Quotes about storm

A collection of quotes on the topic of storm, likeness, life, use.

Quotes about storm

Bob Marley photo

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician
Joseph Goebbels photo

“The night is my best friend. It calms the storm in my soul and it lets the guiding stars rise.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

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)

Vincent Van Gogh photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo
Louisa May Alcott photo

“I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.”

Amy, in Ch. 44 : My Lord and Lady
Variant: I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.
Source: Little Women (1868)

Haruki Murakami photo
Вивиан Грин photo
Haruki Murakami photo

“Once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.”

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002)
Context: And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.

Chapter One

Hunter S. Thompson photo

“Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived, or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

"Security" (1951); excerpted in Outlaw Journalist: The Life & Times of Hunter S. Thompson (2008), page 15
1950s

Dolly Parton photo
Klaus Kinski photo

“ASSHOLES! Do you ask a car crash for another take? Do you ask a volcano for another take? Do you ask the storm for another take?”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

On directors asking him for another take.
Playboy interview

Francisco Palau photo
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy photo
Dorothy Parker photo

“They sicken of the calm who know the storm.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Sunset Gun: Poems

John Newton photo

“God sometimes does His work with gentle drizzle, not storms.”

John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer

Source: Amazing Grace

J.M.W. Turner photo
Thomas Sankara photo
Erich Maria Remarque photo
Roald Amundsen photo
Alejandro Jodorowsky photo
Phillis Wheatley photo
Babur photo
Julian Assange photo

“Large newspapers are routinely censored by legal costs. It is time this stopped. It is time a country said, enough is enough, justice must be seen, history must be preserved, and we will give shelter from the storm.”

Julian Assange (1971) Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist

[Mark, Tran, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/12/iceland-haven-freedom-speech-wikileaks?KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=600&width=990, Iceland plans future as global haven for freedom of speech, The Guardian, February 12, 2010, 2010-06-17]

Isadora Duncan photo

“My inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds, from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between gentleness and the soft breeze, and the like, and I always endeavour to put into my movements a little of that divine continuity which gives to the whole of nature its beauty and its life.”

Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American dancer and choreographer

As quoted in Modern Dancing and Dancers (1912) by John Ernest Crawford Flitch, p. 105.
Context: To seek in nature the fairest forms and to find the movement which expresses the soul of these forms — this is the art of the dancer. It is from nature alone that the dancer must draw his inspirations, in the same manner as the sculptor, with whom he has so many affinities. Rodin has said: "To produce good sculpture it is not necessary to copy the works of antiquity; it is necessary first of all to regard the works of nature, and to see in those of the classics only the method by which they have interpreted nature." Rodin is right; and in my art I have by no means copied, as has been supposed, the figures of Greek vases, friezes and paintings. From them I have learned to regard nature, and when certain of my movements recall the gestures that are seen in works of art, it is only because, like them, they are drawn from the grand natural source.
My inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds, from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between gentleness and the soft breeze, and the like, and I always endeavour to put into my movements a little of that divine continuity which gives to the whole of nature its beauty and its life.

Francis of Assisi photo
Epictetus photo
Mark Twain photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Daniel Defoe photo

“I saw the Cloud, though I did not foresee the Storm.”

Source: Moll Flanders

Douglas Adams photo
Abraham Lincoln photo

“I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that his hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me - and I think He has - I believe I am ready.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Anecdote recorded as something that Lincoln said in a conversation with educator Newman Bateman in the Autumn of 1860, in Life of Abraham Lincoln (1866) by Josiah Gilbert Holland, Chapter XVI, p. 287<!-- University of Nebraska Press -->
Posthumous attributions
Context: I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me — and I think He has — I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God.
Context: I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me — and I think He has — I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and Christ and reason say the same; and they will find it so. Douglas doesn't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with God’s help I shall not fail. I may not see the end; but it will come and I shall be vindicated; and these men will find that they have not read their Bibles aright.

Louisa May Alcott photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo

“I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: Rainer Maria Rilke's the Book of Hours: A New Translation with Commentary

Walter Benjamin photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Erich Maria Remarque photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Erich Maria Remarque photo
William Shakespeare photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Stefan Zweig photo
Henri Barbusse photo
Michael Elmore-Meegan photo

“If you really want to know who your friends are, see you stands by you in a storm”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All Will be Well (2004)

Barack Obama photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo
Joe Clark photo

“We will not take this nation by storm or by stealth or by surprise. We will win it by work.”

Joe Clark (1939) 16th Prime Minister of Canada

February, 1976, regarding his leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party. ( http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/federal_politics/clips/6511/, "Did You Know?")

Hippocrates photo
Banda Singh Bahadur photo
Mao Zedong photo

“Marxists should not be afraid of criticism from any quarter. Quite the contrary, they need to temper and develop themselves and win new positions in the teeth of criticism and in the storm and stress of struggle. Fighting against wrong ideas is like being vaccinated -- a man develops greater immunity from disease as a result of vaccination. Plants raised in hothouses are unlikely to be hardy. Carrying out the policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend will not weaken, but strengthen, the leading position of Marxism in the ideological field.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

" VIII. ON "LET A HUNDRED FLOWERS BLOSSOM LET A HUNDRED SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT CONTEND" AND "LONG-TERM COEXISTENCE AND MUTUAL SUPERVISION" "
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 马克思主义者不应该害怕任何人批评。相反,马克思主义者就是要在人们的批评中间,就是要在斗争的风雨中间,锻炼自己,发展自己,扩大自己的阵地。同错误思想作斗争,好比种牛痘,经过了牛痘疫苗的作用,人身上就增强免疫力。在温室里培养出来的东西,不会有强大的生命力。实行百花齐放、百家争鸣的方针,并不会削弱马克思主义在思想界的领导地位,相反地正是会加强它的这种地位。

Voltaire photo

“A minister of state is excusable for the harm he does when the helm of government has forced his hand in a storm; but in the calm he is guilty of all the good he does not do.”

Un ministre est excusable du mal qu’il fait, lorsque le gouvernail de l’État est forcé dans sa main par les tempêtes; mais dans le calme il est coupable de tout le bien qu’il ne fait pas.
Le Siècle de Louis XIV, ch. VI: "État de la France jusqu’à la mort du cardinal Mazarin en 1661" (1752) Unsourced paraphrase or variant translation: Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.
Citas

Abraham Lincoln photo

“I mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the Revolution had upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment. By this influence, the jealousy, envy, and avarice incident to our nature and so common to a state of peace, prosperity, and conscious strength, were for the time in a great measure smothered and rendered inactive, while the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation. And thus, from the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature, were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest cause — that of establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty. But this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with the circumstances that produced it. I do not mean to say that the scenes of the Revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten, but that, like everything else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read; but even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then they cannot be so universally known nor so vividly felt as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son, or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family — a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related — a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned. But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done — the leveling of its walls. They are gone. They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-restless hurricane has swept over them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few more ruder storms, then to sink and be no more. They were pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they have crumbled away that temple must fall unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

James Macpherson photo
W.B. Yeats photo

“Mock mockers after that
That would not lift a hand maybe
To help good, wise or great
To bar that foul storm out, for we
Traffic in mockery.”

V, st. 4
The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/

Bede photo

“The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.”
Talis...mihi uidetur, rex, vita hominum praesens in terris, ad conparationem eius, quod nobis incertum est, temporis, quale cum te residente ad caenam cum ducibus ac ministris tuis tempore brumali, accenso quidem foco in medio, et calido effecto caenaculo, furentibus autem foris per omnia turbinibus hiemalium pluviarum vel nivium, adveniens unus passeium domum citissime pervolaverit; qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore, quo intus est, hiemis tempestate non tangitur, sed tamen parvissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita haec vita hominum ad modicum apparet; quid autem sequatur, quidue praecesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Unde si haec nova doctrina certius aliquid attulit, merito esse sequenda videtur.

Book II, chapter 13
This, Bede tells us, was the advice given to Edwin, King of Northumbria by one of his chief men, at a meeting where the king proposed that he and his followers should convert to Christianity. It followed a speech by the chief priest Coifi, who also spoke in favor of conversion.
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People)

Mark Twain photo
Burt Bacharach photo
Tacitus photo

“The soldiers have the plunder of a city that is stormed, the generals of one which capitulates.”
Expugnatae urbis praedam ad militem, deditae ad duces pertinere.

Book III, 19; Church-Brodribb translation
Histories (100-110)

Horace photo

“I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter.”
Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri, quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes.

Book I, epistle i, line 14
Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)

Kurt Vonnegut photo
Nathan Bedford Forrest photo

“If you surrender, you shall be treated as prisoners of war, but if I have to storm your works, you may expect no quarter.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) Confederate Army general

As quoted in May I Quote You, General Forrest? by Randall Bedwell.
1860s

Nikola Tesla photo
Henri Barbusse photo
Matthew Arnold photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Alfred Denning, Baron Denning photo

“His thoughts, delivered to me
From the white coverlet and pillow,
I see now, were inheritances—
Delicate riders of the storm.”

Hart Crane (1899–1932) American writer

Praise for an Urn (l. 5-8). In The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, by Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair (1988)

Jules Verne photo

“The undulation of these infinite numbers of mountains, whose snowy summits make them look as if covered by foam, recalled to my remembrance the surface of a storm-beaten ocean. If I looked towards the west, the ocean lay before me in all its majestic grandeur, a continuation as it were, of these fleecy hilltops. Where the earth ended and the sea began it was impossible for the eye to distinguish.

I soon felt that strange and mysterious sensation which is awakened in the mind when looking down from lofty hilltops, and now I was able to do so without any feeling of nervousness, having fortunately hardened myself to that kind of sublime contemplation. I wholly forgot who I was, and where I was. I became intoxicated with a sense of lofty sublimity, without thought of the abysses into which my daring was soon about to plunge me.”

<p>Les ondulations de ces montagnes infinies, que leurs couches de neige semblaient rendre écumantes, rappelaient à mon souvenir la surface d'une mer agitée. Si je me retournais vers l'ouest, l'Océan s'y développait dans sa majestueuse étendue, comme une continuation de ces sommets moutonneux. Où finissait la terre, où commençaient les flots, mon oeil le distinguait à peine.</p><p>Je me plongeais ainsi dans cette prestigieuse extase que donnent les hautes cimes, et cette fois, sans vertige, car je m'accoutumais enfin à ces sublimes contemplations. Mes regards éblouis se baignaient dans la transparente irradiation des rayons solaires, j'oubliais qui j'étais, où j'étais, pour vivre de la vie des elfes ou des sylphes, imaginaires habitants de la mythologie scandinave; je m'enivrais de la volupté des hauteurs, sans songer aux abîmes dans lesquels ma destinée allait me plonger avant peu.</p>
Source: Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Ch. XVI: Boldly down the crater

Pope Francis photo
Arsène Houssaye photo

“Whoever embarks with a woman embarks with a storm; but they are themselves the safety boats.”

Arsène Houssaye (1814–1896) French writer

Source: James O'Donnell Bennett (1908) When Good Fellows Get Together, p. 147

Charles Darwin photo
W.B. Yeats photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“But what changes come upon the weary desert of our culture, so darkly described, when it is touched by the magic of Dionysus! A storm seizes everything decrepit, rotten, broken, stunted; shrouds it in a whirling red cloud of dust and carries it into the air like a vulture. In vain confusion we seek for all that has vanished; for what we see has risen as if from beneath he earth into the gold light, so full and green, so luxuriantly alive, immeasurable and filled with yearning. Tragedy sits in sublime rapture amidst this abundance of life, suffering and delight, listening to a far-off, melancholy song which tells of the Mothers of Being, whose names are Delusion, Will, Woe. -
Yes, my friends, join me in my faith in this Dionysiac life and the rebirth of tragedy. The age of Socratic man is past: crown yourselves with ivy, grasp the thyrsus and do not be amazed if tigers and panthers lie down fawning at your feet. Now dare to be tragic men, for you will be redeemed. You shall join the Dionysiac procession from India to Greece! Gird yourselves for a hard battle, but have faith in the miracles of your god!”

Aber wie verändert sich plötzlich jene eben so düster geschilderte Wildniss unserer ermüdeten Cultur, wenn sie der dionysische Zauber berührt! Ein Sturmwind packt alles Abgelebte, Morsche, Zerbrochne, Verkümmerte, hüllt es wirbelnd in eine rothe Staubwolke und trägt es wie ein Geier in die Lüfte. Verwirrt suchen unsere Blicke nach dem Entschwundenen: denn was sie sehen, ist wie aus einer Versenkung an's goldne Licht gestiegen, so voll und grün, so üppig lebendig, so sehnsuchtsvoll unermesslich. Die Tragödie sitzt inmitten dieses Ueberflusses an Leben, Leid und Lust, in erhabener Entzückung, sie horcht einem fernen schwermüthigen Gesange - er erzählt von den Müttern des Seins, deren Namen lauten: Wahn, Wille, Wehe.
Ja, meine Freunde, glaubt mit mir an das dionysische Leben und an die Wiedergeburt der Tragödie. Die Zeit des sokratischen Menschen ist vorüber: kränzt euch mit Epheu, nehmt den Thyrsusstab zur Hand und wundert euch nicht, wenn Tiger und Panther sich schmeichelnd zu euren Knien niederlegen. Jetzt wagt es nur, tragische Menschen zu sein: denn ihr sollt erlöst werden. Ihr sollt den dionysischen Festzug von Indien nach Griechenland geleiten! Rüstet euch zu hartem Streite, aber glaubt an die Wunder eures Gottes!
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 98

Barack Obama photo

“But right now, the key is to make sure that the public is following instructions. For those of you who still need additional information about how to respond, you can go to Ready. gov -- that’s Ready. gov. And that website should provide you with all the information that your family needs in terms of how you can prepare for this storm.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by the President on Hurricane Sandy http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2012/10/29/president-obama-makes-statement-hurricane-sandy#transcript, quoted in * 2012-10-29
FEMA, W.H. send storm victims to Internet
Steve
Friess
Politico
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/83024.html?hp=l10
2012-11-02
2012

Benjamin Disraeli photo
Alexander Suvorov photo
Joseph Stalin photo

“There are no fortresses that Bolsheviks cannot storm.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Clive Foss, The Tyrants: 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption, London: Quercus Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1905204965 , p. 131
Contemporary witnesses

Rajneesh photo
Antonin Artaud photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo

“Whenever a Muslim called upon the Muslim society, he never faced any resistance-he called in the name of one God ‘Allah-ho-Akbar’. On the other hand, when we (Hindus) call will call, ‘come on, Hindus’, who will respond? We, the Hindus, are divided in numerous small communities, many barriers-provincialism-who will respond overcoming all these obstacles? “We suffered from many dangers, but we could never be united. When Mohammed Ghouri brought the first blow from outside, the Hindus could not be united, even in the those days of imminent danger. When the Muslims started to demolish the temples one after another, and to break the idols of Gods and Goddesses, the Hindus fought and died in small units, but they could not be united. It has been provided that we were killed in different ages due to out discord. Weakness harbors sin. So, if the Muslims beat us and we, the Hindus, tolerate this without resistance-then, we will know that it is made possible only by our weakness. For the sake of ourselves and our neighbour Muslims also, we have to discard our weakness. We can appeal to our neighbour Muslims, `Please don't be cruel to us. No religion can be based on genocide' - but this kind of appeal is nothing, but the weeping of the weak person. When the low pressure is created in the air, storm comes spontaneously; nobody can stop it for sake for religion. Similarly, if weakness is cherished and be allowed to exist, torture comes automatically - nobody can stop it. Possibly, the Hindus and the Muslims can make a fake friendship to each other for a while, but that cannot last forever. As long as you don’t purify the soil, which grows only thorny shrubs you can not expect any fruit.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

“Swamy Shraddananda’, written by Rabindranath in Magh, 1333 Bangabda; compiled in the book ‘Kalantar’.

Stefan Zweig photo
Hammurabi photo

“If any one owe a debt for a loan, and a storm prostrates the grain, or the harvest fail, or the grain does not grow for lack of water; in that year he need not give his creditor any grain, he washes his debt-tablet in water and pays no rent for this year.”

Hammurabi (-1810–-1750 BC) sixth king of Babylon

Section 48 of the Code of Hammurabi (translated by Leonard William King, 1910).
Alternately translated as: If a man owe a debt and Adad inundate his field and carry away the produce, or, though lack of water, grain have not grown in the field, in that year he shall not make any return of grain to the creditor, he shall alter his contract-tablet and he shall not pay the interest for that year.

Black Elk photo

“When a vision comes from the thunder beings of the West, it comes with terror like a thunder storm; but when the storm of vision has passed, the world is greener and happier; for wherever the truth of vision comes upon the world, it is like a rain.”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Context: When a vision comes from the thunder beings of the West, it comes with terror like a thunder storm; but when the storm of vision has passed, the world is greener and happier; for wherever the truth of vision comes upon the world, it is like a rain. The world, you see, is happier after the terror of the storm. … you have noticed that truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping. … as lightning illuminates the dark, for it is the power of lightning that heyokas have.

Barack Obama photo

“I believe that this movement of change cannot be turned back, and that we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us through many storms: our opposition to violence directed at one’s own people; our support for a set of universal rights, including the freedom for people to express themselves and choose their leaders; our support for governments that are ultimately responsive to the aspirations of the people.
Born, as we are, out of a revolution by those who longed to be free, we welcome the fact that history is on the move in the Middle East and North Africa, and that young people are leading the way.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Address on interventions in Libya (March 2011)
Context: I believe that this movement of change cannot be turned back, and that we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us through many storms: our opposition to violence directed at one’s own people; our support for a set of universal rights, including the freedom for people to express themselves and choose their leaders; our support for governments that are ultimately responsive to the aspirations of the people.
Born, as we are, out of a revolution by those who longed to be free, we welcome the fact that history is on the move in the Middle East and North Africa, and that young people are leading the way. Because wherever people long to be free, they will find a friend in the United States. Ultimately, it is that faith — those ideals — that are the true measure of American leadership.

Hermann Hesse photo

“Desire to sleep has vanished now,
Spring has arrived in the night
In the wake of a storm.”

Source: Gertrude (1910), p. 164
Context: The south winds roars at night,
Curlews hasten in their flight,
The air is damp and warm.
Desire to sleep has vanished now,
Spring has arrived in the night
In the wake of a storm.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley photo

“My greatest pleasure was the enjoyment of a serene sky amidst these verdant woods: yet I loved all the changes of Nature; and rain, and storm, and the beautiful clouds of heaven brought their delights with them.”

Matilda (1819)
Context: My greatest pleasure was the enjoyment of a serene sky amidst these verdant woods: yet I loved all the changes of Nature; and rain, and storm, and the beautiful clouds of heaven brought their delights with them. When rocked by the waves of the lake my spirits rose in triumph as a horseman feels with pride the motions of his high fed steed.
But my pleasures arose from the contemplation of nature alone, I had no companion: my warm affections finding no return from any other human heart were forced to run waste on inanimate objects.

Walter Benjamin photo

“This storm is what we call progress.”

Source: Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), IX
Context: A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

Emile Zola photo

“Meanwhile, in Paris, truth was marching on, inevitably, and we know how the long-awaited storm broke.”

J'accuse! (1898)
Context: Meanwhile, in Paris, truth was marching on, inevitably, and we know how the long-awaited storm broke. Mr. Mathieu Dreyfus denounced Major Esterhazy as the real author of the bordereau just as Mr. Scheurer-Kestne was handing over to the Minister of Justice a request for the revision of the trial. This is where Major Esterhazy comes in. Witnesses say that he was at first in a panic, on the verge of suicide or running away. Then all of a sudden, emboldened, he amazed Paris by the violence of his attitude.

Thomas Fuller photo

“Vows made in storm forgotten in calm. ”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian
Sam Harris photo

“You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.”

Source: 2010s, Free Will (2012), p. 14

John Muir photo
Rick Riordan photo
Cressida Cowell photo