Quotes About Catastrophe

It's sort of like the flood's about to happen and you're Noah. You're on the ark. Yeah, you're okay. But you are not happy looking out at the flood. That's not a happy moment for Noah.

There is going to be a calamity, and whenever there is a calamity, Merrill is there.

Roman history, Nathaniel. You need to read it. It is full of emperors who cannot tell even their children what catastrophe is about to occur, so they might defend themselves. Sometimes there is a necessity for silence.

The garden is an unhappy place for the perfectionist. Too much stands beyond our control here, and the only thing we can absolutely count on is eventual catastrophe.

My wife's biggest fear is air pollution, living in London as we do. She's convinced that's the big problem. And my own is sink holes and the inevitability of us all, at some point, collapsing into a sink hole and never being seen again.

During Partition, my parents, my brother and sisters were killed before my eyes.

I'm familiar with that feeling of silence that comes with a very imminent catastrophe, when you know you have absolutely no control over a situation.

It is a curious feature of our existance that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.

Soon levees up and down the river were popping like buttons off a tight shirt. At Mounds Landing, Mississippi, a hundred black workers, kept at their posts by men with rifles, were swept to oblivion when a levee gave way. The coroner, for reasons unstated, recorded just two deaths.

It is a curious feature of our existence that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it. The

What would it be like if we had four years and four months to watch an inescapable doom advancing toward us, knowing that when it finally arrived it would blow the skin right off our bones?

If all the ice sheets melted, sea levels would rise by 60 metres—the height of a twenty-storey building—and every coastal city in the world would be inundated.

If all the ice sheets melted, sea levels would rise by 60 metres.

How quickly do we need to get to zero? Science tells us that in order to avoid a climate catastrophe, rich countries should reach net-zero emissions by 2050. You've probably heard people say we can decarbonize deeply even sooner—by 2030.

think Nikita Khrushchev, surprisingly enough, summed up nuclear war quite well. He said the survivors would envy the dead.

To have Trump answer them, of course, would be a catastrophe because Trump could erupt and say absolutely anything.

of mankind—something he believed Mother Nature would eventually deliver in the form of widespread famine and disease.

less of mankind—something he believed Mother Nature would eventually deliver in the form of widespread famine and disease.

I am aware, sure, I am aware. Catastrophically aware.

Life is catastrophe....Everything is unfair. Who do we complain to in this shitty place?....We all lose everything that matters in the end....it's possible to play it with a kind of joy.p.767, The Goldfinch

Por eso se fija tanto en el recuerdo, por eso se pueden contar tan bien las catástrofes.

a comfortable consumer civilization of socialized human animals, aided by all the discoveries of science and industry and reproducing demographically in a squirming, catastrophic crescendo.

In the context of tragedy, all polite behavior is self-denial.

There were a lot of these middle-aged single types in the neighborhood, shipwrecked by every kind of catastrophe, but she was one of the few who didn't have children, who lived alone, who was still kinda young. Something must have happened, your mother speculated. In her mind, a woman with no child could be explained only by vast untrammelled calamity. Maybe she just doesn't like children. Nobody likes children, your mother assured you. That doesn't mean you don't have them.