Quotes about whirlwind (59 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries
were echoing across the starless air,
so that, as soon as I set out, I wept.
Strange utterances, horrible pronouncements,
accents of anger, words of suffering,
and voices shrill and faint, and beating hands—
all went to make a tumult that will whirl
forever through that turbid, timeless air,
like sand that eddies when a whirlwind swirls.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto III, lines 22–30 (tr. Mandelbaum).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Suffering , Anger

“Oh troika, winged troika, tell me who invented you? Surely, nowhere but among a nimble nation could you have been born in a country which has taken itself in earnest and has evenly spread far and wide over half of the globe, so that once you start counting the milestones you may count on till a speckled haze dances before your eyes… Rus, are you not similar in your headlong motion to one of those nimble troikas that none can overtake? The flying road turns into smoke under you, bridges thunder and pass, all fall back and is left behind!… And what does this awesome motion mean? What is the passing strange steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes?… Rus, whither are you speeding to? Answer me. No answer. The middle bell trills out in a dream its liquid soliloquy; the roaring air is torn to pieces and becomes wind; all things on earth fly by and other nations and states gaze askance as they step aside and give her the right of way.”

Nikolai Gogol book Dead Souls

Vol. I, ch. 11
Dead Souls (1842)

Dreams , Way , Home , Dance

“And as they still went on and talked, behold, chariots of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

2 Kings 2:11
Bible References

Horse

“The revelation still seems to me so terrible that the silence of men, heaped under the roofs down there at my feet, seizes and threatens me. And if I am but timidly formulating it within myself, that is because each of us has lived in reality more than his life, and because my training has filled me, like the rest, with centuries of shadow, of humiliation and captivity.
It is establishing itself cautiously; but it is the truth, and there are moments when logic seizes you in its godlike whirlwind.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XX The Cult

Life , Men , Truth , Reality

“To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”

Anne Rice book The Vampire Lestat

The Vampire Lestat (1985)

Question

“For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1850s, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? (1852)
Context: At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

God , Feeling , Light

“Do not work primarily for money; do your duty to patients first and let the money follow; our life is short, we don't live twice; the whirlwind will pick up the leaves and spin them, but then it will drop them and they will form a pile.”

John Hersey book Hiroshima

Source: Hiroshima

Life , Money

“The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, I Have A Dream (1963)
Source: I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World
Context: The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

Justice

“We get an apartment together, and after a whirlwind courtship you marry my sister and honeymoon in Vegas.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Time Paradox

Sister

“Whenever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God's speaking from the whirlwind, nature's old song, and dance…”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

God , Nature , Dance

“Achilles makes a sound like choking. “There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.” His spearpoint flies in a dark whirlwind, bright as the evening-star, to catch the hollow at Hector’s throat.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Men , Star

“There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are periods when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny; the second are spaces of time when much labour goes to the making of a little result. It is true that the latter may prepare the former, may be the little smoke of sacrifice going up to heaven which calls down the rain of God's bounty…. Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the moment; for them is irreparable loss or a great destruction…. In the hour of God cleanse thy soul of all self-deceit and hypocrisy and vain self-flattering that thou mayst look straight into thy spirit and hear that which summons it. All insincerity of nature, once thy defence against the eye of the Master and the light of the ideal, becomes now a gap in thy armour and invites the blow. Even if thou conquer for the moment, it is the worse for thee, for the blow shall come afterwards and cast thee down in the midst of thy triumph. But being pure cast aside all fear; for the hour is often terrible, a fire and a whirlwind and a tempest, a treading of the winepress of the wrath of God; but he who can stand up in it on the truth of his purpose is he who shall stand; even though he fall, he shall rise again; even though he seem to pass on the wings of the wind, he shall return. Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected, the incalculable, the immeasurable. Mete not the power of the Breath by thy petty instruments, but trust and go forward…. But most keep thy soul clear, even if for a while, of the clamour of the ego. Then shall a fire march before thee in the night and the storm be thy helper and thy flag shall wave on the highest height of the greatness that was to be conquered.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

1918 (The Hour of God)
India's Rebirth

Men , God , Truth , Fear

“Combine the "mounting pressure" with the "growing cause" and you've got yourself a "media whirlwind" which you can also refer to.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

S2E5
Newswipe

“ALANZO: Wrongs, like great whirlwinds,
Shake highest battlements. Few for heaven would care,
Should they be ever happy.”

Thomas Dekker The Noble Spanish Soldier

The Noble Spanish Soldier (1622)

Happiness

“So the loud torrent and the whirlwind's roar
But bind him to his native mountains more.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: The Traveller (1764), Line 217.

Mountain

“Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God's grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life.”

Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur

First Message to the Negroes of the World from Atlanta Prison" http://www.unia-acl.org/archive/whrlwind.htm (10 February 1925).

Life , God , Freedom , Fight

“A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Arguing that living organisms could not have arisen by chance alone.
The Intelligent Universe (1983), p. 19

Universe , Chance , Flying

“Another tradition in systems theory, known as system dynamics, originated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The founder of this tradition was Jay Forrester, a creative engineer who invented the magnetic core memory for computers and who built the Whirlwind computer, which is now in the Smithsonian Institution.”

Stuart A. Umpleby (1944) American scientist

Source: "The origins and purposes of several traditions in systems theory and cybernetics," 1999, p. 85: About System Dynamics

Memory

“Let the gossip roll!
What to me are Hamlet's garters,
or the whirlwind of Salome's dance,
or the tread of the Man in the Iron Mask?
I am more iron than they.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Poem without a Hero (1963)

Dance

“I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray;
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing,
And hear the wild roar of their thunder today!”

Anne Brontë book Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day (1842)

“.. the moving whirlwind of modernity through its crowds, its cars, its telegraph poles, its bare, working-class neighbourhoods, its noises, its squeals, its violence, its cruelty, its cynicism, and its relentless pushiness.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

In Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008.
1914 - 1916, Pittura e scultura futuriste' Milan, 1914

Cars

“A great soul, any sincere soul, knows not what he is,—alternates between the highest height and the lowest depth; can, of all things, the least measure—Himself! What others take him for, and what he guesses that he may be; these two items strangely act on one another, help to determine one another. With all men reverently admiring him; with his own wild soul full of noble ardors and affections, of whirlwind chaotic darkness and glorious new light; a divine Universe bursting all into godlike beauty round him, and no man to whom the like ever had befallen, what could he think himself to be?”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Men , Beauty , Soul , Thinking

“Things evolve to evolve. Evolutionary processes are the linchpin of change. These processes of discovery represent a complexity of simple systems that flux in perpetual tension as they teeter at the edge of chaos. This whirlwind of emergence is responsible for the spontaneous order and higher, organized complexity so noticeable in biological evolution—one–celled critters beefing up to become multicellular organisms.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 335

Change

“With the sure sagacity of a leader of men, Washington at once selected, for the highest and most responsible stations, the three chief Americans who represented the three forces in the nation which alone could command success in the institution of the government. Hamilton was the head, Jefferson was the heart, and John Jay was the conscience. Washington's just and serene ascendancy was the lambent flame in which these beneficent powers were fused, and nothing less than that ascendancy could have ridden the whirlwind and directed the storm that burst around him.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

As quoted in Manual Of Patriotism : For Use in the Public Schools of the State of New York (1900) By Charles Rufus Skinner, p. 261.

Men , Success , Heart

“Shortly after 9/11 a French spokesman for the activist group ATTAC quoted the adage: "He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind." French prime minister Lionel Jospin seemed to be pointing in this direction when he asked, "What lesson are the Americans going to draw from what has happened?" The lesson, Jospin indicated, should be for the U. S. to moderate her unilateralism. For Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president of the German Bishops' Conference, the lesson to be drawn from terrorism was that "the West must not seek to dominate the rest of the world."”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

2000s, Europe's Anti-American Obsession (2003)

World , Quotes , Drawing

“See this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God's sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they'd allowed to wither in themselves.”

Robert McCammon book Boy's Life

Introduction.
Boy's Life (1991)

God , People , Youth , Age

“Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes;
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.”

Thomas Gray The Bard

II. 2. lines 71-76
The Bard (1757)

Pleasure , Youth

“A smiling lie is a whirlwind, easy to enter, but hard to escape.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“A Lie,” p. 65
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Stone and a Word”

Lie , Smile

“We are not this story's author, who fills time and eternity with His purpose. Yet His purpose is achieved in our duty, and our duty is fulfilled in service to one another. Never tiring, never yielding, never finishing, we renew that purpose today; to make our country more just and generous; to affirm the dignity of our lives and every life. This work continues. This story goes on. And an Angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Bush concluded his address with these lines, paraphrasing a quotation by John Page he had used earlier within it: We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?. Page himself, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson (20 July 1776), was quoting a phrase from Ecclesiastes 9:11: I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to the intelligent, nor yet favour to men of knowledge; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
2000s, 2001, First inaugural address (January 2001)

Life , Angels , Time , Country

“The mighty Mahmud, Allah-breathing Lord
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul
Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Fear , Soul

“The Man Comes Around" is a song that I wrote, it's my song of the apocalypse, and I got the idea from a dream that I had — I dreamed I saw Queen Elizabeth. I dreamed I went in to Buckingham Palace, and there she sat on the floor. And she looked up at me and said, "Johnny Cash, you're like a thorn tree in a whirlwind." And I woke up, of course, and I thought, what could a dream like this mean? Thorn tree in a whirlwind? Well, I forgot about it for two or three years, but it kept haunting me, this dream. I kept thinking about it, how vivid it was, and then I thought, Maybe it's biblical. So I found it. Something about whirlwinds and thorn trees in the Bible. So from that, my song started and… "The Man Comes Around.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

The song turned out to be "The Man Comes Around."
CNN interview (2002)

Dreams , Idea , Thinking , Tree

“Suppose it be granted that Mr. Cleveland is a just man, and desires to protect colored citizens in the exercise of their constitutional rights. What is he, and what is any man in the Presidential chair, without the support of his party? As against his party, he is only as a feather against a whirlwind. In the hands of his party, Mr. Cleveland is as clay in the hands of the potter.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/ (1888).
1880s

Color , Exercises , Support

“When freedom rises from the killing floor,
No lock of iron or rivet can restrain the door.
And no kind of army can hope to win a war
Like trying to stop the rain or still the lion`s roar,
Like trying to stop the whirlwind scattering seeds and spores
Like trying to stop the tin cans rapping out jailhouse semaphore.”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

Joe Strummer and Bono, "46664", written for Nelson Mandela's HIV/AIDS festival in 2003.
Lyrics

War , Hope , Freedom

“Each must the other take as sign, short sign
To stop the whirlwind, balk the elements.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure

“Wherever thou seest a great end, be sure of a great beginning. Where a monstrous and painful destruction appals thy mind, console it with the certainty of a large and great creation. God is there not only in the still small voice, but in the fire and in the whirlwind….. The greater the destruction, the freer the chances of creation; but the destruction is often long, slow and oppressive, the creation tardy in its coming or interrupted in its triumph. The night returns again and again and the day lingers or seems even to have been a false dawning. Despair not therefore but watch and work. Those who hope violently, despair swiftly: neither hope nor fear, but be sure of God's purpose and thy will to accomplish.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

August, 1917
India's Rebirth

God , Pain , Fear , Hope

“Strepsiades: ‘Tis the Whirlwind, that has driven out Zeus and is King now.”

Aristophanés The Clouds

tr. Athen. 1912, vol. 1, p. 350 http://books.google.com/books?id=9vpxAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Tis+the+Whirlwind%2C+that+has+driven+out+Jupiter+and+is+King+now%22
Clouds (423 BC)

“There is a literature that does not reach the voracious mass. It is the work of creators... Every page must explode, either by profound heavy seriousness, the whirlwind, poetic frenzy, the new, the eternal, the crushing joke, enthusiasm for principles, or by the way in which it is printed. On the one hand a tottering world in flight, betrothed to the glockenspiel of hell, on the other hand: new men. Rough, bouncing, riding on hiccups. Behind them a crippled world and literary quacks with a mania for improvement.”

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist

1910s, Dada Manifesto', 1918

Men , World , Way , Literature

“The vain attempt persisted in through twenty centuries of ruling class interpolation, interpretation and falsification to make Jesus appear the divinely commissioned conservator of the peace and soother of the oppressed, instead of the master proletarian revolutionist and sower of the social whirlwind—the vain attempt to prostitute the name and teachings and example of the martyred Christ to the power of Mammon, the very power which had murdered him in cold blood, vindicates his transcendent genius and proclaims the immortality of his work.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

Jesus, the Supreme Leader (1914)

Peace , Appearance , Christ

“Build me straight, O worthy Master!
Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Building of the Ship

Source: The Building of the Ship (1849), Lines 1-4.

Strong

“O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

"No Worst, There Is None", lines 9 -15
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Life , Death , Mountain , Sleep

“For love is a flattering mischief, that hath denied aged and wise men a foresight of those evils that too often prove to be the children of that blind father; a passion, that carries us to commit errors with as much ease as whirlwinds move feathers, and begets in us an unwearied industry to the attainment of what we desire.”

Izaak Walton (1593–1683) English author and biographer

Life of Dr. Donne (1640).

Love , Men , Children , Age

“A lot of people are not familiar with the fact that when Lincoln Lab grew out of the Project Whirlwind (which were just names to me at that point) for the purpose of looking into radar air defense -- processing radar signals with the computer and then using radio controls to defend with fighters and so forth -- Whirlwind had been originally designed as an aircraft simulator for individual airplanes.”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

Source: An Interview with Douglas T. Ross (1984), p. 22.

People

“After the Declaration of Independence was signed, Virginia statesman John Page wrote to Thomas Jefferson, 'We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?' Much time has passed since Jefferson arrived for his inauguration. The years and changes accumulate. But the themes of this day he would know, our nation's grand story of courage and its simple dream of dignity.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, First inaugural address (January 2001)

Dreams , Angels , Courage , Thinking

“Resignation,— not to a whirlwind of inexorable forces, not to powers that cannot see or hear or feel, but to One who lives forever, and who loves us well, and who has given us all that we have, ay, life itself, that we may at His bidding freely give it back to Him.”

Henry Liddon (1829–1890) British theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 512.

Love , Life , Feeling

“The wild winds had been sown and the whirlwinds were gathering… and I was reaping what I had not sown… None of us could escape the history of the centuries before any of us had been born, and with which we had nothing to do.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: My Several Worlds (1954), p. 208
Context: The wild winds had been sown and the whirlwinds were gathering... and I was reaping what I had not sown... None of us could escape the history of the centuries before any of us had been born, and with which we had nothing to do. We had not, I think, ever committed even a mild unkindness against a Chinese, and certainly we had devoted ourselves to justice for them, we had taken sides against our own race again and again for their sakes, sensitive always to injustices which others had committed and were still committing. But nothing mattered today, neither the kindness nor the cruelty. We were in hiding for our lives because we were white.

History

“I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me — and this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery of the world.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

Journal Intime (1882), Quotes used in the Introduction by Ward
Context: I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me — and this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery of the world. I am, or rather my sensible consciousness is, concentrated upon this ideal standing-point, this invisible threshold, as it were, whence one hears the impetuous passage of time, rushing and foaming as it flows out into the changeless ocean of eternity. After all the bewildering distractions of life — after having drowned myself in a multiplicity of trifles and in the caprices of this fugitive existence, yet without ever attaining to self-intoxication or self-delusion — I come again upon the fathomless abyss, the silent and melancholy cavern, where dwell 'Die Mütter,' where sleeps that which neither lives nor dies, which has neither movement nor change, nor extension, nor form, and which lasts when all else passes away.

Life , Men , World

“Where they claim the central sun lies, the solar being, the hot beam made out of every human gaze, there is nothing but a hole and less than a hole: the eye of a dead fish, the giddy cavity of the eye that falls into itself and looks at itself without seeing. There is nothing with which to fill the hollow center of the whirlwind.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

The Clerk's Vision (1949)
Context: The world stretches out before me, the vast world of the big, the little, and the medium. Universe of kings and presidents and jailors, of mandarins and pariahs and liberators and liberated, of judges and witnesses and the condemned: stars of the first, second, third and nth magnitudes, planets, comets, bodies errant and eccentric or routine and domesticated by the laws of gravity, the subtle laws of falling, all keeping step, all turning slowly or rapidly around a void. Where they claim the central sun lies, the solar being, the hot beam made out of every human gaze, there is nothing but a hole and less than a hole: the eye of a dead fish, the giddy cavity of the eye that falls into itself and looks at itself without seeing. There is nothing with which to fill the hollow center of the whirlwind. The springs are smashed, the foundations collapsed, the visible or invisible bonds that joined one star to another, one body to another, one man to another, are nothing but a tangle of wires and thorns, a jungle of claws and teeth that twist us and chew us and spit us out and chew us again. No one hangs himself by the rope of a physical law. The equations fall tirelessly into themselves.
And in regard to the present matter, if the present matters: I do not belong to the masters. I don't wash my hands of it, but I am not a judge, nor a witness for the prosecution, nor an executioner. I do not torture, interrogate, or suffer interrogation. I do not loudly plead for leniency, nor wish to save myself or anyone else. And for all that I don't do and for all that they do to us, I neither ask forgiveness nor forgive. Their piety is as abject as their justice. Am I innocent? I'm guilty. Am I guilty? I'm innocent. (I'm innocent when I'm guilty, guilty when I'm innocent. I'm guilty when … but that is another song. Another song? It's all the same song.) Guilty innocent, innocent guilty, the fact is I quit.

Fish , Sun , Dead

“All hopes and despairs vanish in the voracious, funneling whirlwind of God.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: All hopes and despairs vanish in the voracious, funneling whirlwind of God. God laughs, wails, kills, sets us on fire, and then leaves us in the middle of the way, charred embers.
And I rejoice to feel between my temples, in the flicker of an eyelid, the beginning and the end of the world.
I condense into a lightning moment the seeding, sprouting, blossoming, fructifying, and the disappearance of every tree, animal, man, star, and god.
All Earth is a seed planted in the coils of my mind. Whatever struggles for numberless years to unfold and fructify in the dark womb of matter bursts in my head like a small and silent lightning flash.
Ah! let us gaze intently on this lightning flash, let us hold it for a moment, let us arrange it into human speech.
Let us transfix this momentary eternity which encloses everything, past and future, but without losing in the immobility of language any of its gigantic erotic whirling.

God , Hope , Despair

“Do good to them that hate you" (an exhortation presumably intended for the capitalist as well as for the laborer), another statement of the same rule is, "They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind."”

A. J. Muste (1885–1967) Christian pacifist and civil rights activist

Context: The psychological basis for the use of nonviolent methods is the simple rule that like produces like, kindness provokes kindness, as surely as injustice produces resentment and evil. It is sometimes forgotten by those whose pacifism is a spurious, namby-pamby thing that if one Biblical statement of this rule is "Do good to them that hate you" (an exhortation presumably intended for the capitalist as well as for the laborer), another statement of the same rule is, "They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind." You get from the universe what you give, with interest! What if men build a system on violence and injustice, on not doing good to those who hate them nor even to those who meekly obey and toil for them? And persist in this course through centuries of Christian history? And if, then, the oppressed raise the chant:

Hate

“Such souls are, in these days, getting somewhat out of humour with the world. Your very Byron, in these days, is at least driven mad; flatly refuses fealty to the world. The world with its injustices, its golden brutalities, and dull yellow guineas, is a disgust to such souls: the ray of Heaven that is in them does at least pre-doom them to be very miserable here. Yes:—and yet all misery is faculty misdirected, strength that has not yet found its way. The black whirlwind is mother of the lightning. No smoke, in any sense, but can become flame and radiance! Such soul, once graduated in Heaven's stern University, steps out superior to your guinea.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

World , Way , Soul , Sense

“So when an angel by divine command
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.”

Joseph Addison The Campaign

Source: The Campaign (1704), Line 287, the word "passed" was here originally spelt "past" but modern renditions have updated the spelling for clarity. An alteration of these lines occurs in Alexander Pope's satire The Dunciad, Book III, line 264, where he describes a contemporary theatre manager as an "Angel of Dulness":
Immortal Rich! how calm he sits at ease,
Midst snows of paper, and fierce hail of pease;
And proud his mistress' order to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.

Angels

“They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.”

Arthur Travers Harris (1892–1984) Royal Air Force air marshal

Statement of 1942, at the start of the bombing campaign against Germany, as quoted in "Sir Arthur Harris & The Lancaster Bomber" at The British Postal Museum and Archive http://postalheritage.org.uk/page/ww2stamps-bomberharris
Context: The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.

“Whatever plans we may make, we shall find quite useless when the time for action comes. Revolutions are always full of surprises, and whoever thinks he can play chess with a revolution will soon find how terrible is the grasp of God and how insignificant the human reason before the whirlwind of His breath.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

22 February 1908
India's Rebirth
Context: Whatever plans we may make, we shall find quite useless when the time for action comes. Revolutions are always full of surprises, and whoever thinks he can play chess with a revolution will soon find how terrible is the grasp of God and how insignificant the human reason before the whirlwind of His breath. That man only is likely to dominate the chances of a Revolution, who makes no plans but preserves his heart pure for the will of God to declare itself. The great rule of life is to have no schemes but one unalterable purpose. If the will is fixed on the purpose it sets itself to accomplish, then circumstances will suggest the right course; but the schemer finds himself always tripped up by the unexpected.

God , Thinking , Time

“The Teacher points out that you should learn to feel the bonds which have united you by the manifestation of miracles. By a wondrous bast are your sandals tied for the long journey. As was the past, so also will be laid the future. One cannot have respite from predestined meetings. And numberless are the sendings upon the pages of life. Thus, all is prepared; but do not tear My web. The whirlwind of folly blows away the best designs sent by Me. One should not strew about treasures which are bestowed for manifestation to the world. Being a minor is not an excuse. It is better to celebrate the victory after the first battle than to wander underground. Therefore, I say, walk together and cover yourselves by one Shield. Let each one purify his breath without sprouting the dust of anger. And, gathering the flowers of devotion, you will understand the usefulness of My path. Do I lead you by force? Compulsion is not Our ally.But if we are walking together, why not give counsel! Therefore, I say to you, think better and do not stumble.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

10
Leaves of Morya’s Garden: Book Two: Illumination (1925)

Anger , Understanding , Past , Future

“I don’t think that I would call it a whirlwind in terms of our relationship. Obviously there have been layers attached to how public it has become after we had a good five, six months almost with just privacy, which was amazing. But no, I think we were able to really have so much time just to connect and we never went longer than two weeks without seeing each other, even though we were obviously doing a long distance relationship. So it’s — we made it work.”

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (1981) American former actress and member by marriage of the British royal family

Engagement interview (November 2017)

Thinking , Time

“The enormous privileges given to Brahmins by the Vedas were sacrosanct only as long as they went unchallenged. The challenge rose in the Tamil country like a whirlwind spearheaded by an iconoclast who questioned the Vedas and the gods as well. He took apparently extremist positions on some issues, but the fundamental nature of the social revolution he wrought was clear even to its victims. The political perspectives of Tamil Nadu and with it much of India, were altered with as seeming finality by Ramaswamy Naicker.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Quoted from "Makers of Millennium India" in Express Publications in Fuzzy and Neutrosophic Analysis of Periyar's Views on Untouchability by W. B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Florentin Smarandache, K. Kandasamy http://books.google.co.in/books?id=hgb-MKcsSR0C&pg=PA380, p. 103.
About Periyar

Question , God , Country , Nature

“A wild impetuous whirlwind of passion and faculty slumbered quiet there; such heavenly melody dwelling in the heart of it. A noble rough genuineness; homely, rustic, honest; true simplicity of strength; with its lightning-fire, with its soft dewy pity;—like the old Norse Thor, the Peasant-god!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

Passion , Home , God , Heart

“A youth nursed up in wintry whirlwinds, in desolate darkness and difficulty, that he may step forth at last from his stormy Scandinavia, strong as a true man, as a god: a Christian Odin,—a right Thor once more, with his thunder-hammer, to smite asunder ugly enough Jotuns and Giant-monsters!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Priest

Strong , God , Youth

“The Earth is nothing but phlegm spat out by the Sun, and our immediate solar system a whirlwind of boulders. There is no "delicate balance".”

A.E. Samaan

Source: From a "Race of Masters" to a "Master Race": 1948 to 1848

Sun