Best 369 quotes in «disaster quotes» category

Faced with the prospect of a black depression, Highsmith once again retreated into fantasy, dreaming about an affair with the actress Anne Meacham, whose picture she had seen in a magazine publicising her role in the Tennessee Williams' play, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel. After the disasters of recent years, she reckoned that the safest option was to escape into romantic imagination. She reviewed her failures over the past five years and concluded that 'the moral is: stay alone. Any idea of any close relationship should be imaginary, like any story I am writing. This way no harm is done to me or to any other person'.

Flying in a modern jet airplane doses the human with levels of radiation comparable to those found in nuclear disaster zones.

Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and gives them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes more conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune...

Front grace in the shadows

He awoke the next morning to an instant consciousness of disaster.

I always hated it when TV reporters stuck a microphone in the faces of people who'd just lost a home or a loved one, wanting to know how they felt. They felt like shit. They hurt, and they didn't know how they were going to get through the night. They wanted to scream and cry and hit the guy with the microphone.

He said it hit him travelling one time in the year or so before he met my mother. Whatever country of the world it was, the poor were starting to look alike, live alike, eat alike, and dress alike in the same kind of clothes all made in the same part of China. To him, it was a sign that the people had got severed from the land.

Hell, sometimes it feels like the whole country is on fire. Like a constant conflagration is burning too close to all poor people. Shouldn't rich-ass America be taking care of everybody?

How strange it (the earthquake) must all have seemed to them, here where they lived so safely always! They thought such a dreadful thing could happen to others, but not to them. That is the way!

Humans are very intelligent in inventing new ideas to gamble and pursue financial greed. Every financial trading, instruments and systems looks like a beautiful silent volcano before destructive eruptions.

I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, for grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want everyone to scratch himself to death.

If your life is a miserable disaster, you might want to consider, that it's because you are doing something wrong.

If this is really it...if you're really done with me...will you let me hold you tonight? - Travis

If a country is not governed well, all sort of disasters will become a routine of that country!

I have flirted with disaster like a miracle reversed midstream.

I had the vertiginous feeling one gets standing at the precipice of an unresolved plan, for I had brought Bon and myself to the brink of disaster without knowing how to save us. But was not this how all plans developed, unknown to their maker until he wove for himself a parachute, or else melted into air?

I have every expectation that the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop Mauna Kea will be remembered by historians as the biggest disaster to ever hit astronomy.

I have no sense of what War is like; It may be like disaster Hollywood movies. But i wish india and Pakistan fight a War and devour all ; instead of decapitating one-by-one

In books there are chapters to separate out the moments, to show that time is going by and things are changing, and sometimes the parts even have titles that are full of promise—'The Meeting', 'Hope', 'Downfall'—like paintings do. But in life there's nothing like that, no titles or signs or warnings, nothing to say 'Beware, danger!' or 'Frequent landslides' or 'Disillusion ahead'. In life you stand all alone in your costume, and too bad if it's in tatters.

In the midst of a full-blown disaster – with the house apparently self-destructing around them – Lila was calmly filing her nails.

In devastation there is opportunity.

I noticed that volcanoes, earthquakes and floods, though are not good events, they are better than the silence of good people when bad people take the podium. The latter are to an extent uncontrollable, but the former can be stopped.

I rise from my worst disasters, I turn, I change.

I pulled the sheet off their faces. Their faces were black with coal dust and didn't look like anything was wrong with them except they were dirty. The both of them had smiles on their faces. I thought maybe one of them had told a joke just before they died and, pain and all, they both laughed and ended up with a smile. Probably not true but but it made me feel good to think about it like that, and when the Sister came in I asked her if I could clean their faces and she said, "no, certainly not!" but I said, "ah, c'mon, it's me brother n' father, I want to," and she looked at me and looked at me, and at last she said, "of course, of course, I'll get some soap and water." When the nun came back she helped me. Not doing it, but more like showing me how, and taking to me, saying things like "this is a very handsome man" and "you must have been proud of your brother" when I told her how Charlie Dave would fight for me, and "you're lucky you have another brother"; of course I was, but he was younger and might change, but she talked to me and made it all seem normal, the two of us standing over a dead face and cleaning the grit away. The only other thing I remember a nun ever saying to me was, "Mairead, you get to your seat, this minute!

It’s a diamond isle of paradise beneath a black sky! Welcome to a crisp Italian January! We’re so much more than lavish travelers now… We’ll go down in history, Down like this vessel that sank so swiftly, Down to the depths below… These angels are splashing through neon casinos, Lifeboats are launching, and first up’s Schettino . Don’t blame him, he claims he fell in! That’s why he’s safe and we’re sorry. Vada a bordo, cazzo! Our beautiful floating carnival is DYING! Velvet carpets soaked with seawater, elevators sealed shut! The sour taste of death flows through in waves, Pulling people down to icy graves, Down to the depths below… Who am I? I’m his purser, and I might survive, If the coastguard realizes I’m still alive. For now I’m down here, as you might overhear, At the trial where he’ll share his story. Vada a bordo, cazzo!

It does not matter what I believe. The past is done. Hope is irrelevant. We measure success and failure in history with a cost of lives. Penicillin saved people, and the world wars exterminated them. Success and failure. Feelings, regrets, the point where they knew they made mistakes...it is interesting but unfortunately, irrelevant. Did they go to their death and grieve for what they did? Did the makers of the atomic bomb grieve for the destruction they dedicated their lives towards creating? Who cares? They did it. Whether they knew what they were creating, or whether they talked themselves into believing it was for the best, the glory of history is being able to view it in black-and-white. However honorable one's initial intention, a villain will always be a villain.

I thank God for my sanguine temperament, which refuses to allow me to believe in disaster until it is finally manifest

It's a sight I plan to remember, this spontaneous unity when faced with disaster.

It's certainly true that Chernobyl, while an accident in the sense that no one intentionally set it off, was also the deliberate product of a culture of cronyism, laziness, and a deep-seated indifference toward the general population. The literature on the subject is pretty unanimous in its opinion that the Soviet system had taken a poorly designed reactor and then staffed it with a group of incompetents. It then proceeded, as the interviews in this book attest, to lie about the disaster in the most criminal way. In the crucial first ten days, when the reactor core was burning and releasing a steady stream of highly radioactive material into the surrounding areas, the authorities repeatedly claimed that the situation was under control. . . In the week after the accident, while refusing to admit to the world that anything really serious had gone wrong, the Soviets poured thousands of men into the breach. . . The machines they brought broke down because of the radiation. The humans wouldn't break down until weeks or months later, at which point they'd die horribly.

It's called the Infinity Effect.

Not having ice cream,” she proclaimed, “is the culmination of all disasters!

I’ve seen a lot of stuff… maybe I’ve seen too much. I see most humans in a bad light because I’ve seen what they can do, how evil they can be… I’ve seen the Holocaust and I’ve seen Jonestown, I’ve seen the Vietnam War and I’ve seen Hiroshima… I’ve seen the Chernobyl disaster… I’ve seen the World Trade Center attack… I’ve been alive too long, over a hundred years is a long time to be alive,” Alecto sighed, staring at the cigarette he was holding.

Man is bound to follow the exploits of his scientific and inventive mind and to admire himself for his splendid achievements. At the same time, he cannot help admitting that his genius shows an uncanny tendency to invent things that become more and more dangerous, because they represent better and better means for wholesale suicide. In view of the rapidly increasing avalanche of world population, we have already begun to seek ways and means of keeping the rising flood at bay. But nature may anticipate all our attempts by turning against man his own creative mind, and, by releasing the H-bomb or some equally catastrophic device, put an effective stop to overpopulation. In spite of our proud domination of nature we are still her victims as much as ever and have not even learnt to control our own nature, which slowly and inevitably courts disaster.

Maybe when we face a tragedy, someone, somewhere is preventing a bigger tragedy from happening.

Most creatures run when they sense danger. People grab a six-pack and a folding chair.

Natural disasters happen from time to time but poverty happens all the time and therefore poverty is the greatest tragedy, it is the greatest disaster of mankind!

It was a great fucking time, the short era of disaster euphoria, for nothing enhances pleasures and blocks guilt like a looming cataclysm.

I will feel no guilt on shutting my door to those who didn't listen.

Love is a curious mixture of opposites, a blend of extreme selfishness and total devotion. A paradox! Besides which, love, everybody is always talking about love, love, but love isn't something you choose, you catch it like a disease, you get trapped in it, like a disaster.

Modern society is a biological disaster masquerading as progress.

Most of the parents who came to the school were full-time mothers and housewives; most of the villagers offering their opinions were retired, elderly and male. It was another enactment of the ancient dialogue, its lines written centuries ago, between the entreating voices of women, and the oblivious, overbearing dismissiveness of old men.

No matter what happens, disaster piled on calamity, no matter what, everything will be okay in the long run.

Not IF...But WHEN

On February 9th, 1942, the SS Normandie, a proud ocean liner and the pride of the French Merchant Marine, was being converted into a troop transport. A welder’s torch cut through a bulkhead and set afire a bundle of flammable rags and a stack of life jackets. The fire soon roared throughout the ship and since the internal fire protection system had been disabled, the only assistance available was from the New York City Fire Department. Fireboats pumped water onto the blaze until it caused this magnificent vessel to become unstable. I guess it never occurred to anyone that the water going into the ship, should have been pumped out! On February 10th, the ship rolled over onto its port side, sinking into the mud alongside Pier 88 in Manhattan. Investigations ensued with the thought being that this tragedy was caused by enemy sabotage. However, later findings indicated that the fire had been completely accidental. There are still some allegations contradicting this, and claims that the fire was indeed arson and involved “Lucky” Luciano, the Mafia boss who controlled the waterfront. From the time the fire started until the Normandie was righted in 1943, I watched what was happening to the now renamed USS Lafayette from a perfect vantage point at the top of the Palisades near North Street Park. It was the talk of the town and everyone continued to speculate as to who was at fault. “It must have been the Nazis,” was the conventional wisdom. The soldiers to whom I frequently talked, stationed at the searchlights and gun emplacements, were the ones who surely would know. Eventually, stripped of her superstructure, the ship was righted at great expense. There was talk of converting her into an aircraft carrier, or of cutting her down to become a smaller vessel. However, in the end she was sold for $161,680 to Lipsett, Inc., an American shipyard, where the once magnificent ship was reduced to scrap metal.

Or if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentany as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And, ere a man hath power to say ‘Behold!’ The jaws of darkness do devour it up. So quick bright things come to confusion

On the palm of my hand there's a disaster. I must have been born with it. I carry it with me wherever I go.

People always say that digital cameras are much more stable than film cameras, but the truth is that digital cameras, or any kind of digital technology, is one of the most unstable things in the world. A film camera can last decades if you know how to look after it, but digital things can break down instantly. A violent storm, a nuclear bomb, even something as minor as a cracked screen or the releasing of newer models, can make a digital product just a block of useless metal.

People don't look like people anymore after they've fallen from over a hundred floors above the ground.

Sleep! May be you will wake up tomorrow and find that things never changed, the apocalypse never happened, and everything's fine, normal, at home. Or may be you will wake up tomorrow and find that things have changed, for the better, the apocalypse is over and there's light, hope and a new home. Sleep, you crazy soul, just sleep.

People from the past, have a tendency to walk back into the present, and run over the future.