the rich, the indolent, and the fortunate in vain seek for.

  William Hazlitt

  Luxury, Poverty, Rich

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1500, Delphi Classics

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• The riches of scholarship, the benignities of literature, defy fortune and outlive calamity. They are beyond the reach of thief or moth or rust. As they cannot be inherited, so they cannot, be alienated.

  James Russell Lowell

  Thieves, Rust, Literature

  James Russell Lowell (1904). “The Complete Writings of James Russell Lowell: Literary and political addresses”

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• Yesterday is not a milestone that has been passed, but a daystone on the beaten track of the years, and irremediably part of us, within us, heavy and dangerous. We are not merely more weary because of yesterday, we are other, no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday.

  Samuel Beckett

  Years, Yesterday, Track

  Samuel Beckett, Georges Duthuit (1965). “Proust”

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• They say that if you get bored enough with calamity you can learn to laugh.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Adversity, Laughing, Bored

  Lawrence Durrell (2015). “The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian and Quinx”, p.199, Faber & Faber

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• The calamity of war, wherever, whenever and upon whomever it descends, is a tragedy for the whole of humanity.

  Raisa Gorbacheva

  War, Humanity, Tragedy

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• You may regret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer, but if you cannot, mind your own business.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Regret, Mind Your Own Business, May

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred R. Ferguson (1965). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume V: 1835-1838”, p.335, Harvard University Press

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• What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What's the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?

  Gautama Buddha

  Inspiring, Wise, Buddhist

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• There is only one calamity: ignorance. And there is only one solution: enlightenment.

  Jaggi Vasudev

  Life, Spiritual, Truth

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• Our chief usefulness to humanity rests on our combining power with high purpose. Power undirected by high purpose spells calamity, and high purpose by itself is utterly useless if the power to put it into effect is lacking.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Power, Humanity, Purpose

  Theodore Roosevelt (2015). “Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century”, p.78, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Mortifications are often more painful than real calamities.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Real, Painful, Shame

  Oliver Goldsmith (1855). “The Vicar of Wakefield: A Tale”, p.65

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• Do not say, What what fear has a rich man of calamity.

  Chanakya

  Men, Rich, Rich Man

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• My Calamity is my providence, outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy.

  Bahá'u'lláh

  Fire, Light, Vengeance

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• The wickedness of the few makes the calamity of the many.

  Publilius Syrus

  Wickedness

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• There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war, or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it.

  Will Rogers

  War, Pestilence, Helping

  Will Rogers, Bryan B. Sterling (1995). “Will Rogers Speaks: Over 1,000 Timeless Quotations for Public Speakers (writers, Politicians, Comedians, Browsers ...)”, M Evans & Company

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• You have a strange relationship with calamity when you're a writer: you write about it; as an artist, you objectify and fetishize it. You render life into material, and that's a creepy thing to do.

  Tony Kushner

  Writing, Artist, Creepy

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• Who shrinks from knowledge of his calamities but aggravates his fear; troubles half seen, shall torture all the more.

  Seneca the Younger

  Anxiety, Half, Trouble

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• Calamities that are not the result of purely natural phenomena usually have their origins, distant and obscure though they may be, in common human failings.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  May, Common, Failing

  Aung San Suu Kyi, University of Oxford. Refugee Studies Programme (1993). “Towards a true refuge”

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• Make haste in giving voluntary charity, for calamities cannot pass by it.

  Al-Tabarani

  Islamic, Giving, Haste

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• I have a lot of sympathy with the ideas and frustration of the Occupy movement. I absolutely agree with the sense that Wall Street has brought an economic calamity to the middle class and that no one has been held accountable.

  Susan Bysiewicz

  Wall, Frustration, Class

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