Quotes About Instability

Something whispered that the happiness we at present enjoyed was set on mutable foundations. Death must happen to all.

I'm a straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all directions by the elephants

Mr. Dennis received this part of the scheme with a wry face, observing that as a general principle he objected to women altogether, as being unsafe and slippery persons on whom there was no calculating with any certainty, and who were never in the same mind for four-and-twenty hours at a stretch.

I cannot tell you how dependent and uncertain I feel, and how exposed to hundreds of chances. All my expectations depend on one person. And how indefinite and uncertain they are!

As if, in the gap he had left, the wedge of change were driven to the head, rending what was a solid mass to fragments, things cemented and held together by the usages of years, burst asunder in as many weeks. The mine which Time has slowly dug beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock before, becomes but sand and dust.

the more energy a probability requires, the more unstable it really is.

A civilization, when the moment has come for crowds to acquire a high hand over it, is at the mercy of too many chances to endure for long. Could anything postpone for a while the hour of its ruin, it would be precisely the extreme instability of the opinions of crowds and their growing indifference and lack of respect for all general beliefs.

Chaos and instability, concepts only beginning to acquire formal definitions, were not the same at all. A chaotic system could be stable if its particular brand of irregularity persisted in the face of small disturbances.

Those studying chaotic dynamics discovered that the disorderly behavior of simple systems acted as a creative process. It generated complexity: richly organized patterns, sometimes stable and sometimes unstable, sometimes finite and sometimes infinite, but always with the fascination of living things. That was why scientists played with toys.

The Butterfly Effect acquired a technical name: sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

the tiny imprecision built into each calculation rapidly takes over, because this is a system with sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

Funny the way those newspaper men veer about when they get wind of a new opening. Weathercocks. Hot and cold in the same breath. Wouldn't know which to believe. One story good till you hear the next. Go for one another baldheaded in the papers and then all blows over. Hail fellow well met the next moment.

You see how easy it is to go from having everything to having nothing?

Normalcy has taken leave of the galaxy.

In case you guys didn't catch last week's episode, I'm out of the flock, I informed them. Angel has no allegiance to me. She's wanted me gone for a long time. And in case you didn't catch all the episodes from the past year, Angel is... unbalanced. Untrustworthy, Fang seconded. Unpredictable, Jeb added. Dangerous, Dylan chimed in.

He was on the verge on insanity with one foot on a banana peel...

The Middle East is a very difficult stage to play upon. Without doubt, it is a good drama. And on occasion, there are situations so unimaginable, if not ludicrous, as to make them almost comic. But the cast is constantly changing, the audience is often disengaged, and it seems at times that no one is actually running the show.

Womankind Is ever a fickle and a changeful thing.

Women's words are as light as the doomed leaves whirling in autumn, Easily swept by the wind, easily drowned by the wave.

Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state.

Growing up, I never had a steady home.

There's nothing so interesting as a steam roller that's about to be derailed.

had gone insane and would throw the child, perhaps

No matter how dizzying his professional highs, Shane just couldn't resist the pull of the tide sweeping him out. Self-destruction was always imminent. No, if writing had been the cure, the past fifteen years would've looked very different. He wouldn't have taken so long to get sober. He might've picked a permanent place to live, put down actual roots. Invested in Seamless or Spotify. He'd have gotten serious about the business of living.