“Just as at first the South wind makes gentle sport as it softly stirs the leaves and topmost branches of the woodland, but soon the unlucky ships are feeling all its terrible strength.”
Source: Argonautica, Book VI, Lines 664–666
Original
Velut ante comas ac summa cacumina silvae lenibus adludit flabris levis Auster, at illum protinus immanem miserae sensere carinae.
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Gaius Valerius Flaccus 54
Roman poet and writer 45–95Related quotes

Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.
" Romance Sonámbulo http://www.poesia-inter.net/index203.htm" from Primer Romancero Gitano (1928)

Stornelli Politici, ""Costanza"".
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 354.
“Sometimes its not the strength but gentleness that cracks the hardest shells.”
Source: Lost December

Love is Enough (1872), Song VII: Dawn Talks to Day
Context: Eve shall kiss night,
And the leaves stir like rain
As the wind stealeth light
O'er the grass of the plain.
Unseen are thine eyes
Mid the dreamy night's sleeping,
And on my mouth there lies
The dear rain of thy weeping.
Gather Leaves and Grasses, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“391. To a crazy ship all windes are contrary.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“As a little skiff attached to a great ship, when the storm blows high, takes in her small share of the raging waters and tosses in the same south wind.”
Immensae veluti conexa carinae
cumba minor, cum saevit hiems, pro parte furentis
parva receptat aquas et eodem volvitur austro.
iv, line 120
Silvae, Book I