"Catastrophic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the institutions of civilization, the catastrophic losses of the present century could have been foretold and, with competent leadership and disciplined followership, could have been averted. But leadership was self-serving, shortsighted and for the most part untrained, while followership was split up into national and local segments, ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... have this out at once,' she said, and hailing a taxi she bundled the other woman into it and drove home. Charles was out. She ordered tea, and quickly had the whole story out—the lodgings in Birmingham, the intrigue, the ultimatum, Charles's catastrophic collapse and inertia, years of poverty in London going from studio to studio, lodging to lodging: his flight—with another woman: her struggles, her present hand to mouth existence on the outskirts of ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... felt himself "knocked out." With incredible velocity his friends were caught up and whirled in every direction like cockle-shells in a hurricane. Their haunts knew them no more, and before he could realize his personal concern with catastrophic events Bobby became a disconsolate wanderer in search of the flotsam and jetsam which were all that remained ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... Portia Van Brock's, having been bidden to meet a man they were both willing to cultivate—Oliver Marston, the lieutenant-governor. And for this cause it wanted but five minutes of midnight when Kent burst into Loring's bedroom on the third floor of the Clarendon, catastrophic ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... silence, the catastrophic desolation of the place, were all the more impressive because of the relatively recent date of the buildings. As Moulay-Ismael had dealt with Volubilis, so time had dealt with his own Meknez; and the destruction which it had taken thousands ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... catastrophic. Ever a high-strung bird, he lost completely the repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere and the better order of parrot. His nerves were shocked, and, as always under such conditions, his impulse was to bite blindly. He bit, and Henry—one feels sorry for Henry: he was ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... a catastrophic change Set his shipmates thinking; Rumour whispered, "It is strange; Clearly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... would be parallel but not the same. But if there were even a mental equal to men, no matter how unhuman such a creature might appear, if there were a really rational animal anywhere in the cosmos off of Earth, the result would be catastrophic. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... which was continued into the following reign and was remedied only under Elizabeth. The first experiment was made as early as 1526; but it was the financial embarrassments of Henry's last years which brought about a debasement that was almost catastrophic. From 1543 to 1551 matters went from bad to worse till the currency was in a state of chaos: and the silver coin issued in the last year contained only one-seventh of the pure metal that went to that ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... he sat upon the sidewalk in 56th Street, and tried to pacify certain outraged blood-vessels in the nasal region. Of course, the curtain had been up some time, but, so far as he was concerned, the incidents which followed his precipitate descent from the automobile were merely catastrophic. He had seen a vivid, violet-colored star close to his eyes, had felt a crushing blow, had heard his own voice vaguely; and then he awoke to a singular sense of personal dis-ease, and to the fact that the noble Earl had ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... was an organism of flesh and blood, of the same constitution and structure as ours. It occupied space, and was ordinarily subject to the laws of space. It was visible and tangible. It shared the natural processes of birth, growth, and metabolism. At the resurrection a catastrophic change took place in it. It was still a body. It was still Christ's body. Continuity was preserved. The evidences of continuity were external, and so strong as to convince doubters. We cannot fathom either the change or the continuity. What we know is that ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... has known, at one time or another in life, that strange unexpected calm that always falls like sudden snow on a storm-tossed country, after some great crisis or upheaval. The blow has seemed so catastrophic that the world must be changed with the force of its fall— but the world is not changed; hours pass and days go by, and no one seems to be aware that anything has occurred...it is only when months have gone, and perhaps ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... understood, as Anarchist Communism understands it, in the sense of ownership by the free association of the men and women in a community without those compulsory powers which are necessary to constitute a State. Some Socialists expect communal ownership to arrive suddenly and completely by a catastrophic revolution, while others expect it to come gradually, first in one industry, then in another. Some insist upon the necessity of completeness in the acquisition of land and capital by the public, while others would be content to see lingering islands of ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... tragedy in pantomime! A terrible jangle and catastrophic silence! No groan from misused Christmas. No remarks from the dumbfounded birds! With the vicious aeroplane hopping after him, he had galloped for the narrow aisle through the ribbon of jungle concealing the beach. There he had met his fate! Yes, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... with an extended forefinger and the knitted brows of one anticipating a catastrophic smash. The cyclist, who was sitting next the lamp, ducked and jumped across the bar. Everybody jumped, more or less. Miss Maybridge turned and screamed. For nearly three seconds the lamp remained still. A faint ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... more than this earth. It is not of the greatest importance whether we lose it or it lose itself. We look for a "new heavens and a new earth." We are, or should be, used to their forces, and at home among their personalities. This universe is a unity. It is not made up of separate, catastrophic movements, but it all flows on like the sweetly blended notes of a psalm. "Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;" though the heavens be "rolled together as a scroll," the stars fall, "even as a fig tree ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... allowed to die. If Grant Hamilton were returned to the Senate, the long-range planning of William Lancedale would suffer a crushing setback, and the public reaction would be catastrophic. The Plan comes first, Lancedale had told him. He made his decision, and then saw that he hadn't needed to make it. Claire had straightened, left her father, crossed quickly to the safe, and was kneeling in front of it, her back stiff with determination, her fingers busy at the dials, her eyes ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... the entire household up, the tragic news having circulated with the rapidity peculiar to such catastrophic tidings; and preceded by Major Carstairs, who met him in the hall, he hurried upstairs to the room where Tochatti lay in her ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... within a year after Caroline's catastrophic visit to the bookshop the only thing in it that preserved any semblance of being up to date was Miss Masters. Miss McCracken had followed in the footsteps of Mr. Moonlight Quill ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Ministers was shared by an ever-increasing number of her subjects. During the crisis in the Sudan, the popular temper was her own. She had been among the first to urge the necessity of an expedition to Khartoum, and, when the news came of the catastrophic death of General Gordon, her voice led the chorus of denunciation which raved against the Government. In her rage, she despatched a fulminating telegram to Mr. Gladstone, not in the usual cypher, but open; and her letter of condolence to Miss ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... imagination, which naturally is more at home in the marvelous and catastrophic than in the orderly regions of familiar phenomena. To him the heavens are an immense pyrotechnicon and he is the master of the show and sets off the fireworks. But he knows nothing of logic, which is the science of ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... imperceptibly gradual. After a while she rarely spoke of her husband. The name of Leonard Boyce was never mentioned between us. With her as with me, the weeks ate up the uneventful days and the months the uneventful weeks. In her humdrum life the falling away of Mrs. Tufton loomed catastrophic. ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... can talk or write or echo, can do his utmost to spread his realization of the possibilities of a world congress and the establishment of world law and world peace that lie behind the monstrous agonies and cruelties and confusions of this catastrophic year. Given an immense body of opinion initiatives may break out effectively anywhere; failing it, they will ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Thrasimede, which will, as some say, "bulk largely" later. The length of this part is, indeed, enormous, the double volume running to over fourteen hundred pages, instead of the usual ten or twelve. But its close is spirited and sufficiently interim-catastrophic. Cyrus discovers in the enceinte of Sardis the usual weak point—an apparently impregnable scarped rock, which has been weakly fortified and garrisoned—takes it by escalade in person with his best paladins, and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... for all, with aggressive designs against no one. Yet we realize that there is uneasiness in the world because of a belief on the part of peoples that through arrogance, miscalculation or fear of attack, catastrophic war could be launched. Keeping the peace in today's world more than ever calls for the utmost in the nation's resolution, wisdom, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... damnation of the next generation before it is born, is exposed in all its catastrophic misery, in the reports of the National Consumers' League. In her report of living conditions among night-working mothers in thirty-nine textile mills in Rhode Island, based on exhaustive studies, Mrs. Florence Kelley describes the "normal" life of ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... elastic, standing at any moment in a temporary and unstable equilibrium. But at any particular moment the possibility of a huge and catastrophic shift such as those described is out of the question except at the price of a general collapse. Even a minor dislocation breaks down a certain part of the machinery of society. Particular groups of workers are thrown out of place. There is no other place where they can fit in, or at any rate ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... Most catastrophic of all, however, was the fact that Dag Daughtry was three quarts short of his daily allowance and did not dare break into the rent money which was all that stood between him and his family and the street. This was why he sat at the beer ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... The poetry, fiction and drama of the three Northern nations had become stagnant with commonplace and conventional matter, lumbered with the recognized, inevitable and sacrosanct forms of composition. This was particularly the case in Sweden, where the influence of Ibsen now proved more violent and catastrophic than anywhere else. Ibsen destroyed the attraction of the old banal poetry; his spirit breathed upon it in fire, and in all its faded elegance it withered ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... agreed that the long dry summer menaced some catastrophic change which should surprise this easy-going age as the plague had done last year. But oh, how lightly that widespread calamity had touched those light minds! and, if Providence had designed to warn or to punish, how vain had been the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... lot of people seem to imagine national bankruptcy: as a catastrophic jolt. It is a quite impossible nightmare of cessation. The reality is the completest contrast. All the belligerent countries of the world are at the present moment quietly, steadily and progressively ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... shorten its period from thirty-seven to two years and eight months, must, in the immediate future, be brought to rest on his surface; and the solar conflagration thence ensuing was represented in some quarters, with more licence of imagination than countenance from science, as likely to be of catastrophic import to the inhabitants of ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... of dealing with unhealthy conditions is unfortunately not one that compels us to conduct a solvent hygiene on a cash basis. She demoralizes us with long credits and reckless overdrafts, and then pulls us up cruelly with catastrophic bankruptcies. Take, for example, common domestic sanitation. A whole city generation may neglect it utterly and scandalously, if not with absolute impunity, yet without any evil consequences that anyone thinks of tracing to it. In a hospital two generations of ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... his head whimsically. "Chatellerault has had his laugh already, and, like the ill-mannered dog he is, he has kept it to himself. I think, Marcel, that it is our turn now. I have purposely sent Chatellerault away that he may gain no notion of the catastrophic jest we are preparing him ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... of papers arrived. The German advance was continuing. The British reverse was becoming catastrophic. At first I felt a kind of grimness, and then I was thrilled by the thought that perhaps the end of the war might be near. We might not have a good peace, but peace of any kind was preferable to war. The mendacious Press talked much about a "dishonourable peace," as though any peace could ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt |
