Disaster Quotes - Page 36

• I'm sorry about your Porsche." "I can replace the Porsche. I can't replace you. You need to be more careful." I was just sitting in your car!" Babe, you're a magnet for disaster.

  Janet Evanovich

  Sorry, Car, Sitting

  Janet Evanovich (2010). “Eleven on Top”, p.72, Macmillan

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• The critical question for our generation—and for every generation— is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ were not there?

  John Piper

  Our Generation, Leisure Activities, Heaven

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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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• And yet every so often, the heart of America, shuddering with indignation, sends a nervous spasm through the gentle back of the Andes, and tumultuous shock waves assault the surface of the land. Three times the cuppola of proud Santo Domingo has collapsed from on high to the rhythm of broken bones and its worn walls have opened and fallen too. But the foundations they rest on are unmoved, the great blocks of the Temple of the Sun exhibit their gray stone indifferently; however colossal the disaster befalling its oppressor, not one of its huge rocks shifts from its place.

  Che Guevara

  Wall, Block, Heart

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• One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Night, Cities, Pyramids

  J. M. Coetzee (1980). “Waiting for the Barbarians”, Penguin Group USA

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• I began dividing life in absolutes... Things and people were either perfectly bad, or perfectly good, and when life didn't obey this black-and-white rule, when things or people were complex or contradictory, I pretended otherwise. I turned every defeat into a disaster, every success into an epic triumph, and separated all people into heroes or villains. Unable to bear ambiguity, I built a barricade of delusions against it.

  J. R. Moehringer

  Hero, Black And White, Epic

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• Present global culture is a kind of arrogant newcomer. It arrives on the planetary stage following four and a half billion years of other acts, and after looking about for a few thousand years declares itself in possession of eternal truths. But in a world that is changing as fast as ours, this is a prescription for disaster. No nation, no religion, no economic system, no body of knowledge, is likely to have all the answers for our survival. There must be many social systems that would work far better than any now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.

  Carl Sagan

  Years, Survival, Answers

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• It was growing late, and though one might stand on the brink of a deep chasm of disaster, one was still obliged to dress for dinner.

  Georgette Heyer

  Ironic, Dresses, Growing

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• How many times had those awful words - "I know what I'm doing" - been uttered throughout history as prelude to disaster?

  Christopher Buckley

  Awful, Prelude, Knows

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• The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster When you take your pill it's like a mine disaster. I think of all the people lost inside you.

  Richard Brautigan

  Thinking, People, Pills

  Richard Brautigan (1989). “Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, and In Watermelon Sugar”, p.242, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Keep rockin', and keep knockin' Whether you Louis Vuitton it up or Reebokin' You see the hate, that they're servin' on a platter So what we gon' have, dessert or disaster?

  Kanye West

  Hate, Dessert, Louis Vuitton

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• All is but illusion and disaster.

  Voltaire

  Illusion

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• To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Authority, Permit, Irresponsible

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• All Earthquakes and Disasters are warnings; there’s too much corruption in the world

  Aristotle

  Earthquakes, Warning, World

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• Falling in love is great but being in love is a disaster

  Mario Puzo

  Falling In Love, Being In Love, Love Is

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• I think part of the reason I'm attracted to Foster is because he's such a mess. I mean, the people I have loved in my life have never been easy to love. I'm not used to normal. I'm used to disaster. I don't know, as messed up as he is, he's also sort of exciting, sort of a challenge. I'm accustomed to working for love.

  Augusten Burroughs

  Mean, Thinking, People

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• There is no such thing as a good call at 7 AM. It's been my experience that all calls between the hours of 11 PM and 9 AM are disaster calls.

  Janet Evanovich

  Pms, Hours

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• There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with realities outside and above us.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Reality

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.18, Macmillan

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• Human love, human trust, are always perilous, because they break down. The greater the love, the greater the trust, and the greater the peril, the greater the disaster. Because to place absolute trust on another human being is in itself a disaster, both ways, since each human being is a ship that must sail its own course, even if it go in company with another ship.... And yet, love is the greatest thing between human beings.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Love Is, Way, Ships

  D. H. Lawrence (2016). “Kangaroo”, p.201, Jester House Publishing

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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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• Strictly enforce the scale of "fixed responsibility." The first and foremost level of responsibility is with the individual himself; the second level is the family; then the church; next the community, finally the county, and, in a disaster or emergency, the state. Under no circumstances is the federal government to become involved in public welfare. The Founders felt it would corrupt the government and also the poor. No Constitutional authority exists for the federal government to participate in charity or welfare.

  W. Cleon Skousen

  Responsibility, Government, Community

  W. Cleon Skousen “The Making of America”, Verity Publishing

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• It is very easy to shun someone who is deliberately cruel, and everyone loathes a man who is brutal and vicious. Such people have a hard time winning followers. But an individual who is gracious, who is attractive, who smiles and flatters and praises - that is a person who can lead whole nations to disaster. Who would not want to follow such a man or woman? Everyone is drawn to beauty and wit.

  Sharon Shinn

  Hard Times, Winning, Men

  Sharon Shinn (2009). “Gateway”, p.71, Penguin

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• This boy has negative charisma. He walks into a room and the oxygen starts to evaporate. I guess that's why girls sleep with him. They find his awfulness transfixing. He's like a lousy 1970's disaster movie that they can't bring themselves to turn off, even though it is making their life worse every minute they leave it on.

  Emma Forrest

  Girl, Sleep, Boys

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• Does it take the harsh light of disaster to show a person’s true nature?

  Jean-Dominique Bauby

  Light, Doe, Harsh

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• If by 'miracle kids' you mean innocent test-tube babies whose DNA was forcibly unraveled and merged with two percent avian genes, yeah, I guess that would be us," I said. "Because it's a miracle that we're not complete nut jobs and mutant disasters.

  James Patterson

  Baby, Jobs, Mean

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