“Which is the best,—
Beauty and glory, in a southern clime,
Mingled with thunder, tempest; or the calm
Of skies that scarcely change, which, at the least,
If much of shine they have not, have no storms?”
Erinna
The Golden Violet (1827)
Variant: Which is the best,—
Beauty and glory, in a southern clime,
Mingled with thunder, tempest; or the calm
Of skies that scarcely change, which, at the least,
If much of shine they have not, have no storms?
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Letitia Elizabeth Landon 785
English poet and novelist 1802–1838Related quotes

“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.”
Thea, in Part VI, Ch. 7
The Song of the Lark (1915)
Context: I keep my mind on it. That's the whole trick, in so far as stage experience goes; keeping right there every second. If I think of anything else for a flash, I'm gone, done for. But at the same time, one can take things in — with another part of your brain, maybe. It's different from what you get in study, more practical and conclusive. There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm. You learn the delivery of a part only before an audience.

Speaking during a photo op at the White House https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/10/06/trump-gathers-with-military-leaders-says-maybe-its-the-calm-before-the-storm/ (6 October 2017)
2010s, 2017, October

“I believe in a lofty form of poetry, in the work in which beauty will be mingled with beliefs.”
The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVII
Context: Who shall compose the Bible of human desire, the terrible and simple Bible of that which drives us from life to life, the Bible of our doings, our goings, our original fall? Who will dare to tell everything, who will have the genius to see everything?
I believe in a lofty form of poetry, in the work in which beauty will be mingled with beliefs. The more incapable of it I feel myself, the more I believe it to be possible. The sad splendour with which certain memories of mine overwhelm me, shows me that it is possible. Sometimes I myself have been sublime, I myself have been a masterpiece. Sometimes my visions have been mingled with a thrill of evidence so strong and so creative that the whole room has quivered with it like a forest, and there have been moments, in truth, when the silence cried out.
But I have stolen all this, and I have profited by it, thanks to the shamelessness of the truth revealed. At the point in space in which, by accident, I found myself, I had only to open my eyes and to stretch out my mendicant hands to accomplish more than a dream, to accomplish almost a work.

“Calms appear, when storms are past,
Love will have its hour at last.”
Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), The Secular Masque (1700), Lines 72–73.

“The night is my best friend. It calms the storm in my soul and it lets the guiding stars rise.”
Die Nacht ist meine beste Freundin. Sie glättet den Sturm in der Seele und lässt die weisenden Sterne aufgehen.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)