“New storms will arise; one can believe in calamities to come which will surpass the afflictions we have been overwhelmed by in the past; already, men are thinking of bandaging their old wounds to return to the battlefield.”

—  François-René de Chateaubriand , book Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe

Book XLII: Ch. 18: A summary of the changes which have occurred around the globe in my lifetime
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848 – 1850)
Context: New storms will arise; one can believe in calamities to come which will surpass the afflictions we have been overwhelmed by in the past; already, men are thinking of bandaging their old wounds to return to the battlefield. However, I do not expect an imminent outbreak of war: nations and kings are equally weary; unforeseen catastrophe will not yet fall on France: what follows me will only be the effect of general transformation. No doubt there will be painful moments: the face of the world cannot change without suffering. But, once again, there will be no separate revolutions; simply the great revolution approaching its end. The scenes of tomorrow no longer concern me; they call for other artists: your turn, gentlemen!
As I write these last words, my window, which looks west over the gardens of the Foreign Mission, is open: it is six in the morning; I can see the pale and swollen moon; it is sinking over the spire of the Invalides, scarcely touched by the first golden glow from the East; one might say that the old world was ending, and the new beginning. I behold the light of a dawn whose sunrise I shall never see. It only remains for me to sit down at the edge of my grave; then I shall descend boldly, crucifix in hand, into eternity.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "New storms will arise; one can believe in calamities to come which will surpass the afflictions we have been overwhelme…" by François-René de Chateaubriand?
François-René de Chateaubriand photo
François-René de Chateaubriand 28
French writer, politician, diplomat and historian 1768–1848

Related quotes

Simone de Beauvoir photo

“The humanity of tomorrow will be living in its flesh and in its conscious liberty; that time will be its present and it will in turn prefer it. New relations of flesh and sentiment of which we have no conception will arise between the sexes; already, indeed, there have appeared between men and women friendships, rivalries, complicities, comradeships — chaste or sensual — which past centuries could not have conceived.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

The Second Sex (1949)

“… one can't avoid the storms and calamities of life, but one can at least find the right partner to face them with.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Tempt Me at Twilight

Michael Faraday photo

“It teaches us first by tutors and books, to learn that which is already known to others, and then by the light and methods which belong to science to learn for ourselves and for others; so making a fruitful return to man in the future for that which we have obtained from the men of the past.”

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist

Lecture notes of 1858, quoted in The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870) by Bence Jones, Vol. 2, p. 403
Context: We learn by such results as these, what is the kind of education that science offers to man. It teaches us to be neglectful of nothing, not to despise the small beginnings — they precede of necessity all great things. Vesicles make clouds; they are trifles light as air, but then they make drops, and drops make showers, rain makes torrents and rivers, and these can alter the face of a country, and even keep the ocean to its proper fulness and use. It teaches a continual comparison of the small and great, and that under differences almost approaching the infinite, for the small as often contains the great in principle, as the great does the small; and thus the mind becomes comprehensive. It teaches to deduce principles carefully, to hold them firmly, or to suspend the judgment, to discover and obey law, and by it to be bold in applying to the greatest what we know of the smallest. It teaches us first by tutors and books, to learn that which is already known to others, and then by the light and methods which belong to science to learn for ourselves and for others; so making a fruitful return to man in the future for that which we have obtained from the men of the past.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi
Billy Joel photo

“In every heart there is a room,
A sanctuary safe and strong,
To heal the wounds from lovers past,
Until a new one comes along”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist
Washington Irving photo

“The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal — every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open — this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"Rural Funerals".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)

Adolf Hitler photo

“I am beginning with the young. We older ones are used up. Yes, we are old already. We are rotten to the marrow. We have no unrestrained instincts left. We are cowardly and sentimental. We are bearing the burden of a humiliating past, and have in our blood the dull recollection of serfdom and servility. But my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at these young men and boys! What material! With them, I can make a new world.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Adolf Hitler c. 1933; as quoted in Hitler Speaks http://books.google.com/books?id=PndurCstDZMC&pg=PA251 (1939), by Hermann Rauschning, London: Thornton Butterworth, p. 247.
Misattributed

“A new wound makes all the old ones ache again.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“Consider your own place in the universal oneness of which we are all a part, from which we all arise, and to which we all return.”

David Fontana (1934–2010) British psychologist
Pearl S. Buck photo

“There was an old abbot in one temple and he said something of which I think often and it was this, that when men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

As quoted in The Quotable Woman (1978) by Elaine T Partnow, p. 226. "When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place" has sometimes been quoted as her original statement, though she states that she herself is quoting an abbot.

Related topics