Lightning Quotes
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Such souls, Whose sudden visitations daze the world, Vanish like lightning, but they leave behind A voice that in the distance far away wakens the slumbering ages.
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More Lightning Quotes
lightning never strikes twice in the same place.
— Meaning: "The same unpleasant or unexpected phenomenon will not recur in the same place or circumstances, or happen to the same person again; a superstition that often leads to a false sense of security."
— Source for meaning: Martin H. Manser (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 169.
— Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710. , p. 634
The air crackled with the presage of lightning, and a heavy mist descended around them.
stephen r. lawhead— p. 163 (The Bone House (2011))
When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
william shakespeare— Macbeth (1605), Act I, scene 1, line 1.
Thunder is good , thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work .
— Mark Twain, letter to an Unidentified Person (1908).
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.
william shakespeare— Lysander, scene i
His love was passion's essence:as a tree On fire by lightning, with ethereal flame Kindled he was, and blasted.
Rochdale— 1812-18 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 3, stanza 78.
We sail across dominions barely seen, washed by the swells of time. We plow through fields of magnetism. Past and future come together on thunderheads and our dead hearts live with lightning in the wounds of the Gods.
norman mailer— Ancient Evenings (1983) Last lines
Naked girls with the heads of Marx and Malraux prone and helpless in the glare of the headlights, tried to give them a little joie de vivre but maybe it didn’t take, their constant bickering and smallness, it’s like a stroke of lightning, the world reminds you of its power, tracheotomies right and left, I am spinning, my pretty child, don’t scratch, pick up your feet, the long nights, spent most of my time listening, this is a test of the system, this is only a test.
Donald Barthelme— “Aria”, conclusion
Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea.
john muir— The Mountains of California, Chapter 1: "The Sierra Nevada"
Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the God of storms, The lightning and the gale.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., A Metrical Essay.
Oh, the air is sultry and pregnant with lightning . And therefore we call to our deluded brothers: Repent , repent, the Kingdom of the Lord is at hand !
— Mikhail Bakunin, in "The Reaction in Germany" (1842)
At Tara today in this fateful hour I place all Heaven with its power, And the sun with its brightness, And the snow with its whiteness, And fire with all the strength it hath, And lightning with its rapid wrath, And the winds with their swiftness along their path, And the sea with its deepness, And the rocks with their steepness, And the earth with its starkness All these I place, By God's almighty help and grace, Between myself and the powers of darkness.
— "The Rune of St. Patrick", derived from "The Lorica", both traditionally attributed to St. Patrick, published in Lyrica Celtica (1896); also in Celtic Christianity : Ecology and Holiness (1987) by Christopher Bamford and William Parker Marsh, p. 54
Oh, the air is sultry and pregnant with lightning . And therefore we call to our deluded brothers: Repent, repent, the Kingdom of the Lord is at hand !
— Mikhail Bakunin, in "The Reaction in Germany" (1842)
'Tis thou, alone, who with thy mystic fan, Work'st more than Wisdom, Art, or Nature can, To rouse the sacred madness; and awake The frost-bound-blood, and spirits; and to make Them frantic with thy raptures, flashing through The soul, like lightning, and as active too.
Robert Herrick— 1648 'His Fare-well to Sack'.
I did say yes O at lightning and lashed rod; Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess Thy terror,O Christ,O God.
gerard manley hopkins— 1876 'The Wreck of the Deutschland', pt.1, stanza 2.
It is He who shows you the lightning, for fear and hope, and produces the heavy clouds; the thunder proclaims His praise, and the angels, in awe of Him.
The Koran— Sura13, l.13.
It came by a lightning flash like knowledge from the gods.
— 1975 On the1953 discovery of the DNA molecule. Sociobiology.
Thought can never capture the movement of life, it is much too slow. It is like lightning and thunder. They occur simultaneously, but sound, travelling slower than light, reaches you later, creating the illusion of two separate events.
u. g. krishnamurti— Mind is a Myth (1987), Chapter 3: Not Knowing Is Your Natural State.
Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.
joseph addison— No. 381 (17 May 1712).
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on.
julia ward howe— First lines of the published version, in the Atlantic Monthly (February 1862); Howe stated that the title “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was devised by the Atlantic editor James T. Fields.Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
He is trampling out the wine press, where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He hath loosed the fateful lightnings of his terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.First lines of the first manuscript version (19 November 1861).
The art of concentrating strength at one point, forcing a breakthrough, rolling up and securing the flanks on either side, and then penetrating like lightning, before the enemy has time to react, deep into his rear.
erwin rommel— Strategies he promoted which have been called Blitzkrieg (Lightning War), as quoted in Europe Since 1914 (1966) by Gordon Alexander Craig
The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.
mark twain
A flash of harmless lightning, A mist of rainbow dyes, The burnished sunbeams brightening From flower to flower he flies.
— John Banister Tabb, Humming Bird.
It has been suggested that because the able mechanical engineers who have taken up the subject of dynamo construction are mainly to be credited with the advances which have been made in electrical lightning, therefor electrical engineering per se is to be a thing of the past. For the further, those who would be electrical engineers must first be mechanical engineers, and then somehow obtain a smattering of electrical knowledge, and all will be will with them...
— Sydney F. Walker (1890) "A plea for the electrical engineer" in: The Electrical Engineer (1890) p. 286
An immortality of pain and tears; an infinity of wretchedness and despair; the blackness of darkness across which conscience will forever shoot her clear and ghastly flashes, like lightning streaming over a desert when midnight and tempest are there; weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth; long, long eternity, and things that will make eternity seem longer, making each moment seem eternity, oh, miserable condition of the damned!
— Richard Fuller, p. 311. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does all the work.
— Mark Twain, as quoted in Living Like Benjamin : Making Dreams Come True (2007) by Brad Borden, p. 123
We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed The white of their leaves, the amber grain Shrunk in the wind, and the lightning now Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain.
thomas bailey aldrich— Before the Rain
'Tis a principle of war that when you can use the lightning, 'tis better than cannon.
Napoleon I— Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 841-60.
