"If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that registered earthquakes ten thousand miles away."
Earthquakes quotes
Earthquakes
230 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Earthquakes quotes (page 3 of 12)
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"Canadians have been very generous toward Haiti after the earthquake and, thanks to you, our most vulnerable people have received food, drinkable water, shelter, medical care and education. For that, we are extremely grateful."
"People in Japan have experienced many tsunamis and various earthquakes throughout the ages."
"As I write, Johnny Rotten's first moments in "Anarchy in the U.K." - a rolling earthquake of a laugh, a buried shout, then hoary words somehow stripped of all claptrap and set down in the city streets - I AM AN ANTICHRIST - Remain as powerful as anything I know. Listening to the record today - listening to the way Johnny Rotten tears at his lines, and then hurls the pieces at the world; recalling the all-consuming smile he produced as he sang - my back stiffens; I pull away even as my scalp begins to sweat."
"I never can see why they make such a fuss and get so frightened because wimmen does a thing or two now they usedn't to. Nothing short of a earthquake can make them not men an' wimmmen, an' that's the main thing."
"Earthquakes would be great if they could hit specific areas, like the parent lounge at a children's beauty pageant."
"The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet; and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown, we feel the insignificance of his boasted power."
"As for earthquakes, though they were still formidable, they were so interesting that men of science could hardly regret them."
"It is in the small things we see it. The child's first step, as awesome as an earthquake. The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk."
"Few literary depictions of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake match the intensity and visceral power of those in Flacco's gripping first novel. The author's screenwriting talent shines in this story of the earth's destructive power and humanity's moral depravity. The emerging maniacal personality, revealed in increasingly gruesome and venomous detail, rivals the Ripper.Dickens meets Hannibal Lecter. Brace yourself."
"After the earthquake and the fire comes the still, small voice."
"Global warming is one of those things, not like an earthquake where there's a big bang and you say, 'Oh, my God, this is really, has hit us.' It creeps up on you. ... Half a degree temperature difference from one year to the next, a little bit of rise of the ocean, a little bit of melting of the glaciers, and then all of a sudden it is too late to do something about it."
"Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell? -Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil"
"Mass civil disobedience is like an earthquake, a sort of general upheaval on the political plane."
"The big horrible thing isn't the plane crash or the earthquake or the diagnosis. When those things occur, we act, we know what to do. We live or we die. Hell is what we do in the meantime. It is the ways we starve our souls as we prepare for the future that never comes as planned. The true disaster is living the life in your mind and missing the one in front of you."
"It is always interesting to see people in dead earnest, from whatever cause, and earthquakes make everybody earnest."
"America don't have no future! America's going to be destroyed! Allah's going to divinely chastise America! Violence, crimes, earthquakes - there's gonna be all kinds of trouble. America's going to pay for all its lynchings and killings of slaves and what it's done to black people."
"Those first few weeks are an unearthly season. From the outside you remain so ordinary, no one can tell from looking that you have experienced an earthquake of the soul. You've been torn asunder, invested with an ancient, incomprehensible magic. It's the one thing that we never quite get over: that we contain our own future."
"Wind chimes are also earthquake chimes."
"I like the way Mahler wandered about in his music and still retained his passion. He must have looked like an earthquake walking down the street."