Catastrophe Quotes - Page 16

• It seemed to him that in Annawadi, fortunes derived not just from what people did, or how well they did it, but from the accidents and catastrophes they dodged. A decent life was the train that hadn’t hit you, the slumlord you hadn’t offended, the malaria you hadn’t caught.

  Katherine Boo

  People, Malaria, Fortune

  Katherine Boo (2012). “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum”, p.13, Portobello Books

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• Being broke is not a disgrace, it is only a catastrophe.

  Rex Stout

  Broke, Disgrace, Being Broke

  Rex Stout (2010). “The League of Frightened Men”, p.87, Bantam

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• Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.

  Rebecca West

  Pain, Night, Mad

  Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.818, Open Road Media

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• I looked at it [revolver] as if it reminded me of a crime I had committed with an irrepressible smile such as rises sometimes to people’s lips in the face of great catastrophes which are beyond their grasp, the smile that comes at times on certain women’s faces while they are saying they regret the harm they have done. It is the smile of nature quietly and proudly asserting its natural right to kill.

  Anais Nin

  Regret, People, Done

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• You list the dead. You tell the stories of the past. You write about the catastrophes and the massacres. What about the living, Finnikin? Who honors them?

  Melina Marchetta

  Writing, Past, Honor

  Melina Marchetta (2015). “The Complete Lumatere Chronicles”, p.106, Penguin UK

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• Partition was a total catastrophe for Delhi,’ she said. ‘Those who were left behind are in misery. Those who were uprooted are in misery. The Peace of Delhi is gone. Now it is all gone.

  William Dalrymple

  Gone, Misery, Delhi

  William Dalrymple (2003). “City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi”, p.60, Penguin

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• Probably most catastrophes end this way without an ending, the dead not even knowing how they died...,those who loved them forever questioning "this unnecessary death," and the rest of us tiring of this inconsolable catastrophe and turning to the next one.

  Norman Maclean

  Knowing, Forever, Way

  Norman Maclean (2017). “Young Men and Fire: Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition”, p.43, University of Chicago Press

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• It began as most thing begin. Not on a dark and stormy night. Not foreshadowed by ominous here comes the villain music, dire warning at the bottom of a teacup, or dread portents in the sky. It began small and innocuously, as most catastrophes do. A butterfly flaps its wings somewhere and the wind changes, and a warm front hits a cold front off the coast of western Africa and before you know it you’ve got an hurricane closing in. By the time anyone figured out the storm was coming, it was too late to do anything but batten down the hatches and exercise damage control.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Butterfly, Exercise, Dark

  FaceBook post by Karen Marie Moning from Jun 06, 2013

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• What tale do you like best to hear?' 'Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme - courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe - marriage.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Running, Choices, Promise

  Charlotte Bronte (2013). “Jane Eyre”, p.252, Simon and Schuster

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• Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse.

  Cornel West

  Ghetto, Racism, Police

  "Dr. King Weeps From His Grave". www.nytimes.com. August 25, 2011.

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• I really like Barack Obama. I think that he's working very hard. He's trying to rebuild our reputation throughout the world. The previous administration was a total disaster, a total catastrophe. He was handed a pretty bad deck of cards. And I'm not saying I agree with everything he's doing. He's a champion. I mean, he won against all odds. When he first announced, people were giving him virtually no chance. And he's just done something that's amazing.

  Donald Trump

  Mean, Thinking, Odds

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• If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.

  Daniel Webster

  Bible, Country, Men

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• Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage can still overflow, the bills arrive in the mail, telemarketers, interrupt dinner.

  Jodi Picoult

  Garbage Cans, Details, Goes On

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• You don't cause problems. You cause catastrophes.

  Ilona Andrews

  Causes, Problem

  Ilona Andrews (2008). “Magic Burns”, p.177, Penguin

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• History: the category of human phenomena which tends to catastrophe.

  Jules Romains

  History, Categories, Humans

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• Your welcome means more to me, Ivy Alisha Tamwood, than a thousand souls. Watching Rachel work is a wonder of one catastrophe after another.

  Kim Harrison

  Mean, Ivy, Soul

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• Sisters annoy, interfere, criticize. Indulge in monumental sulks, in huffs, in snide remarks. Borrow. Break. Monopolize the bathroom. Are always underfoot. But if catastrophe should strike, sisters are there. Defending you against all comers.

  Pam Brown

  Sister, Sibling, Indulge In

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• I'm planning a catastrophe.

  Leonard Cohen

  Planning

  Leonard Cohen (2011). “The Favourite Game”, p.51, Emblem Editions

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• Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics. To us a single act of injustice--cheating in business, exploitation of the poor--is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence: to us, an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Cheating, Israel, People

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1969). “The Prophets”

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• Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else. This is where California comes in. Mud slides, brush fires, coastal erosion, mass killings, et cetera. We can relax and enjoy these disasters because in our hearts we feel that California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.

  Don DeLillo

  Heart, Fire, Erosion

  Don DeLillo (2011). “White Noise”, p.77, Pan Macmillan

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• Ever more people are alert to the challenge of global poverty and global warming. We know that solutions are at hand. We will not sleepwalk into catastrophe. We have the capacity to forsee and forestall, and I believe we will find the will to act

  Jonathan Dimbleby

  Future, Believe, Hands

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• Whatever the short term clashes between protecting the environment and eradicating poverty, medium term and long term it is clear. Unless we grow sustainably, at some point we face catastrophe

  Tony Blair

  Future, Long, Vision

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• [On Marilyn Monroe:] I think my response to her death was the common one: it came to me with the impact of a personal deprivation but I also felt it as I might a catastrophe in history or in nature; there was less in life, there was less of life, because she had ceased to exist. In her loss life itself had been injured.

  Diana Trilling

  Death, Loss, Thinking

  Diana Trilling (1964). “Claremont essays”

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• But my belief is growing that our political and social evils are remediable, if only all of us who want a change for the better just get up and work for it, all the time, with as much knowledge and intelligence as we can muster for it. Half the wrongs of human life exist because of the inertia of people who simply will not use their energies in fighting for what they believe in. And finally the wrongs roll up into world catastrophes and millions of deaths and a terrible set-back for all mankind.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Believe, Fighting, People

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.291, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.

  H. G. Wells

  Race, Civilization, Weapons

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