thunderstorm quotes

Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.

-W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden
  'The Novelist'.

Die Zeit hat inWirklichkeit keine Einschnitte, es gibt kein Gewitter oder Drommetenget o« n beim Beginn eines neuen Monats oder Jahres, und selbst bei dem eines neuen S a« kulums sind es nur wir Menschen, die schieÞen und l a« uten. Timehasno divisionstomark its passage, there isnevera thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.

-Thomas Mann
  Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), ch.4, section 4 (translated by H  T Lowe-Porter).

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new: That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do: For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heaven fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew From the nations'airy navies grappling in the central blue; Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, Ulysses With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunder-storm; Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle- flags were furled In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'Locksley Hall', l.117^28.