Disaster Quotes - Page 13

• How dreadful it is, to emerge from the oblivion of slumber, and to receive as a good morrow the mute wailing of one's own hapless heart - to return from the land of deceptive dreams to the heavy knowledge of unchanged disaster!

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Dream, Grief, Heart

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1833). “The Last Man”, p.180

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• All disasters stem from us. Why is there a war? Perhaps because now and then I might be inclined to snap at my neighbour. Because I and my neighbour and everyone else do not have enough love. Yet we could fight war and all its excrescences by releasing each day, the love which is shackled inside us, and giving it a chance to live.

  Etty Hillesum

  War, Fighting, Giving

  Etty Hillesum (1985). “An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”

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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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• When the sense of justice seeks to express itself quite outside the regular channels of established government, it has set forth on a dangerous journey inevitably ending in disaster.

  Jane Addams

  Journey, Government, Justice

  Jane Addams (2016). “Twenty Years at Hull House”, p.253, Open Road Media

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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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• 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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• Disaster is private, in its way, as love is.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Love Is, Tragedy, Way

  Nadine Gordimer (2012). “Get a Life”, p.42, A&C Black

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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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• Thinking about profound social change, conservatives always expect disaster, while revolutionaries confidently anticipate utopia. Both are wrong.

  Carolyn Heilbrun

  Thinking, Profound, Revolutionary

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• In the turbulence of this anxious and active world many people are leading uneventful, lonely lives. To them dreariness, not disaster, is the enemy. They seldom realize that on their steadfastness, on their ability to withstand the fatigue of dull repetitive work, and on their courage in meeting constant small adversities depend in great measure the happiness and prosperity of the community as a whole. ... The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

  Queen Elizabeth II

  Running, Lonely, Adversity

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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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• Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters of life begin when you get what you want.

  Irving Kristol

  Real, Frustrated, Want

  Irving Kristol (1983). “Reflections of a neoconservative: looking back, looking ahead”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• All amateur travellers have experienced horror journeys, long or short, sooner or later, one way or another. As a student of disaster, I note that we react alike to our tribulations: frayed and bitter at the time, proud afterwards. Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.

  Martha Gellhorn

  Travel, Self Esteem, Journey

  Martha Gellhorn (2001). “Travels with Myself and Another: A Memoir”, p.13, Penguin

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• The woman's bill of rights is, unhappily, long overdue. It should have run along with the rights of man in the eighteenth century. Its drag as to time of official proclamation is a drag as to social vision. And even if equal rights were now written into the law of our land, it would be so inadequate today as a means to food, clothing and shelter for woman at large that what they would still be enjoying would be equality in disaster rather than in realistic privilege.

  Mary Ritter Beard

  Running, Mean, Men

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• Is the sea drying up? It is going up into mist and coming down on us in this water spout, the rain. It raineth every day, and the weather represents our tearful despair on a large scale.

  Mary Boykin Chesnut

  Rain, Loss, Sea

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• America has a history of political isolation and economic self-sufficiency; its citizens have tended to regard the rest of the world as a disaster area from which lucky or pushy people emigrate to the Promised Land.

  Alison Lurie

  Self, Land, America

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• Nature can seem cruel, but she balances her books.

  Alison Lurie

  Nature, Book, Loss

  Alison Lurie (2012). “The Last Resort: A Novel”, p.275, Open Road Media

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• Live disasters are wonderful attractions when you're safe on the other side of them.

  Sara Paretsky

  Safe, Sides, Wonderful

  Sara Paretsky (2011). “Deadlock”, p.190, Dell

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• The worst has happened ... it's rather liberating.

  Ruth Rendell

  Loss, Worst, Happened

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• One person's fashion is another person's disaster.

  Hillary Clinton

  Fashion, Persons

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• It is just as important to move on in the wake of stunning success as in the wake of disaster.

  Lynda Obst

  Success, Moving, Important

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