“
If I were reading a book and happened to strike a wonderful passage I would close the book then and there and go for a walk. I hated the thought of coming to the end of a good book. I would tease it along, delay the inevitable as long as possible, But always, when I hit a great passage, I would stop reading immediately. Out I would go, rain, hail, snow or ice, and chew the cud.
”
”
Henry Miller (Plexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, #2))
“
I had a few other things on my mind. Like if it was going to rain every time I got aroused. That was not cool. I guessed I could handle it so long as it rained other times as well. I didn’t want the connection to be so obvious. Hey, it’s raining! The queen must have gotten laid. Ooh…is that hail? Must have been into some kinky shit today.
”
”
Richelle Mead (Thorn Queen (Dark Swan, #2))
“
She awaits the rain like a writer embraces metaphors,
A drizzle isn't for the child who dances in the storm.
Of rain that washes away the petrichor it brings,
A downpour of a hail of bullets, and she calls it spring.
”
”
Sanhita Baruah (The Farewell and other poems)
“
Winter hurled more wind and rain at the city than it ever had before. Clouds dashed about in all directions emptying their thunder, hail and rain. The horizon was choked in fog.
”
”
Ismail Kadare (Chronicle in Stone)
“
It seemed unreasonable, unfair, that a woman so young and beautiful should be so exhausted. Of course, it was neither unreasonable nor unfair. Exhaustion pays no mind to age and beauty. Like rain and earthquakes and hail and floods.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Dance Dance Dance)
“
Exhaustion pays no mind to age or beauty. Like rain and earthquakes and hail and floods.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Dance Dance Dance)
“
Whenever it rains, I remember him, not as a tear that hails down as a raindrop, but as a God of fertility. As, every time I remember him, his memories conceive a baby of emotions in me!
”
”
Mehek Bassi (Chained: Can you escape fate?)
“
Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor hail shall close the door of the mighty Starbucks.
”
”
Lauren Myracle (Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances)
“
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely and Scrooge never did.
”
”
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
“
Eskimos have five words for different kinds of snow, because they live with it and it is important to them. But the Aztec language has but one word for snow, rain, and hail.
”
”
Alan W. Watts (The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are)
“
And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see, --
A drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell, --
I know not how such things can be! --
I breathed my soul back into me.
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who has been dead, and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound;
Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky
”
”
Edna St. Vincent Millay (Collected Poems)
“
Sorry about the rain.
This is your doing?
I'm doing everything I can to change Catesby's mind.
The mare plodded along. I looked to the skies.
maybe add some hail.
”
”
Nadine Brandes (Fawkes)
“
Decoding (a child's difficult) behavior is like looking at a rain wrapped tornado crossing the road in front of you. You see the fury of rain, hail, wind and debris, but you have to look real hard to see the driving force behind it.
”
”
Deborah A. Beasley (Successful Foster Care Adoption)
“
The storm lashes us, out of the confusion of grey and yellow the hail of splinters whips forth the childlike cries of the wounded, and in the night shattered life groans painfully into silence. Our hands are earth, our bodies clay and our eyes pools of rain. We do not know whether we are still alive.
”
”
Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)
“
Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)
Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up
”
”
Frank O'Hara
“
It starts raining harder, I've got a long way to go walking and pushing that sore leg right along in the gathering rain, no chance no intention whatever of hailing a cab, the whiskey and the Morphine have made me unruffled by the sickness of the poison in my heart.
”
”
Jack Kerouac (Tristessa)
“
What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier, returning to the range, admire?
Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's projection: its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides: its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all the region below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: its capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all soluble substances including millions of tons of the most precious metals: its slow erosions of peninsulas and islands, its persistent formation of homothetic islands, peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents, gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified by the well by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe), numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90 percent of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon.
”
”
James Joyce (Ulysses)
“
They rode for days through the rain and they rode through rain and hail and rain again. In that gray storm light they crossed a flooded plain with the footed shapes of the horses reflected in the water among clouds and mountains and the riders slumped forward and rightly skeptic of the shimmering cities on the distant shore of that sea whereon they trod miraculous. They climbed up through rolling grasslands where small birds shied away chittering down the wind and a buzzard labored up from among bones with wings that went whoop whoop whoop like a child's toy swung on a string and in the long red sunset the sheets of water on the plain below them lay like tidepools of primal blood.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
“
He knew by heart every individual clump of bunch grass in the miles of red shaggy prairie that stretched before his cabin. He knew it in all the deceitful loveliness of its early summer, in all the bitter barrenness of its autumn. He had seen it smitten by all the plagues of Egypt. He had seen it parched by drought, and sogged by rain, beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and in the grasshopper years he had seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones that the vultures have left. After the great fires he had seen it stretch for miles and miles, black and smoking as the floor of hell.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Troll Garden and Selected Stories)
“
There could not well be more ink splashed about it, if it had been roofless from its first construction, and the skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through the varying seasons of the year.
”
”
Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)
“
Like a simple wildflower, standing strong through rain, wind and hail, love, finally, had its way, and it was content.
”
”
Ella Rose Carlos (A Long Lost Fantasy)
“
And for some reason he had an unfolded white handkerchief draped over his head, possibly to ward off rain, or hail, or brimstone.
”
”
J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)
“
... WHEN ONE LOOKS INTO THE DARKNESS THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING THERE...
Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,
Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir
And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep
Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep
Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold
The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
Saw the pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise
In Druid vapour and make the torches dim;
Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him
Who met Fand walking among flaming dew
By a grey shore where the wind never blew,
And lost the world and Emer for a kiss;
And him who drove the gods out of their liss,
And till a hundred morns had flowered red
Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;
And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown
And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown
Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods:
And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,
And sought through lands and islands numberless years,
Until he found, with laughter and with tears,
A woman of so shining loveliness
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress. I, too, await
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?
Out of sight is out of mind:
Long have man and woman-kind,
Heavy of will and light of mood,
Taken away our wheaten food,
Taken away our Altar stone;
Hail and rain and thunder alone,
And red hearts we turn to grey,
Are true till time gutter away.
... the common people are always ready to blame the beautiful.
”
”
W.B. Yeats (The Secret Rose and Rosa Alchemica)
“
It commenced raining one day and did not stop for two months. We went through ever different kind of rain they is, cep'n maybe sleet or hail. It was little tiny stinging rain sometimes, an big ole fat rain at others. It came sidewise an straight down an sometimes even seem to stand up from the ground. Nevertheless, we was expected to do our shit, which was mainly walking upland down the hills an stuff looking for gooks.
”
”
Winston Groom (Forrest Gump (Forrest Gump, #1))
“
Well-being of body is like a mountain. A lot happens on a mountain. It hails, and the winds come up, and it rains and snows. The sun gets very hot, clouds cross over, animals shit and piss on the mountain, and so do people. People leave their trash, and other people clean it up. Many things come and go on this mountain, but it just sits there. When we’ve seen ourselves completely, there’s a stillness of body that is like a mountain. We no longer get jumpy and have to scratch our noses, pull our ears, punch somebody, go running from the room, or drink ourselves into oblivion.
”
”
Pema Chödrön (When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Shambhala Classics))
“
The world might be sunny-side up today.
The big ball of yellow might be spilling into the clouds, runny and yolky and blurring into the bluest sky, bright with cold hope and false promises about fond memories, real families, hearty breakfasts, stacks of pancakes drizzled in maple syrup sitting on a plate in a world that doesn’t exist anymore.
Or maybe not.
Maybe it’s dark and wet today, whistling wind so sharp it stings the skin off the knuckles of grown men. Maybe it’s snowing, maybe it’s raining, I don’t know maybe it’s freezing it’s hailing it’s a hurricane slip slipping into a tornado and the earth is quaking apart to make room for our mistakes.
”
”
Tahereh Mafi (Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2))
“
I'll love you in the rain and in the snow and in the hail and - what else is there?
”
”
Ernest Hemingway
“
Spring is when the weather in the Pacific Northwest gets confused, bouncing between hail and sun and rain all in the same day. Sometimes all in the same hour.
”
”
Rachel Griffin (Wild Is the Witch)
“
On most days, nature gleefully played it’s own rhythm, and then there were days when the skies vociferously reached down to us, in tiny frozen pellets beating down on roof tops.
”
”
Meeta Ahluwalia
“
The rain splattered against the black shade above my head, sharp and fast like a hail of gunfire.
”
”
Blythe Baker (A Simple Country Murder (Helen Lightholder, #1))
“
I guess it's better to have a chalk smile, than an ink smile. Where chalk changes with the direction of wind, ink stays as a deep stain. Like rain, sun and hail against a fake plant.
”
”
Anthony Liccione
“
Nobody in Faha could remember when it started. Rain there on the western seaboard was a condition of living. It came straight-down and sideways, frontwards, backwards and any other wards God could think of. It came in sweeps, in waves, sometimes in veils. It came dressed as drizzle, as mizzle, as mist, as showers, frequent and widespread, as a wet fog, as a damp day, a drop, a dripping, and an out-and-out downpour. It came the fine day, the bright day, and the day promised dry. It came at any time of the day and night, and in all seasons, regardless of calendar and forecast, until in Faha your clothes were rain and your skin was rain and your house was rain with a fireplace. It came off the grey vastness of an Atlantic that threw itself against the land like a lover once spurned and resolved not to be so again. It came accompanied by seagulls and smells of salt and seaweed. It came with cold air and curtained light. It came like a judgment, or, in benign version, like a blessing God had forgotten he had left on. It came for a handkerchief of blue sky, came on westerlies, sometimes—why not?—on easterlies, came in clouds that broke their backs on the mountains in Kerry and fell into Clare, making mud the ground and blind the air. It came disguised as hail, as sleet, but never as snow. It came softly sometimes, tenderly sometimes, its spears turned to kisses, in rain that pretended it was not rain, that had come down to be closer to the fields whose green it loved and fostered, until it drowned them.
”
”
Niall Williams (This is Happiness)
“
Then it studies all the awesome expanse which lies between heaven and earth – this nearer space turbulent with thunder, lightning, gales of wind, and falling rain, snow and hail. Finally, having scoured the lower areas it bursts through to the heights and enjoys the noblest sight of divine things and, mindful of its own immortality, it ranges over all that has been and will be throughout all ages.
”
”
Seneca (On the Shortness of Life)
“
Tale of the Fishwife and its Sad Fate’, purportedly translated literally from the German: It is a bleak day. Hear the rain, how he pours, and the hail, how he rattles; and see the snow, how he drifts along, and of the mud, how deep he is! Ah the poor fishwife, it is stuck fast in the mire; it has dropped its basket of fishes; and its hands have been cut by the scales as it seized some of the falling creatures; and one scale has even got into its eye. And it cannot get her out. It opens its mouth to cry for help; but if any sound comes out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the storm. And now a tomcat has got one of the fishes and she will surely escape with him. No, she bites off a fin, she holds her in her mouth – will she swallow her? No, the fishwife’s brave mother-dog deserts his puppies and rescues the fin – which he eats, himself, as his reward …
”
”
Guy Deutscher (The Unfolding Of Language: The Evolution of Mankind`s greatest Invention)
“
It seemed unreasonable, unfair, that a woman so young and beautiful should be so exhausted. Of course, it was neither unreasonable nor unfair. Exhaustion pays no mind to age or beauty. Like rain and earthquakes and hail and floods.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Dance Dance Dance (The Rat Series, #4))
“
It is the fire that consumes me;
It is an inexplicable love,
It is the rain that calms me;
It is a melody from above.
It is the wind that humbles me;
It is everywhere and nowhere,
It is the sand that fuels me;
It is the artistry of nature.
I’m consumed by what I am,
I’m calmed by a riotous noise,
I’m humbled through arrogance,
I’m fueled by what is in poise.
I’ve much cherished the mystifying,
I’ve heard the unreal symphonies,
I’ve been moved by the inevitable,
And I’ve hailed the epiphanies.
”
”
Zubair Ahsan
“
To Roam
Well, I like this world
Well, I like this world
Well, I like this world
I like it how it was
I pray how it was
I like it how it was
Ghosts in the rain
Cold walk of freedom
Well, I'm walking a hallway
I'm walking a hallway
I'm walking a hallway
Said, I'm walking a hallway
I'm walking a hallway
Well, I'm walking a hallway
I am proud and I'm gloried
Thinking 'bout the day what'll surely come
When on the scene, I'm smile evaded
When outta nowhere, I'm gonna run
But I know where I go, I will be gone
Somewhere to run to - if you see
You could see it through my mind
You wouldn't know it - no way
You'd know when my eyes roam
Through the fog and hail and sleet
I missed the snow and nowhere
Nowhere, nowhere, nowhere
You should've known where
Should've known where
You should've known where
Should've known better, baby
'Cause I like this world
And I like this world
Some people want to roam
Some people, they roam this world alone
Some people were born to roam
Some people they roam this world alone
Alone
”
”
Robert Pattinson
“
He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
”
”
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
“
But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollows of the wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers. They lengthen; they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear planets, plates of brightness. The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flesh of tattered flags kindling in the doom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands. The autumn trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvest moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the shore.
It seemed now as if, touched by human penitence and all its toil, divine goodness had parted the curtain and displayed behind it, single, distinct, the hare erect; the wave falling; the boat rocking; which, did we deserve them, should be ours always. But alas, divine goodness, twitching the cord, draws the curtain; it does not please him; he covers his treasures in a drench of hail, and so breaks them, so confuses them that it seems impossible that their calm should ever return or that we should ever compose from their fragments a perfect whole or read in the littered pieces the clear words of truth. For our penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil respite only.
The nights now are full of wind and destruction; the trees plunge and bend and their leaves fly helter skelter until the lawn is plastered with them and they lie packed in gutters and choke rain pipes and scatter damp paths. Also the sea tosses itself and breaks itself, and should any sleeper fancying that he might find on the beach an answer to his doubts, a sharer of his solitude, throw off his bedclothes and go down by himself to walk on the sand, no image with semblance of serving and divine promptitude comes readily to hand bringing the night to order and making the world reflect the compass of the soul. The hand dwindles in his hand; the voice bellows in his ear. Almost it would appear that it is useless in such confusion to ask the night those questions as to what, and why, and wherefore, which tempt the sleeper from his bed to seek an answer.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
“
Spring is when the weather in the Pacific Northwest gets confused, bouncing between hail and sun and rain all in the same day. Sometimes all in the same hour. There’s something playful about it, as if the weather is enjoying every facet of its personality, appreciating all the ways in which it covers the earth.
”
”
Rachel Griffin (Wild Is the Witch)
“
Mark Twain, merciless as always, parodied the government’s efforts: “Probable northeast to southwest winds, varying to the southward and westward and eastward, and points between, high and low barometer swapping around from place to place, probably areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and lightning.
”
”
Erik Larson (Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History)
“
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect.
”
”
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
“
Some days - some early mornings - when the wind smells of blossoms I'll never see, and there are fawns playing in the misty orchards, and you're yawning and mumbling and scratching your head, and growling that we'll see rain before nightfall, and probably hail as well, on such mornings I wish with all my heart that we could both live forever, and I think you were a great fool to give it up.
”
”
Peter S. Beagle (The Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of The Last Unicorn (The Last Unicorn))
“
This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas;—that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; what is it? Ay, what? At bottom we do not yet know; we can never know at all. It is not by our superior insight that we escape the difficulty; it is by our superior levity, our inattention, our want of insight. It is by not thinking that we cease to wonder at it. Hardened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays, mere words. We call that fire of the black thunder-cloud "electricity," and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
”
”
Thomas Carlyle (On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History)
“
Hunting Song
THE dusky night rides down the sky,
And ushers in the morn;
The hounds all join in glorious cry,
The huntsman winds his horn:
And a hunting we will go.
The wife around her husband throws
Her arms, and begs his stay;
My dear, it rains, and hails, and snows,
You will not hunt to-day.
But a hunting we will go.
A brushing fox in yonder wood,
Secure to find we seek;
For why, I carry'd sound and good
A cartload there last week.
And a hunting we will go.
Away he goes, he flies the rout,
Their steeds all spur and switch;
Some are thrown in, and some thrown out,
And some thrown in the ditch:
But a hunting we will go.
At length is strength to faintness worn,
Poor Reynard ceases flight;
Then hungry, homeward we return,
To feast away the night:
Then a drinking we will go.
”
”
Henry Fielding
“
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
”
”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Complete Poems)
“
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
”
”
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
“
Bilbo had never seen or imagined anything of the kind. They were high up in a narrow place, with a dreadful fall into a dim valley at one side of them. There they were sheltering under a hanging rock for the night, and he lay beneath a blanket and shook from head to toe. When he peeped out in the lightning-flashes, he saw that across the valley the stone-giants were out, and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them down into the darkness where they smashed among the trees far below, or splintered into little bits with a bang. Then came a wind and a rain, and the wind whipped the rain and the hail about in every direction, so that an overhanging rock was no protection at all. Soon they were getting drenched and their ponies were standing with their heads down and their tails between their legs, and some of them were whinnying with fright. They could hear the giants guffawing and shouting all over the mountainsides.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit)
“
You want to leave the moat, to go back to the room; you’re already turning and trying to find the door, covered with fake leather, in the steep wall of the moat, but the master succeeds in grabbing your hand and, looking straight in your eyes, says: Your assignment: describe the jaw of a crocodile, the tongue of a hummingbird, the steeple of the New Maiden Convent, a shoot of bird cherry, the bend of the Lethe, the tail of any village dog, a night of love, mirages over hot asphalt, the bright midday in Berezov, the face of a flibbertigibbet, the garden of hell, compare the termite colony to the forest anthill, the sad fate of leaves to the serenade of a Venetian gondolier, and transform a cicada into a butterfly, turn rain into hail, day into night, give us today our daily bread, make a sibilant out of a vowel, prevent the crash of the train whose engineer is asleep, repeat the thirteenth labor of Hercules, give a smoke to a passerby, explain youth and old age, sing a song about a bluebird bringing water in the morn, turn your face to the north, to the Novgorodian barbicans, and then describe how the doorman knows it is snowing outside, if he sits in the foyer all day, talks to the elevator operator, and does not look out the window because there is no window; yes, tell how exactly, and in addition, plant in your orchard a white rose of the winds, show it to the teacher Pavel and, if he likes it, give the white rose to the teacher Pavel, pin the flower to his cowboy shirt or to his dacha hat, bring joy to the man who departed to nowhere, make your old pedagogue—a joker, a clown, and a wind-chaser—happy.
”
”
Sasha Sokolov (A School for Fools)
“
Gregori stepped away from the huddled mass of tourists, putting distance between himself and the guide. He walked completely erect,his head high, his long hair flowing around him. His hands were loose at his sides, and his body was relaxed, rippling with power.
"Hear me now, ancient one." His voice was soft and musical, filling the silence with beauty and purity. "You have lived long in this world, and you weary of the emptiness. I have come in anwer to your call."
"Gregori.The Dark One." The evil voice hissed and growled the words in answer. The ugliness tore at sensitive nerve endings like nails on a chalkboard. Some of the tourists actually covered their ears. "How dare you enter my city and interfere where you have no right?"
"I am justice,evil one. I have come to set your free from the bounaries holding you to this place." Gregori's voice was so soft and hypnotic that those listening edged out from their sanctuaries.It beckoned and pulled, so that none could resist his every desire.
The black shape above their head roiled like a witch's cauldron. A jagged bolt of lightning slammed to earth straight toward the huddled group. Gregori raised a hand and redirected the force of energy away from the tourists and Savannah. A smile edged the cruel set of his mouth. "You think to mock me with display,ancient one? Do not attempt to anger what you do not understand.You came to me.I did not hunt you.You seek to threaten my lifemate and those I count as my friends.I can do no other than carry the justice of our people to you." Gregori's voice was so reasonable, so perfect and pure,drawing obedience from the most recalcitrant of criminals.
The guide made a sound,somewhere between disbelief and fear.Gregori silenced him with a wave of his hand, needing no distractions. But the noise had been enough for the ancient one to break the spell Gregori's voice was weaving around him. The dark stain above their heads thrashed wildly, as if ridding itself ot ever-tightening bonds before slamming a series of lightning strikes at the helpless mortals on the ground.
Screams and moans accompanied the whispered prayers, but Gregori stood his ground, unflinching. He merely redirected the whips of energy and light, sent them streaking back into the black mass above their heads.A hideous snarl,a screech of defiance and hatred,was the only warning before it hailed. Hufe golfball-sized blocks of bright-red ice rained down toward them. It was thick and horrible to see, the shower of frozen blood from the skies. But it stopped abruptly, as if an unseen force held it hovering inches from their heads.
Gregori remained unchanged, impassive, his face a blank mask as he shielded the tourists and sent the hail hurtling back at their attacker.From out of the cemetery a few blocks from them, an army of the dead rose up. Wolves howled and raced along beside the skeletons as they moved to intercept the Carpathian hunter.
Savannah. He said her name once, a soft brush in her mind.
I've got it, she sent back instantly.Gregori had his hands full dealing with the abominations the vampire was throwing at him; he did't need to waste his energy protecting the general public from the apparition. She moved out into the open, a small, fragile figure, concentrating on the incoming threat.
To those dwelling in the houses along the block and those driving in their cars, she masked the pack of wolves as dogs racing down the street.The stick=like skeletons, grotesque and bizarre, were merely a fast-moving group of people. She held the illusion until they were within a few feet of Gregori.Dropping the illusion, she fed every ounce of her energy and power to Gregori so he could meet the attack.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Dark Magic (Dark, #4))
“
Why do people say trees are majestic?" --- "Because they've earned it. After a sapling's roots take hold, they spread out to give it strength. Then, unstoppable, those roots continue to grow, and after years of withstanding rain, hail, snow and every other environmental disaster you can imagine, it has a root system stretching as wide as the tree is tall in every direction. Take this one," he said tilting his head back & gazing up at her penny tree. "If you could dig up all the roots, they'd probably fill our town's swimming pool. These trees are humbling because we're so much weaker as human beings, so flawed in comparison.
”
”
Holly Kennedy (The Penny Tree)
“
Every Saturday I would go to the library and choose my books for the week. One late-autumn morning, despite menacing clouds, I bundled up and walked as always, past the peach orchards, the pig farm and the skating rink to the fork in the road that led to our sole library. The sight of so many books never failed to excite me, rows and rows of books with multicolored spines. I’d spent an inordinate amount of time choosing my stack of books that day, with the sky growing more ominous. At first, I wasn’t worried as I had long legs and was a pretty fast walker, but then it became apparent that there was no way I was going to beat the impending storm. It grew colder, the winds picked up, followed by heavy rains, then pelting hail. I slid the books under my coat to protect them, I had a long way to go; I stepped in puddles and could feel the icy water permeate my ankle socks. When I finally reached home my mother shook her head with sympathetic exasperation, prepared a hot bath and made me go to bed. I came down with bronchitis and missed several days of school. But it had been worth it, for I had my books, among them The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, Half Magic and The Dog of Flanders. Wonderful books that I read over and over, only accessible to me through our library.
”
”
Patti Smith (Year of the Monkey)
“
Ode to the West Wind
I
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aëry surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull’d by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem’d a vision; I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
”
”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (Ode to the West Wind and Other Poems)
“
She was not afraid of cyclones in the darkest bile-green-and-black skies during storms that cracked off the limbs of oaks and the tops of pines and made the tin roof of the house and gallery pop and groan and bend upward at the edges. Nor of the hail that pocked the tin like buckshot raining down. Nor of lightning that split trees their length and left smoldering charred skeletons rooted to the wet, scorched earth. She was not afraid of God, with his sly and untrustworthy balance of love and wrath, who was yet curious enough to make himself vulnerable and walk among humans just like herself in the beautiful, harrowing embodiment of Jesus.
”
”
Brad Watson (Miss Jane)
“
Let the dark and gloomy air be seen buffeted by the rush of contrary winds and dense from the continued rain mingled with hail and bearing hither and thither an infinite number of branches torn from the trees and mixed with numberless leaves. All round may be seen venerable trees, uprooted by the fury of the winds; and fragments of mountains, already scoured bare by the torrents, falling into those torrents and choking their valleys till the swollen rivers overflow and submerge the wide lowlands and their inhabitants. You might see on many of the hill-tops terrified animals of different kinds, collected together and subdued to tameness, in company with men and women who had fled there with their children.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Leonardo da Vinci)
“
Behind us lay rainy weeks—grey sky, grey fluid earth, grey dying. If we go out, the rain at once soaks through our overcoat and clothing;—and we remain wet all the time we are in the line. We never get dry. Those who will wear high boots tie sand bags round the tops so that the mud does not pour in so fast. The rifles are caked, the uniforms caked, everything is fluid and dissolved, the earth one dripping, soaked, oily mass in which lie yellow pools with red spiral streams of blood and into which the dead, wounded, and survivors slowly sink down. The storm lashes us, out of the confusion of grey and yellow the hail of splinters whips forth the child-like cries of the wounded, and in the night shattered life groans painfully into silence.
”
”
Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)
“
the streets. So now everyone is afraid of it. Petr GINZ Today it’s clear to everyone who is a Jew and who’s an Aryan, because you’ll know Jews near and far by their black and yellow star. And Jews who are so demarcated must live according to the rules dictated: Always, after eight o’clock, be at home and click the lock; work only labouring with pick or hoe, and do not listen to the radio. You’re not allowed to own a mutt; barbers can’t give your hair a cut; a female Jew who once was rich can’t have a dog, even a bitch, she cannot send her kids to school must shop from three to five since that’s the rule. She can’t have bracelets, garlic, wine, or go to the theatre, out to dine; she can’t have cars or a gramophone, fur coats or skis or a telephone; she can’t eat onions, pork, or cheese, have instruments, or matrices; she cannot own a clarinet or keep a canary for a pet, rent bicycles or barometers, have woollen socks or warm sweaters. And especially the outcast Jew must give up all habits he knew: he can’t buy clothes, can’t buy a shoe, since dressing well is not his due; he can’t have poultry, shaving soap, or jam or anything to smoke; can’t get a license, buy some gin, read magazines, a news bulletin, buy sweets or a machine to sew; to fields or shops he cannot go even to buy a single pair of winter woollen underwear, or a sardine or a ripe pear. And if this list is not complete there’s more, so you should be discreet; don’t buy a thing; accept defeat. Walk everywhere you want to go in rain or sleet or hail or snow. Don’t leave your house, don’t push a pram, don’t take a bus or train or tram; you’re not allowed on a fast train; don’t hail a taxi, or complain; no matter how thirsty you are you must not enter any bar; the riverbank is not for you, or a museum or park or zoo or swimming pool or stadium or post office or department store, or church, casino, or cathedral or any public urinal. And you be careful not to use main streets, and keep off avenues! And if you want to breathe some air go to God’s garden and walk there among the graves in the cemetery because no park to you is free. And if you are a clever Jew you’ll close off bank accounts and you will give up other habits too like meeting Aryans you knew. He used to be allowed a swag, suitcase, rucksack, or carpetbag. Now he has lost even those rights but every Jew lowers his sights and follows all the rules he’s got and doesn’t care one little jot.
”
”
Petr Ginz (The Diary of Petr Ginz, 1941–1942)
“
If at any one time of my life more than another, I was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six months of my stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked in all weathers. It was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or snow, too hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order of the day than of the night. The longest days were too short for him, and the shortest nights too long for him. I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!
”
”
Frederick Douglass (Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass: By Frederick Douglass & Illustrated)
“
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self contained and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely; and Scrooge never did.
”
”
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
“
Thomas Carlyle, following Plato, pictures a man, a deep pagan thinker, who had grown to maturity in some hidden cave and is brought out suddenly to see the sun rise. “What would his wonder be,” exclaims Carlyle, “his rapt astonishment at the sight we daily witness with indifference! With the free, open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole heart would be kindled by that sight.... This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas; that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; what is it? Ay, what? At bottom we do not yet know; we can never know at all.” How different are we who have grown used to it, who have become jaded with a satiety of wonder. “It is not by our superior insight that we escape the difficulty,” says Carlyle, “it is by our superior levity, our inattention, our want of insight. It is by not thinking that we cease to wonder at it.... We call that fire of the black thundercloud electricity, and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what is it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.” These penetrating, almost prophetic,
”
”
A.W. Tozer (Knowledge of the Holy)
“
Sometimes the sun is covered by dense layers of dark clouds. A person looking up would swear that there is no sun. But still the sun shines. At night, when there is no light, still the sun shines. During rain or hail or hurricane or tornado, still the sun shines.
Does the sun ask itself, "Am I good? Am I worthwhile? Is there enough of me?" No, it burns and it shines. Does the sun ask itself, "What does the moon think of me? How does Mars feel about me today?" No, it burns, it shines. Does the sun ask itself, "Am I as big as other suns in other galaxies?" No, it burns, it shines.
In this country in the coming years, I think that there will be a terrible storm. I think that the skies will darken beyond all recognition. Those who walk the streets will walk them in darkness. Those who are in prisons and mental institutions will not see the sky at all, only the dark out of barred windows. Those who are hungry and in despair may not look up at all. They will see the darkness as it lies on the ground in front of their feet. Those who are raped will see the darkness as they look up into the face of the rapist. Those who are assaulted and brutalized by madmen will stare intently into the darkness to discern who is moving toward them at every moment. It will be hard to remember, as the storm is raging, that still, even though we cannot see it, the sun shines. It will be hard to remember that still, even though we cannot see it, the sun burns. We will try to see it and we will try to feel it, and we will forget that it warms us still, that if it were not there, burning, shining, this earth would be a cold and desolate and barren place.
As long as we have life and breath, no matter how dark the earth around us, that sun still burns, still shines. There is no today without it. There is no tomorrow without it. There was no yesterday without it. That light is within us—constant, warm, and healing. Remember it, sisters, in the dark times to come.
”
”
Andrea Dworkin (Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics)
“
The temple was in a field of graves
suddenly a pitiful-looking skeleton appeared
and said:
A melancholy autumn wind
Blows through the world;
the pampas grass waves
As we drift to the moor,
Drift to the sea.
What can be done
With the mind of a man
That should be clear
But though he is dressed up in a monk's robe,
Just lets life pass him by?
Such deep musings
Made me uneasy, I could not sleep.
Towards dawn
I dozed off...
I found myself surrounded
by a group of skeletons,
acting as they had
when they were
still alive.
One skeleton came over to me and said:
Memories
Flee and
Are no more.
All are empty dreams
Devoid of meaning.
Violate the reality of things
And babble about
'God' and 'the Buddha'
And you will never find
the true Way.
Still breathing,
You feel animated,
So a corpse in a field
Seems to be something
Apart from you.
If chunks of rock
Can serve as a memento
To the dead
A better headstone
Would be a simple tea-mortar.
Humans are indeed frightful things.
A single moon
Bright and clear
In an unclouded sky;
Yet we still stumble
In the world's darkness.
This world
Is but
A fleeting dream
So why be alarmed
At its evanescence?
The vagaries of life,
Though painful,
Teach us
Not to cling
To this floating world.
Why do people
Lavish decoration
On this set of bones,
Destined to disappear
Without a trace?
The original body
Must return to
Its original place.
Do not search
For what cannot be found.
No one really knows
The nature of birth
Nor the true dwelling place.
We return to the source
And turn to dust.
Many paths lead from
The foot of the mountain,
But at the peak
We all gaze at the
Single bright moon.
If at the end of our journey
There is no final
Resting place,
Then we need not fear
Losing our Way.
No beginning.
No end.
Our mind
Is born and dies;
The emptiness of emptiness!
Relax,
And the mind
Runs wild;
Control the world
And you can cast it aside.
Rain, hail, snow, and ice:
All are different
But when they fall
They become to same water
As the valley stream.
The ways of proclaiming
The Mind all vary,
But the same heavenly truth
Can be seen
In each and every one.
Cover your path
With fallen pine needles
So no one will be able
To locate your
True dwelling place.
How vain,
The endless funderals at the
Cremation grounds of Mount Toribe!
Don't the mourner realize
That they will be next?
'Life is fleeeting!'
We think at the sight
Of smoke drifting from Mount Toribe,
But when will we realize
That we are in the same boat?
All is in vain!
This morning,
A healthy friend;
This evening,
A wisp of cremation smoke.
What a pity!
Evening smoke from Mount Toribe
Blown violently
To and fro
By the wind.
When burned
We become ashes,
and earth when buried.
Is it only our sins
That remain behind?
All the sins
Committed
In the Three Worlds
Will fade away
Together with me.
”
”
Ikkyu
“
But now, strange as it seems, a peasant's small, scrawny. light brown nag is harnessed to such a large cart, one of those horses he's seen it often that sometimes strain to pull some huge load of firewood or hay. Especially if the cart has gotten stuck in the mud or a rut. The peasants always whip the horse so terribly, so very painfully, sometimes even across its muzzle and eyes, and he would always feel so sorry, so very sorry to witness it that he would feel like crying, and his mother would always lead him away from the window. Now things are getting extremely boisterous: some very large and extremely drunken peasants in red and blue shirts, their heavy coats slung over their shoulders. come out of the tavern shouting, singing. and playing balalaikas. “Git in. everyone git in!" shouts one peasant, a young lad with a thick neck and a fleshy face, red as a beet, “I'll take ya all. Git in!" But there is a burst of laughter and shouting:
“That ol’ nag ain't good for nothin'!"
“Hey, Mikolka, you must be outta yer head to hitch that ol' mare to yer cart!"
“That poor ol' horse must be twenty if she's a day, lads!"
“Git in, I'll take ya all!" Mikolka shouts again,jumping in first, taking hold of the reins, and standing up straight in the front of the cart. “Matvei went off with the bay," he cries from the cart, “and as for this ol' mare here, lads, she's only breakin' my heart: I don't give a damn ifit kills ’er; she ain't worth her salt. Git in, I tell ya! I'll make 'er gallop! She’ll gallop, all right!" And he takes the whip in his hand, getting ready to thrash the horse with delight.
"What the hell, git in!" laugh several people in the crowd. "You heard 'im, she'll gallop!"
“I bet she ain't galloped in ten years!"
"She will now!"
“Don't pity 'er, lads; everyone, bring yer whips, git ready!" "That's it! Thrash 'er!" They all clamber into Mikolka's cart with guffaws and wisecracks. There are six lads and room for more. They take along a peasant woman, fat and ruddy. She's wearing red calico, a headdress trimmed with beads, and fur slippers; she‘s cracking nuts and cackling. The crowd’s also laughing; as a matter of fact, how could one keep from laughing at the idea of a broken down old mare about to gallop, trying to pull such a heavy load! Two lads in the cart grab their whips to help Mikolka. The shout rings out: “Pull!" The mare strains with all her might, but not only can’t she gallop, she can barely take a step forward; she merely scrapes her hooves, grunts, and cowers from the blows of the three whips raining down on her like hail. Laughter redoubles in the cart and among the crowd, but Mikolka grows angry and in his rage strikes the little mare with more blows, as if he really thinks she’ll be able to gallop. “Take me along, too, lads!" shouts someone from the crowd who’s gotten a taste of the fun.
“Git in! Everyone, git inl" cries Mikolka. “She'll take everyone. I‘ll flog 'er!" And he whips her and whips her again; in his frenzy, he no longer knows what he’s doing.
“Papa, papa," the boy cries to his father. “Papa, what are they doing? Papa, they‘re beating the poor horse!"
“Let's go, let's go!" his father says. “They’re drunk, misbehaving, those fools: let’s go. Don't look!" He tries to lead his son away. but the boy breaks from his father‘s arms; beside himself, he runs toward the horse. But the poor horse is on her last legs. Gasping for breath, she stops, and then tries to pull again, about to drop.
“Beat 'er to death!" cries Mikolka. ”That's what it's come to. I‘ll flog ‘er!"
“Aren't you a Christian. you devil?" shouts one old man from the crowd.
“Just imagine, asking an ol' horse like that to pull such a heavy load,” adds another.
“You‘ll do 'er in!" shouts a third.
“Leave me alone! She’s mine! I can do what I want with 'er! Git in, all of ya! Everyone git in I'm gonna make 'er gallop!
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)
“
One of the Obsidians to fight alongside Ragnar at the walls of Agea, Wulfgar was with the Sons of Ares that freed me from the Jackal in Attica. Now ArchWarden of the Republic, he smiles down at me from the step above, his black eyes crinkling at the corners. “Hail libertas,” I say with a smile. “Hail libertas,” he echoes. “Wulfgar. Fancy meeting you here. You missed the Rain,” I say. “You did not wait for me to return, did you?” Wulfgar clucks his tongue. “My children will ask where I was when the Rain fell upon Mercury, and you know what I will have to tell them?” He leans forward with a conspiratorial smile. “I was making night soil, wiping my ass when I heard Barca had taken Mount Caloris.” He rumbles out a laugh.
”
”
Pierce Brown (Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga, #4))
“
Q: What’s worse than raining cats and dogs? A: Hailing taxi cabs.
”
”
Rob Elliott (Laugh-Out-Loud Animal Jokes for Kids (Laugh-Out-Loud Jokes for Kids))
“
If you want to teach something to water, you must be first a river, a lake, an ocean; you must be rain and flood, ice and hail, rime and snow! You must be all of them! But not enough! You must be something more, only then you can teach something to water!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
The man with laughing eyes stopped smiling
to say, “Until you speak Arabic,
you will not understand pain.”
Something to do with the back of the head,
an Arab carries sorrow in the back of the head,
that only language cracks, the thrum of stones
weeping, grating hinge on an old metal gate.
“Once you know,” he whispered, “you can
enter the room
whenever you need to. Music you heard
from a distance,
the slapped drum of a stranger’s wedding,
well up inside your skin, inside rain, a thousand
pulsing tongues. You are changed.”
Outside, the snow has finally stopped.
In a land where snow rarely falls,
we had felt our days grow white and still.
I thought pain had no tongue. Or every tongue
at once, supreme translator, sieve. I admit my
shame. To live on the brink of Arabic, tugging
its rich threads without understanding
how to weave the rug…I have no gift.
The sound, but not the sense.
I kept looking over his shoulder for someone else
to talk to, recalling my dying friend
who only scrawled
I can’t write. What good would any grammar
have been
to her then? I touched his arm, held it hard,
which sometimes you don’t do in the Middle East,
and said, I’ll work on it, feeling sad
for his good strict heart, but later in the slick street
hailed a taxi by shouting Pain! and it stopped
in every language and opened its doors.
”
”
Naomi Shihab Nye
“
38 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:
2 “Who is this that obscures my plans
with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels[a] shouted for joy?
8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
10 when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?
12 “Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
13 that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
14 The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
its features stand out like those of a garment.
15 The wicked are denied their light,
and their upraised arm is broken.
16 “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
17 Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
18 Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.
19 “What is the way to the abode of light?
And where does darkness reside?
20 Can you take them to their places?
Do you know the paths to their dwellings?
21 Surely you know, for you were already born!
You have lived so many years!
22 “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,
23 which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?
24 What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,
or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?
25 Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,
26 to water a land where no one lives,
an uninhabited desert,
27 to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?
28 Does the rain have a father?
Who fathers the drops of dew?
29 From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
30 when the waters become hard as stone,
when the surface of the deep is frozen?
31 “Can you bind the chains[b] of the Pleiades?
Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
32 Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons[c]
or lead out the Bear[d] with its cubs?
33 Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God’s[e] dominion over the earth?
34 “Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?
35 Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?
36 Who gives the ibis wisdom[f]
or gives the rooster understanding?[g]
37 Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?
Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens
38 when the dust becomes hard
and the clods of earth stick together?
39 “Do you hunt the prey for the lioness
and satisfy the hunger of the lions
40 when they crouch in their dens
or lie in wait in a thicket?
41 Who provides food for the raven
when its young cry out to God
and wander about for lack of food?
”
”
?
“
He laughed awkwardly and cleared his throat. 'Rain is better than hail,' he joked. I smiled at him shyly as the memory of our drive in the midst of a hailstorm on Inis Mor flooded back to me.
'It was a beautiful sight though,' I commented quietly, 'so not altogether unwelcome.'
Grady looked at me with his piercing sapphire eyes and replied with emotion, 'it was not as beautiful as you are – and you are most welcome.' I found myself blushing under his gaze and felt that if I tried to speak, I would be utterly tongue-tied. As we neared the entrance to the castle, Grady said, 'thank you for coming, Ellen; I must confess that I had my doubts…
”
”
J.G. MacLeod (Two Paths (The Adventures of Lady Ellen Montagu #2))
“
In the local worldview, every action establishes a relationship with the environment. Estrangement from nature is not an option. Even one’s subtlest thoughts and intentions— whether positive or negative—are held to elicit a response from the animating forces within the landscape. Ill thoughts and selfish concerns can cause rockfalls and hail. Well-directed prayers, on the other hand, can literally stop the rain. A constant interchange occurs, giving rise to what Tibetans call tukje, Great Compassion, or empathy with all things.
”
”
Ian Baker (The Heart of the World: A Journey to Tibet's Lost Paradise)
“
Summer Dew: a light rain that barely touched you. Sea Mist: a soft rain that emerged from the air like fog. Heartbeat: an even rain, steady as your heart. Cloudburst: a downpour that soaked you to the skin. Icefall: a hard rain that struck like hail. Thunder Break: when the sky was alive with storms.
”
”
Cerrie Burnell (Harper and the Scarlet Umbrella)
“
I keep trying to remember things that happened before. The memories are still there, but are covered by a hazy cloak. It’s like waking up from a dream and trying to remember what happened during the dream. I remember things like having dinner in a restaurant with Clark, or putting these long dangling earrings in my ears, or trying to hail a taxi in the rain. But if I try to grab any piece of it, it’s not quite there.
”
”
Freida McFadden (Brain Damage)
“
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”
”
Commercial Roofing Service Of Minneapolis
“
A storm was brewing in his heart, with rain and hail and mad winds.
”
”
Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry (The Orchard)
“
I took the liberty of opening up your coffers,” Pheseus’ voice traveled around as his boots came to rest in front of Florindel’s face. “Let us see what was there.” A silver derak fell, landing by the toe of his boot and narrowly missing Florindel’s head. It was followed by another, and three more gold dera. Coins rattled against the bottom of a wooden box and then a hail of copper came raining down.
”
”
Sirius . (Condemned (The Draonir Saga, #3))
“
THE EYE OF THE STORM Fear not that the whirlwind will carry you hence, Nor wait for its onslaught in breathless suspense, Nor shrink from the blight of the terrible hail, But pass through the edge to the heart of the tale, For there is a shelter, sunlighted and warm, And Faith sees her God through the eye of the storm. The passionate tempest with rush and wild roar And threatenings of evil may beat on the shore, The waves may be mountains, the fields battle plains, And the earth be immersed in a deluge of rains, Yet, the soul, stayed on God, may sing bravely its psalm, For the heart of the storm is the center of calm. Let hope be not quenched in the blackness of night, Though the cyclone awhile may have blotted the light, For behind the great darkness the stars ever shine, And the light of God’s heavens, His love will make thine, Let no gloom dim your eyes, but uplift them on high To the face of your God and the blue of His sky. The storm is your shelter from danger and sin, And God Himself takes you for safety within; The tempest with Him passes into deep calm, And the roar of the winds is the sound of a psalm. Be glad and serene when the tempest clouds form; God smiles on His child in the eye of the storm.
”
”
Mrs. Charles E. Cowman (Streams in the Desert Morning and Evening: 365-Day Devotional)
“
The Weather Channel is not about weather; it is about the world! It is about how weather affects us all, our entire global economy, health, happiness, spirit. The channel delves with great detail into weather phenomena of all different kinds—hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes, monsoons, hail, rain, lightning storms—and they especially delight in the confluence of multiple phenomena.
”
”
Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
“
But cricket did have one supreme advantage over football. it could be stopped by rain. Every morning at prayers, devout cricket-haters put up a plea for a downpour. As we were in England, our prayers were quite frequently answered, but nothing, nothing but the death of the headmaster could stop football. We could hardly pray for the headmaster, a nice man, to die. In rain, sleet, hail and lightining, shivering and shuddering and soaked to the skin, we battled on. Even in dense fog we kept at it, a shining example to Dartmoor working parties. But cricket was another matter, cricket was a more sensitve affair altogether and if, as I fear, there is cricket in heaven, there will also, please God, be rain.
”
”
Arthur Marshall (Girls Will Be Girls)
“
There are verandahs and balconies, of all shapes and sizes, to almost every house—not on one story alone, but often to one room or another on every story—put there in general with so little order or regularity, that if, year after year, and season after season, it had rained balconies, hailed balconies, snowed balconies, blown balconies, they could scarcely have come into existence in a more disorderly manner.
”
”
Charles Dickens (American Notes and Pictures from Italy)
“
Outside the rain began to pour in sheets, and the wind howled . Giant pieces of hail began to pelt the building— banging off the skylights so hard that Simpson worried the glass might shatter. Then, as it had earlier in the day, the wind briefly let up. It was then Simpson heard a sound she had dreaded —a sound she couldn’t believe she was actually hearing. It was 2: 40 P.M. and the tornado sirens in Moore started to wail.
”
”
Holly Bailey (The Mercy of the Sky: The Story of a Tornado)
“
She drove through snow, fog, rain, ice, hail, sleet, traffic jams, roadworks, speed cameras and police checks to reach him.
”
”
Tyburn Way (Heroine Addict)
“
The leather made rude noises that we both thought best to ignore. “Wait,
”
”
J.R. Rain (Hail Mary (Jim Knighthorse, #3))
“
Are you always like this?” she asked. “Like what?” “So...confident?” “Only when I’m not.” “And when are you not?” “Almost never.” She
”
”
J.R. Rain (Hail Mary (Jim Knighthorse, #3))
“
I shut the door behind me, headed over to my desk and slipped into my new leather chair. The leather made rude noises that we both thought best to ignore. “Wait,
”
”
J.R. Rain (Hail Mary (Jim Knighthorse, #3))
“
I opened one of the desk drawers and extracted a sheet of paper from one of the file folders. I handed it to her. “What’s this?” “A list of referrals.” “And they’ll vouch for you?” “Some more enthusiastically than others.” She
”
”
J.R. Rain (Hail Mary (Jim Knighthorse, #3))
“
I don’t like chardonnay, or wine for that matter. It tastes funny. The problem with wine is that it doesn’t taste like beer. If wine tasted like beer, well, we would be in business. I
”
”
J.R. Rain (Hail Mary (Jim Knighthorse, #3))
“
We discussed my retainer, and learned that the women had all pooled their money together to hire me. So I told her that I was having a special. The first two weeks were free. She seemed relieved and put her checkbook back. Now, I thought as she shuffled off, I just need to find the perv in two weeks.
”
”
J.R. Rain (Hail Mary (Jim Knighthorse, #3))
“
He released the guy, who charged me instantly. One punch for every dog to have ever been thrown overboard to the sharks. One punch for every shark who’d been butchered alive. One punch didn’t settle the score. But it sure as hell felt good. I hit him just under his right eye, so hard that I heard his cheekbone shatter.
”
”
J.R. Rain (Hail Mary (Jim Knighthorse, #3))
“
I could still see some blood caked on at the back of his whitish paws. Doggie stigmatas. I carefully held out my hand. Junior nervously leaned forward, sniffed it instinctively. He looked at my hand, then up at me, then he rested his furry jaw in my open palm. Next to me, I heard Cindy crying softly. Girls.
”
”
J.R. Rain (Hail Mary (Jim Knighthorse, #3))
“
Jack sat back and held his coffee in both hands. His hands, I saw, were filthy. There was even dirt caked under his nails. God had dirt under his nails? “Hurting others is a delicate business, Jim.” “What do you mean, exactly?” “Quite simply: do what you want to yourself. But the moment you cause harm to another—or discord of any type—you will need to reestablish a balance.” I
”
”
J.R. Rain (Hail Mary (Jim Knighthorse, #3))
“
Remember, every experience in life has a former cause. And every current experience will result in a future cause. I do not tell people how to live, but causing harm to another, or discord of any type, will be returned to you. It must be.” “To
”
”
J.R. Rain (Hail Mary (Jim Knighthorse, #3))
“
If Daya and Chhaya cared about the lives of the simple folk, surely They would have blessed us with sunshine this growing season instead of showering us with rain and hail.
”
”
Shiriluna Nott (A Call to Arms (The Chronicles of Arden, #1))
“
What motivated me to write was a pale September, walking to and fro from school, a hail shower in Swaziland, a forest of flowers, autumn in Port Elizabeth, the falling of the leaves, the wind in the trees, the golden threads were caught up and that ran in my sister's hair, children caught in poverty, abandonment, neglect, malnourished with their distended bellies, the weight of driftwood, seawater, fish and chips with my mother after our walk on the beach, talk of angels in war, drought, famine, hunger, the spitting, thin rain or being drenched by a downpour, harbingers, outsiders and insiders.
”
”
Abigail George (Winter in Johannesburg)
“
Here, you can't avoid the changes. And you not only see them, you feel them. You are fully immersed, for better and for worse. You can't escape the truth when you're part of it, day in, day out, through all elements and seasons, no matter what it throws at you. Snow, rain, hail.
”
”
Gin Getz (The Last of the Living Blue)
“
She leaned heavily against the front door, put her hand on the doorknob and although her husband had said nothing of his vision of the black coach wet with rain, she caught a glimpse of it herself in that second between the moment she closed her eyes and the next one when she began a Hail Mary. The amniotic fluid was like something sun-warmed against her leg. It quickly soaked her terry-cloth slipper and then pooled on the linoleum at her feet. Her heel skidded in it a little as she slowly let go of the doorknob and carefully—a reluctant skater on a pond—got herself across the hallway, onto the living-room carpet, and across the living room, a slug’s trail of dark water behind her, and onto the couch. She still held Jacob’s coat in her hand and she threw it over the cushions before she eased herself down, praying all the while the formal prayer that held off both hope and dread, as well as any speculation about what to do next. She must have said a dozen of them—it only occurred to her after about the seventh or eighth that she should have been counting them off on her fingers—when the first cramp seized her and then she threw the prayers aside as if they had been vain attempts to speak in her high-school French. Oh look, she said. Don’t let this happen. Come on. Be reasonable. Long before the fireman pounded at the door (or was it an angel, or a banshee, or the ghost of the other Jacob?), she had listened to the rise and fall of the wind outside. Long
”
”
Alice McDermott (After This)
“
I could always depend on this fucker. Hail, rain, or snow, Gibsie had my back.
”
”
Chloe Walsh (Binding 13 (Boys of Tommen, #1))
“
One particular member of the group stood out to me, and I stiffened as I recognised Vard. The oily Cyclops hadn’t had the mop of long hair back then or even the scar on his face, but my heart thrashed harder as I took in the sight of him so close to my family. “Rain!” one of the cloaked women in his group suddenly cried and a few moments later rain began to pebble the windows. “I could have told you that a week ago,” my mother laughed, glancing up at her new husband with love in her eyes as his attention was drawn to the robed people. “We haven’t had any great Seers emerge in our kingdom since my father’s man Narbord died eight years ago,” Hail said, his eyes sweeping over the group with slight distaste. “So I was forced to create a group of individuals who had enough of The Sight to be relevant, hoping that the minds of the many would amount to the mind of one.” “And do they?” Merissa teased, a knowing glint in her eyes. “There isn’t one among them who can even sit in the Royal Seer’s chair,” he muttered irritably. “Though perhaps that was because it had been waiting for you, just as I was.
”
”
Caroline Peckham (Heartless Sky (Zodiac Academy, #7))
“
Give You
I give you up, fingernails dug in dirt
spitting up blood, I give you up
like the sea gives up her dead
like a string of pearls falling into pieces
crashing onto the cold hard floor
on my hands and knees, scraping up the mess
a rush of Hail Marys raining from my mouth
and I would imagine this isn't love
but some other beast altogether
and if they asked me if I could have died
happy never knowing a world where
you don't want me, I would say yes
They tell me love is something
I have to claw my way out of
Breaking through bone, tearing through skin
Stripping myself of everything
in this final show of my devotion to you
my everything—the only thing left I can give up
I can give you—give you up
”
”
Lang Leav (September Love)
“
My plants cried for rain, my heart withered with them, then the long awaited rains came, but what rains! Winds and hail that completely obliterated the farm on which my hopes hinged. That is nature.
”
”
Bangambiki Habyarimana (The Great Pearl of Wisdom)
“
Full is the ocean always
Whether famine or drought
Never overflowing it's banks
Whether hail, snow or rain
Never has the ocean basin
Eroded, corroded or collapse
Beneath its heavy weight
Neither has the ocean water
Seep, leak or drain
Through the tiny cracks
Of porous soil in the ocean bed
To deplete all its water from beneath
Of all the power given to Lucifer
He has created nothing for you
Can't you see Who really cares?
”
”
Maisie Aletha Smikle