Quotes about rain (929 quotes, page 5) | Quotes of famous people

“All, then, are agreed on the pressing nature of this problem, all are bent on its solution, and though it would doubtless be quite Utopian to expect a similar agreement as to the value of any remedy that may be proposed, it is at least of immense importance that, on a subject thus universally regarded as of supreme importance, we have such a consensus of opinion at the outset. This will be the more remarkable and the more hopeful sign when it is shown, as I believe will be conclusively shown in this work, that the answer to this, one of the most pressing questions of the day, makes of comparatively easy solution many other problems which have hitherto taxed the ingenuity of the greatest thinkers and reformers of our time. Yes, the key to the problem how to restore the people to the land — that beautiful land of ours, with its canopy of sky, the air that blows upon it, the sun that warms it, the rain and dew that moisten it — the very embodiment of Divine love for man — is indeed a Master-Key, for it is the key to a portal through which, even when scarce ajar, will be seen to pour a flood of light on the problems of intemperance, of excessive toil, of restless anxiety, of grinding poverty — the true limits of Governmental interference, ay, and even the relations of man to the Supreme Power.”

Ebenezer Howard (1850–1928) British writer, founder of the garden city movement

Introduction.
Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898)

Love , People , Beauty , Hope

“The Sultan then departed from the environs of the city, in which was a temple of the Hindus. The name of this place was Maharatu-l Hind. He saw there a building of exquisite structure, which the inhabitants said had been built, not by men, but by Genii, and there he witnessed practices contrary to the nature of man, and which could not be believed but from evidence of actual sight. The wall of the city was constructed of hard stone, and two gates opened upon the river flowing under the city, which were erected upon strong and lofty foundations to protect them against the floods of the river and rains. On both sides of the city there were a thousand houses, to which idol temples were attached, all strengthened from top to bottom by rivets of iron, and all made of masonry work; and opposite to them were other buildings, supported on broad wooden pillars, to give them strength.
In the middle of the city there was a temple larger and firmer than the rest, which can neither be described nor painted. The Sultan thus wrote respecting it: - "If any should wish to construct a building equal to this, he would not be able to do it without expending an hundred thousand, thousand red dinars, and it would occupy two hundred years even though the most experienced and able workmen were employed."…
The Sultan gave orders that all the temples should be burnt with naptha and fire, and levelled with the ground.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the capture of Mathura. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 44-45 Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

Men , Support , Nature , Strong

“There's rain on the road
And the faithful have gone.
In a crowd all alone,
Walking 'round in a song.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Damaged By Love
Lyrics, Highway Companion (2006)

Faith

“The clouds, never expect it,
When it rains
But the sea changes color,
But the sea does not change”

Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac

Edge of Seventeen
Bella Donna (album) (1981)

Color , Change , Sea

“President Clinton has made a few feeble swipes at addressing this issue [school violence], but one can only gape at the unintentionally comic spectacle of this man chastising the gun-lobby and America's love of violent movies while he rains bombs on Yugoslavia, where at least twenty noncombatants have already died for every innocent student at Columbine High. It is like listening to a man with a crack-pipe in his hand lecture children about the evils of drugs.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Keynote Address, Vermont Library Conference, VEMA Annual Meeting, (26 May 1999)

Love , Children , School , Evil

“THE OCTOBER COUNTRY …that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…”

Ray Bradbury book The October Country

Epigraph
The October Country (1955)

People , Autumn , Thinking , Sun

“Is it life?" he answered, "I would rather be without it," he said, "for there is queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night of porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed-jars and foreign bacon.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman (1967)

Life , Drink , Passion , Night

“Unless we address those problems from the point of view of a world where development is genuinely sustainable, where protection of the environment is vital, where the earth's wealth is redistributed in favour of the poorest people in the poorest countries, in the next few years we shall face a growing imbalance between north and south. Ever-increasing numbers of people will flee from environmental destruction—from rain forest destruction, increased desertification and the increased flooding linked to that. Millions of people will have to flee from the places where they grew up and live and there will be growing imbalances in the world, and growing poverty. There has to be a change in the relationship. That means that higher prices must be paid for commodities. It means that there must be an increased aid programme, and an understanding that we are all in this together.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/dec/14/overseas-development in the House of Commons (14 December 1990).
1990s

People , World , Understanding , Problem

“Ravens and crows. Rats. Mists and clouds. Insects and corruption. Strange events and odd occurences. The ordinary twisted and strange. Wonders. The dead are beginning to walk and some see them. Others do not, but more and more, we all fear the night. These have been our days. They rain upon us beneath a dead sky, crushing us with their fury, until as one, we beg, "Let it begin."”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Journal of the Unknown Scholar, entry for the Feast of Freia, 1000 NE
(27 October 2009)

Fear , Night , Dead

“A builder. A rough and ready plasterer. A colour grinder. He Courbet is like a Roman bricklayer. And yet he's another true painter. There's no one in this century that surpasses him. Even though he rolls up his sleeves, plugs up his ears, demolishes columns, his workmanship is classical!... His view was always compositional. His vision remained traditional. Like his palette-knife, he used it only out of doors. He was sophisticated and brought his work to a high finish... His great contribution is the poetic introduction of nature - the smell of damp leaves, mossy forest cuttings - into nineteenth century painting; the murmur of rain, woodlands shadows, sunlight moving under trees. The sea. And snow, he painted snow like no one else!”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 198 in: 'What he told me – II. The Louvre'

Nature , Tree , Painting , Sea

“It is frequently expressed in all parts of Scripture, that the worship of the stars would be followed by absence of rain, devastation of the land, bad times, diseases, and shortness of life. But abandonment of that worship, and the return to the service of God, would be the cause of the presence of rain, fertility of the ground, good times, health and length of life. Thus Scripture teaches, in order that man should abandon idolatry, the reverse of that which idolatrous priests preached to the people, for, as has been shown by us, the principal object of the Law is to remove this doctrine, and to destroy its traces.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.30

Life , God , People , Health

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

Edward Bulwer-Lytton book Paul Clifford

Probably the most parodied and ridiculed opening line in literature. It is the inspiration for a satirical prize, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Used by Charles M. Schultz in the Peanuts cartoons.
Paul Clifford (1830)

Night

“The rain starts with a single drop.”

Manal al-Sharif (1979) Saudi Arabian activist

About the Women to drive movement. As quoted in Saudi woman claims she was detained for driving http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/05/21/saudi.women.drivers/ (May 27, 2011) by Atika Shubert, CNN.

“If all the skies were sunshine,
Our faces would be fain
To feel once more upon them
The cooling splash of rain.

If all the world were music,
Our hearts would often long
For one sweet strain of silence.
To break the endless song.

If life were always merry,
Our souls would seek relief,
And rest from weary laughter
In the quiet arms of grief.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

If All the Skies.

Life , World , Music , Feeling

“You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Preguntaréis: ¿Y dónde están las lilas?
¿Y la metafísica cubierta de amapolas?
¿Y la lluvia que a menudo golpeaba
sus palabras llenándolas
de agujeros y pájaros?
Explico Algunos Cosas (I'm Explaining a Few Things or I Explain a Few Things), Tercera Residencia (Third Residence), IV, stanza 1.
Alternate translation by Donald D. Walsh:
You will ask: And where are the lilacs?
And the metaphysical blanket of poppies?
And the rain that often struck
your words filling them
with holes and birds?
Residencia en la Tierra (Residence on Earth) (1933)

Bird

“The most offensive egotist is he that fears to say "I" and "me." "It will probably rain "—that is dogmatic. "I think it will rain"—that is natural and modest. Montaigne is the most delightful of essayists because so great is his humility that he does not think it important that we see not Montaigne. He so forgets himself that he employs no artifice to make us forget him.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: Epigrams, p. 364

Fear , Nature , Thinking , Forgetting

“The Morning of Manifestation sighed,
the breeze of Grace breathed gently,
ripples stirred
upon the sea of Generosity.
The clouds of Abundance poured down the rain
upon the soil of preparedness;
so much rain that the earth shone with Light.”

Fakhruddin 'Iraqi (1213–1289) Persian philosopher

Lama’at (Divine Flashes)

Light , Sea

“God is a cloud from which rain fell.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“A Cloud," p. 26
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Skywalking”

God

“Autumn, cloud blades on the horizon.
The west wind blows from ten thousand miles.
Dawn, in the clear morning air,
Farmers busy after long rain.
The desert trees shed their few green leaves.
The mountain pears are tiny but ripe.
A Tartar flute plays by the city gate.
A single wild goose climbs into the void.”

Du Fu (712–770) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Clear After Rain" (雨晴), as translated by Kenneth Rexroth in One Hundred Poems from the Chinese (1971), p. 16

Mountain , Business , Autumn , Tree

“The average person, when they see a black man, they would say "Man, he got soul cos' his color." But I disagree with that. I think that God would be a very selfish God if He gave all the soul to one race. He lets his rain fall on the red flowers, the green flowers, the blue flowers; the good, the bad, no races, so He lets His blessings fall on all races. So I think that there are types of souls, like there are different types of cars. But they're all cars. You know, I think that, when a white guy sing[s], if he have soul, that don't mean that he had to copy no negro to get it. I believe if he feels, when one sings from the heart and it reaches another heart, that's soul.”

Little Richard (1932) American pianist, singer and songwriter

Remarks on the question: can a white man sing soul music?. Pop Chronicles: Show 15 - The Soul Reformation I: A symposium on soul http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19764/m1/, interview recorded 1.2.1968 http://web.archive.org/web/20110615153027/http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/o-s.

God , Cars , Color , Guy

“To hell with the wind!
Confound the rain!
I recognize no Buddha.
A blow like the stroke of lightning -
A world turns on its hinge.”

Nampo Jomyo (1235–1309)

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6
Other translation:
I rebuke the wind and revile the rain,
I do not know the Buddha and patriarchs;
My single activity turns in the twinkling of an eye,
Swifter even than a lightning flash.
Isshu Miura and Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Zen Dust, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World p. 206; cited in Richard Bryan McDaniel (2013)

World , Hell

“The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightning, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Islands, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. But if you consider all the unlikely things together, at least one of them will probably happen to each of us. I could have seen it rain frogs. I could have stepped foot on Mars. I could have been eaten by a whale. I could have married the queen of England or survived months at sea. But my miracle was different. My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 3
Paper Towns (2008)

Way , Housing , Sea

“It's outrageous to line your pockets off the misery of the poor.
Outrageous, the crimes some human beings must endure.
It's a blessing to wash your face in the summer solstice rain.
It's outrageous a man like me stand here and complain.
But I'm tired.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Outrageous
Song lyrics, Surprise (2006)

Summer

“Then there's power. There was a time when people cooed over Ferraris that developed 200 horsepower, whereas today 2.0 litre Escorts can manage that. It's almost impossible to buy a car that won't do a hundred. (If you really want one, various Mercedes diesels make a pretty good stab at it.) Then there's the environment. The Volkswagen Beetle could kill a rain forest at 400 paces whereas today's Golf trundles around with tulips coming out of its exhaust. The gas coming out of a Sab is actually cleaner than the air that went in. That's true, that is.”

Jeremy Clarkson book Born to be Riled

Source: Born to be Riled (1999), p. 21

People , Cars , Time

“If the Lord has you saved, you're saved, ok? You can't get out of God's hand. Then this 300 degree below zero ice meteor came flying through the solar system. Some of it broke apart. It made craters on Mercury and craters on the Moon. Four of the planets today still have rings around them. And the rings around these planets are made of rock and ice. Very interesting. Now Walt Brown thinks some of the craters on the Moon were formed when the fountains of the deep broke open and rocks went flying up out of Earth's gravitational pull, drifted around for a while, and clobbered into the Moon. He may be right on that. I don't know but it's interesting. He thinks the comets came from Earth, and water on Mars came from Earth, when the fountains of the deep broke upon. You could read about it for yourself if you would like. The super cold snow would land mostly around the north and south poles because super cold ice is not only affected by the magnetic field, it is easily statically charged. […] As this ice meteor came flying towards the earth it broke apart, pieces would settle in around the poles mostly, causing the earth to wobble for a few hundred years. Or maybe even a few thousand years. The canopy of water overhead collapsed, then it rained 40 days, the water underneath the bottom, under the crust came shooting to the surface, and the water kept going up for 150 days. And everybody drowned. It probably took six or eight months to kill everybody during that flood. We all get the idea, "Well it rained and everybody died first day."”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

No, it took a long time for people to die. People would be running and fighting for higher ground. As that got more and more rare as the water keeps coming up, and up, and up, for 150 days, the water increased. By the way, they are still discovering chunks of ice flying around in space.
Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

God , People , Way , Idea

“This was not the first time that Mr. Bulstrode had begun by admonishing Mr. Vincy, and had ended by seeing a very unsatisfactory reflection of himself in the coarse unflattering mirror which that manufacturer’s mind presented to the subtler lights and shadows of his fellowmen; and perhaps his experience ought to have warned him how the scene would end. But a full-fed fountain will be generous with its waters even in the rain, when they are worse than useless; and a fine fount of admonition is apt to be equally irrepressible.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

Light , Water , Time

“May I fall as rain to increase
The harvests that must feed living beings
And in ages of dire famine
May I myself serve as food and drink.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Bodhicaryavatara

Age , Food , Drink

“Your way leads you to lands of rain and wind—
mine takes me back to our old room, our bed.”

Đặng Trần Côn (1710–1745) writer

Source: Chinh phụ ngâm, Lines 53–54

Way

“Cloudy all day. Showery on mtns. to eastward at noon. Fine thunderstorm evening, with grand display of zigzag intensely vivid & very near with keen cracks [and] grand trailing rain … Visited Elk ranch. About sixty old & young. Old bulls carry horns in noble style & grand airs.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

journal entry, Island Park, Idaho (26 August 1913) — the last field entry http://digitalcollections.pacific.edu/cdm/ref/collection/muirjournals/id/3843/show/3839 in Muir's last field journal
1910s

“The hippies are the living demonstration of what it means to give up reason, and to rely on one's primeval instincts, urges, intuitions, and whims. With such tools, they are unable to grasp even what is needed to satisfy their wishes; for example, the wish to have a festival. Where would they be without the charity of the local "squares" who fed them? Where would they be without the fifty doctors rushed from New York to save their lives? Without the automobiles that brought them to the festival? Without the soda pop and beer they substituted for water? Without the helicopters that brought the entertainers? Without all the achievements of the technological civilization they denounce? Left to their own devices, they literally didn't know enough to come in out of the rain.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Apollo and Dionysus (1969)

Beer , Water

“So, when my Days of Impotence approach,
And I’m by Pox and Wine’s unlucky chance
Driv'n from the pleasing Billows of debauch
On the dull Shore of lazy Temperance;My Pains at least some Respite shall afford
While I behold the Battles you maintain
When Fleets of Glasses sail about the Board,
From whose Broad-sides Volleys of Wit shall rain.”

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) English poet, and peer of the realm

The Maim'd Debauchee, ll. 13–20.
Other

Pain , Wine , Chance

“When you wish for so long that you could hear something, and then suddenly, with no warning, you do, is like a lightning strike and rain on parched ground at the same time. You're stunned, but you cannot hear enough.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Gawyn Trakand
(15 October 1994)

Time

“Light breaks on secret lots,
On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;
When logics die,
The secret of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the sun;
Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines, st. 1 (1934), st. 5

Secret , Light , Sun

“No visitors shall yonder valley find.
Except the spirits of the rain and wind:
Here you must bide, my friends, with me entombed
In this dim crypt, where shelved around us lie
The mummied authors.”

Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) United States poet, novelist and travel writer

"Third Evening".
The Poet's Journal (1863)

Lie

“Let me first say that there are ongoing legal proceedings, so I am limited in my ability to speak about those issues. But I’m fully aware that there is a tendency in all of us, as a society, to romanticize people and their families, especially when their work is bigger than themselves. At the risk of sounding cliché, you can’t have rainbows without rain, or roses without thorns. It’s unrealistic for people to have great expectations of us and not allow for basic human normalcy. Our conflicts are reflective of our humanity. We are a family like all others and subject to the same struggles and unfortunate consequences with which all God’s people contend.”

Bernice King (1963) American minister, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Statements during interview with The Root (24 June 2014) http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/06/the_root_interviews_bernice_a_king.html

God , People , Family

“A cloud masses, the sky darkens, leaves twist upward, and we know that it will rain. We also know that after the storm, the runoff will feed into groundwater miles away, and the sky will grow clear by tomorrow. All of these events are distant in time and space, if they're all connected within the same pattern. Each has an influence on the rest, and influence that is usually hidden from view. You can only understand the system of rainstorm by contemplating the whole not any part of the pattern.
Businesses and other human endeavors are also systems. They, too, are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their effects on each other. Since we are part of that lacework ourselves, it's doubly hard to see the whole pattern of change. Instead we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to get resolved.”

Peter M. Senge book The Fifth Discipline

Source: The Fifth Discipline (1990), p. 7 as cited in: Vivien Martin (2003) Leading Change in Health and Social Care. p. 37

Understanding , Business , Problem , Distant

“Temptation: seeds we are forbidden to water, that are showered with rain.”

Yahia Lababidi (1973)

Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)

Water

“Long ago an uncalled rain fell
And a called-upon God stayed equally distant.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

"Prayer," p. 47
The Shape (2000), Sequence: “Pit of the Stone”

God , Distant

“The day after your departure I started a new painting at Le Cours-la-Reine, in the afternoon in a glow of sun, and another in the morning by the water below St. Paul's Church. These two canvases are fairly well advanced, but I still need one session in fine weather without too much mist to give them a little firmness. Until now I have not been able to find the effect I want, I have even been forced to change the effect a bit, which is always dangerous. I have also an effect of fog... Until now I have not been able to find the effect I want, I have even been forced to change the effect a bit, which is always dangerous. I have also an effect of fog, another, same effect, from my window, the same motif in the rain, several sketches in oils, done on the quays near the boats; the next day it was impossible to go on, everything was confused, the motifs no longer existed; one has to realize them in a single session.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter from Rouen 11 October 1883, to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 42
1880's

Departure , Water , Change , Sun

“The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks, and gapes for drink again;
The plants suck in the earth, and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

From Anacreon, ii. Drinking; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Drink

“Raindrops, passionate raindrops,
The kind of rain that writes
'They're so in love' on our skin.
Raindrops, that we hope won't stop
Cooling the red hot love that we are making.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Passionate Raindrops
Song lyrics, A Time To Love (2005)

Love , Hope , Passion

“The wind is not helpless for any man's need,
Nor falleth the rain but for thistle and weed.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Love is Enough (1872), Song II: Have No Thought for Tomorrow

“The dead leaves their rich mosaics
Of olive and gold and brown
Had laid on the rain-wet pavements,
Through all the embowered town.”

Samuel Longfellow (1819–1892) American clergyman

November; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 562.

Dead

“I hate all those weathermen, too, who tell you that rain is bad weather. There's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing, so get yourself a sexy raincoat and live a little.”

Billy Connolly (1942) British comedian

Billy Connolly http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/biography/story/0,6000,556340,00.html
Book Sources

Hate , Weather , Clothes

“An item,” he said softly, his eyes on the disc, “that passes without provenance, pursued by many who thirst for its cold kiss, on which life and all that lay within life is often gambled. Alone, a beggar’s crown. In great numbers, a king’s folly. Weighted with ruin, yet blood washes from it beneath the lightest rain, and to the next no hint of its cost. It is as it is, says Kruppe, worthless but for those who insist otherwise.”

Steven Erikson book Gardens of the Moon

Source: Gardens of the Moon (1999), Chapter 7 (pp. 233-234)

Life , Kiss

“The same polarity of the male and female principle exists in nature; not only, as is obvious in animals and plants, but in the polarity of the two fundamental functions, that of receiving and penetrating. It is the polarity of earth and rain, of the river and the ocean, of night and day, of darkness and light, of matter and spirit.”

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

Source: The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 2

Nature , Light , Animals , Night

“Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.”

William Carlos Williams book Sour Grapes

"The Great Figure"
Sour Grapes (1921)

Light

“It is raining but I do not believe that it is.”

G. E. Moore Moore's paradox

One of the statements presenting what has become known as "Moore's paradox, from a famous lecture concerning logical inconsistency in 1942, as quoted in Reason in Theory and Practice (1969) by Roy Edgley, p. 71; in which he also stated "It is not raining, but I believe that it is." These sentences are not logically contradictory, and yet it seems that no one could make a true assertion by sincerely speaking them. It is reported that Ludwig Wittgenstein, on hearing of Moore's lecture, went to Moore's house in the middle of the night to ask him to repeat it, and considered the problems presented by it Moore's greatest contributions to philosophy.
Variants:
It is raining but I don't believe that it is.
As quoted in Directives and Norms (1968) by Alf Ross, Brian Loar, p. 27.
It is raining but I don't believe that it is raining.
As quoted in Foundations of Illocutionary Logic(1985) by John R. Searle and Daniel Vanderveken, p. 19.

“I am very fond of the modest manner of life of those solitary owners of remote villages, who in Little Russia are commonly called "old-fashioned," who are like tumbledown picturesque little houses, delightful in their simplicity and complete unlikeness to the new smooth buildings whose walls have not yet been discolored by the rain, whose roofs are not yet covered with green lichen, and whose porch does not display its bricks through the peeling stucco.”

Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) Russian writer

"Old World Landowners" (1835)

Life , Fashion , Housing

“I can't remember how they did this effect [on 1977's Mannaja), but it looked awful! One of the girls said to me that I was made of steel because Maurizio dragged me through the rain with the rope around my neck. That was tough indeed. Poor Maurizio died some time after that in a tennis accident.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Girl , Time

“Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind's
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Given (2005), Sabbaths 2001

Tree , Water , Time

“Nobody feels any pain
Tonight as I stand inside the rain”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Just Like A Woman

Pain , Feeling

“Nothing reminds us of an awakening more than rain.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Rain http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/rain-199/
From the poems written in English

“Alas, the blue arc of heaven / Is covered with gloomy clouds, / And the bright radiance of the sun / Is completely hidden
See the terrifying force of the tempest / Bows the oaks so that is groans, / And the rose on the beautiful pasture / has ben bent down by the rain.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

some poetry lines of Friedrich, c. 1807-09; as cited by C. D. Eberlein in C. D. Friedrich Bekenntnisse, p 57; as quoted and translated by Linda Siegel in Caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism, Boston Branden Press Publishers, 1978, p. 52
1794 - 1840

Beauty , Sun

“This appearance of the Evening was… just after a very heavy rain — more rain in the night and very — [? light] wind which continued all the — day following while making – this sketch observed the Moon easing – very beautifully… [in the] due East over the — heavy clouds from which the late showers – had fallen.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Inscription: 12 September, 1821, written on the back of 'Hampstead Heath, Sun setting over Harrow,' his sketch in oil on paper; as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London. 1993), p. 221
1820s

Light , Appearance , Night

“Back to the Army again, sergeant,
Back to the Army again:
Out o' the cold an' the rain, sergeant,
Out o' the cold an' the rain.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Back to the Army Again, refrain (1894).
The Seven Seas (1896)

“Now, in the thermonuclear age, any misjudgment on either side about the intentions of the other could rain more devastation in several hours than has been wrought in all the wars of human history.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Berlin Crisis speech

War , Age , History

“When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Tho' you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care. I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"I Shall Not Care
Rivers to the Sea (1915)

Peace , Tree , Heart , Dead

“It was the poor part of town—small houses and courts with mailboxes full of spiders, mailboxes hanging by one nail, old women inside rolling cigarettes and chewing tobacco and humming to their canaries and watching you, an idiot lost in the rain.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Post Office (1971)

Women , Parting , Housing

“Sometimes when it rains, it's not that simple, when the sky has reasons to cry.”

John Trudell (1946–2015) Native American rights activist, musician, poet

"What it Means to be a Human Being" Speech (2001)

Cry

“Humanity will have to extricate itself from the bags created by false moralists, according to whom we taste happiness and then pass judgment on it, as if it were a piece of fruit. But I maintain that even for a piece of fruit we can do something to help it taste good. This is even truer of marriage and every other human relationship; these things are not meant to be tasted or passively accepted; they must be made. A relationship is not like a bit of shade where one is comfortable or uncomfortable depending on the weather and the way the wind is blowing. On the contrary, it is a place of miracles, where the magician makes the rain and the good weather.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

On Private Life
Alain On Happiness (1928)

Marriage , Way , Help , Dependency

“This morning, when I got my mail — there's concrete all over the ground — cement, you know — and these little clovers — the little green clovers, like from St. Patrick's Day — the plant — were growing up out of the cement — no dirt and no nothing and no rain — and there they were, growing up out of the cement, and I was thinking — "that's like me."”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"My Nightgown is Blue and I am too!" (20 March 2009)

Thinking

“I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

Dogs , Cats

“If we all spring from a single father and mother, Adam and Eve, how can they claim or prove that they are lords more than us, except by making us produce and grow the wealth which they spend? They are clad in velvet and camlet lined with squirrel and ermine, while we go dressed in coarse cloth. They have the wines, the spices and the good bread: we have the rye, the husks and the straw, and we drink water. They have shelter and ease in their fine manors, and we have hardship and toil, the wind and the rain in the fields. And from us must come, from our labour, the things which keep them in luxury”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Et, se venons tout d'un père et d'une mere, Adam et Eve, en quoi poent il dire ne monstrer que il sont mieux signeur que nous, fors parce que il nous font gaaignier et labourer ce que il despendent? Il sont vestu de velours et de camocas fourés de vair et de gris, et nous sommes vesti de povres draps. Il ont les vins, les espisses et les bons pains, et nous avons le soille, le retrait et le paille, et buvons l'aige. Ils ont le sejour et les biaux manoirs, et nous avons le paine et le travail, et le pleue et le vent as camps, et faut que de nous viengne et de nostre labeur ce dont il tiennent les estas.
Book 2, p. 212.
Froissart is again quoting John Ball.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Spring , Drink , Water , Wine

“Pursuit of happiness, unalienable pursuit… right to life liberty and… A black moonless night; Jimmy Herf is walking alone up South Street. Behind the wharfhouses ships raise shadowy skeletons against the night. "By Jesus I admit I'm stumped," he says aloud. All these April nights combing the streets alone a skyscraper has obsessed him, a grooved building jutting up with uncountable bright windows falling onto him out of a scudding sky. Typewriters rain continual nickelplated confetti in his ears.”

John Dos Passos book Manhattan Transfer

Source: Manhattan Transfer (1925), p. 365

Life , Night , Happiness

“Still falls the Rain —
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss —
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

Still Falls the Rain (1940)

World , Loss

“Climb the steep Cold Mountain way
Roads to Cold Mountain are many and never ending
The valleys are long and deep, the peaks piled high
The streams are wide, the grass is thick
The moss is slippery though there is no rain
The pines sigh though there is no wind
Who can escape the snares of the world
And come to sit with me among the white clouds?”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

World , Way , Mountain , Grass

“Weave, weave, weave, you streaks of rain!
I am dissolved and woven again…
Thousands of faces rise and vanish before me.
Thousands of voices weave in the rain.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

“Israel will never have lasting peace until she obeys God. If she will obey His statutes and keep His commandments, He will give her rain in due season, an abundance of food, freedom from fear, victory over the enemy, and peace within the land”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Leviticus 26:1-13
God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

God , Fear , Peace , Food

“Be like that grass on the foot of the hill,
Or like that jasmine plant behind the house,
Be like hard rock when the fate rains difficulties upon you;
Be like jaggery & sugar bringing happiness to the poor & needy,
Be one among all mingling and mixing –Mankuthimma”

D. V. Gundappa (1887–1975) Indian writer

DVG’s Kannada poetry Kagga translated in to English
The Wisdom of Kagga: A Modern Kannada Classic

Fate , Grass , Housing , Happiness

“The red-faced president took afternoon tea
With her majesty The Queen
And they watched old films flicker
Across the old palace movie screen
Crying, "What a shame!"
As she slipped in the rain
Poor dancing girl
Well, she won't dance again…”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Radio America"(with Carl Barat)
Lyrics and poetry

Girl , Dance , Tea , Cry

“When Spring came on with fresh delight
To cheer the soul, and charm the sight,
While every easy breezes, softer rain
And warmer suns salute the plain.”

Thomas Parnell (1679–1718) Anglo-Irish cleric, writer and poet.

from Anacreontic.

Soul , Spring , Sun

“Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain…
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

29
50 Poems (1940)

Women , Men , Dreams , Star

“I'm flat on the floor, with my head down low, where the sky can't rain on me anymore.”

Carrie Underwood (1983) American country music singer

From Flat on the Floor from the album, Carnival Ride (2007). [Misattributed: performer not credited as writer.]

“Outside the rain continued its cadenced and indifferent commentary.”

Michael Bishop (1945) American writer

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 12, “Debacle: The Swarmings” (p. 240)

Indifference

“My observation of the flight of buzzards leads me to believe that they regain their lateral balance when partly overturned by a gust of wind, by a torsion of the tips of the wings. If the rear edge of the right wing tip is twisted upward and the left downward the bird becomes an animated windmill and instantly begins to turn, a line from its head to its tail being the axis. It thus regains its level even if thrown on its beam’s end, so to speak, as I have frequently seen them. I think the bird also in general retains its lateral equilibrium, partly by presenting its two wings at different angles to the wind, and partly by drawing in one wing, thus reducing its area. I incline to the belief that the first is the more important and usual method….
My business requires that my experimental work be confined to the months between September and January and I would be particularly thankful for advice as to a suitable locality where I could depend on winds of about 15 miles per hour without rain or too inclement weather. I am certain that such localities are rare.”

Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) American aviation pioneer

Letter to Octave Chanute (13 May 1900)

Business , Bird , Thinking , Animals

“The rain eased off, but the streets were greasily wet, rainbowed with oil. I went to the bank for more five-pound notes, stood like a pauper in the public library reading the Christian Science Monitor, then went for the first drinks of the day to a dive-bar popular with merchants. Hungarian refugees waited on at the tables and a West Indian negro collected dirty glasses – we were all exiles together.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Drink , Science , Waiting , Reading

“That damned rain had a personal grudge. It got no heavier but it never let up. Yet to east and west I saw light that indicated clear skies in those directions. The gods, if such existed, were laying on the misery especially for me.”

Glen Cook book Shadow Games

Source: Shadow Games (1989), Chapter 28, “Back to Scouting” (p. 148)

God , Light , Personality

“As a man I ain’t never been much for sunny days.
I’m as calm as a fruit stand in New York and maybe as strange.
But when the color goes out of my eyes, it’s usually the change.
But damn, Sam, I love a woman that rains.”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

Damn Sam
29 (2005)

Love , Color , Change

“No. It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Anarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren’t beautiful. They have big hands and feet, like me and the waiter there. But not big bellies. They get very dirty, and take baths together, nobody here does that. The towns are very small and dull, they are dreary. No palaces. Life is dull, and hard work. You can’t always have what you want, or even what you need, because there isn’t enough. You Urrasti have enough. Enough air, enough rain, grass, oceans, food, music, buildings, factories, machines, books, clothes, history. You are rich, you own. We are poor, we lack. You have, we do not have. Everything is beautiful here. Only not the faces. On Anarres nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces. The other faces, the men and women. We have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free—possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes—the wall, the wall!”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 7 (pp. 228-229)

Life , Women , Men , People

“On the top of the wall lay a structure of burnt brick, about a foot and a half in height, under the tiles and projecting like a coping. …when the tiles on the roof are broken or thrown down by the wind so that rain-water can leak through, this burnt brick coating will prevent the crude brick from being damaged, and the cornice-like projection will throw off the drops beyond the vertical face, and thus the walls, though of crude brick structure, will be preserved intact.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VIII, Sec. 18

Water

“Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.”

Sidney Lanier (1842–1881) American musician, poet

"The Marshes of Glynn" (1878).
Poetry

God , Pain , Knowledge , Suffering

“At first they set up forked stakes connected by twigs and covered these walls with mud. Others made walls of lumps of dried mud, covering them with reeds and leaves to keep out the rain and the heat. Finding that such roofs could not stand the rain during the storms of winter, they built them with peaks daubed with mud, the roofs sloping and projecting so as to carry off the rain water.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter I, Sec. 3

Water , Winter

“Good rain is coming to our delight.
Its early-spring timing is perfectly right.
With wind it drifts in all through the night.
Silently it's drenching everything in sight.”

Du Fu (712–770) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Welcome Rain in a Spring Night" (《春夜喜雨》), as translated by Ying Sun http://www.musicated.com/syh/tangpoems.htm (2008)

Spring , Time , Night

“I stood stonelike at midnight, suspended in my masquerade.
I combed my hair till it was just right and commanded the night brigade.
I was open to pain and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch.
I strolled all alone through a fallout zone and came out with my soul untouched.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Growin' Up"
Song lyrics, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)

Pain , Soul , Night

“My God and I are horsemen galloping in the burning sun or under drizzling rain. Pale, starving, but unsubdued, we ride and converse.
"Leader!" I cry. He turns his face toward me, and I shudder to confront his anguish.
Our love for each other is rough and ready, we sit at the same table, we drink the same wine in this low tavern of life.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

Love , Life , God , Drink

“She's my kind of rain, hey, hey-hey.
Like love from a drunken sky-aye-yai-yai.
Confetti falling down on mine.
She's my kind of rain.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

She's My Kind of Rain
Song lyrics, Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors (2002)

Love

“O hearken the words of his voice of compassion:
"Come cling round about me, ye faithful who sicken
Of the weary unrest and the world's passing fashions!
As the rain in mid-morning your troubles shall thicken,
But surely within you some Godhead doth quicken,
As ye cry to me heeding, and leading you home."”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Love is Enough (1872), Song IX: Ho Ye Who Seek Saving

World , Faith , Home , Fashion

“Manchester is the chimney of the world. Rich rascals, poor rogues, drunken ragamuffins and prostitutes form the moral; soot made into paste by rain the physique, and the only view long chimney: what a place! The entrance to hell realised!”

Charles James Napier (1782–1853) Commander-in-Chief in British India

The life and opinions of General Sir Charles James Napier, Volume 2

Hell , World , Past

“Their [antiwar movement] mantra was: "Afghanistan, where the world's richest country rains bombs on the world's poorest country." Poor fools. They should never have tried to beat me at this game. What about, "Afghanistan, where the world's most open society confronts the world's most closed one"? "Where American women pilots kill the men who enslave women." "Where the world's most indiscriminate bombers are bombed by the world's most accurate ones." "Where the largest number of poor people applaud the bombing of their own regime." I could go on. (I think No. 4 may need a little work.) But there are some suggested contrasts for the "doves" to paste into their scrapbook. Incidentally, when they look at their scrapbooks they will be able to reread themselves saying things like, "The bombing of Kosovo is driving the Serbs into the arms of Milosevic."”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2001

Women , Men , People , World

“Whenever Allah’s Messenger saw the rain, he used to say, O Allah! Let it be a strong fruitful rain.”

Aisha (605–678) Muhammad's wife

Bukhari hadith 142

Strong

“It never rains when you want it to
You humble me, Lord”

Norah Jones (1979) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"Humble Me", Feels Like Home (2004)
Song lyrics

“I'll never let you see
The way my broken heart is hurting me.
I've got my pride and I know how to hide
All my sorrow and pain.
I'll do my crying in the rain.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

Crying in the Rain (1962), Co-written with Howard Greenfield, first recorded by The Everly Brothers
Song lyrics, Singles

Pain , Way , Heart , Hurt

“I remember too, a distant bell…
and stars that fell…
like the rain
out of the blue.”

Johnny Mercer (1909–1976) American lyricist, songwriter, singer and music professional

Song "I Remember You" (1941)

Star , Distant

“On a prayer,
In a song,
I hear your voice,
And it keeps me hanging on.
Oh, raining down, against the wind,
I'm reaching out,
'Till we reach the circle's end.
When you come back to me again.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

When You Come Back to Me Again, written by Jenny Yates and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, Scarecrow (2001)

“The overcoat was a trademark of his. It was an impermeable thrift-shop special with a plaid flannel lining and wide lapels, and it looked as though it had been trying for many years to keep the rain off the stooped shoulders of a long series of hard cases, drifters, and ordinary bums. It emitted an odor of bus station so desolate that just standing next to him you could feel your luck changing for the worse.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Feeling , Change

“Other lands became a larder full of all the good things
All we had to do was go and take
Blood the colour of the rain that grew our wicked harvest
Black the colour icing on our cake”

Andy Partridge (1953) British musician

"Human Alchemy".
Mummer (1983)

“The rain
Never falls upwards.
When the wound
Stops hurting
What hurts is
The scar.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Poems Belonging to a Reader for Those who Live in Cities" [Zum Lesebuch für Städtebewohner gehörige Gedichte] (1926-1927), poem 10, trans. Frank Jones in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 148
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Hurt

“.. something as sensational as [a] heavy weight prize fight…. a rain of swings, uppercuts, and straight right and lefts to the stomach and everywhere throughout the entire event – a round lasting about twenty minutes. [remark on a ballet Miro planned to, c. 1930]”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

Quote of Miró in 'Bravo' Barcelona 1994; as cited in Calder Miro, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner / Oliver Wick; Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2004, p. 37
1915 - 1940

Fight

“Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appearrs, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds — the indivisible shared out in endless abundance.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

Bearing the Light
Sands of the Well (1994)

Tree , Light , Winter

Quotes about rain page 5

Quotes about rain
page 5