Quotes4study

In a way, it's nice to know that there are Greek gods out there, because you have somebody to blame when things go wrong. For instance, when you're walking away from a bus that's just been attacked by monster hags and blown up by lightning, and it's raining on top of everything else, most people might think that's just really bad luck; when you're a half-blood, you understand that some devine force is really trying to mess up your day.

Rick Riordan

Rahab was smitten with astonishment. “A god that feeds his people by raining bread from heaven.” “Oh, that’s only one of the miracles that God has given to us.” Othniel went on to tell about how water flowed from a solid rock in the desert when the people were thirsty and there was no water. He told about how God had miraculously cared for Israel during its long wanderings. “It’s been forty years now, and God’s taken care of us.” “Tell me about yourself,” Rahab said. “About me? Well, there’s nothing much to tell. My parents are dead. Ardon up there on the roof, he’s my cousin.” He laughed shortly and said, “He’s the good one. I’m the bad one.

Gilbert Morris

Thunder only happens when it's raining. Players only love you when they're playing. Say... Women... they will come and they will go. When the rain washes you clean... you'll know.

Stevie Nicks

Hold all the skirts of thy mantle extended when heaven is raining gold.

_Eastern Pr._

Failed Attempts To Break Records

    In September 1978 Mr. Terry Gripton, of Stafford, failed to break

the world shouting record by two and a half decibels.  "I am not surprised

he failed," his wife said afterwards.  "He's really a very quiet man and

doesn't even shout at me."

    In August of the same year Mr. Paul Anthony failed to break the

record for continuous organ playing by 387 hours.

    His attempt at the Golden Fish Fry Restaurant in Manchester ended

after 36 hours 10 minutes, when he was accused of disturbing the peace.

"People complained I was too noisy," he said.

    In January 1976 Mr. Barry McQueen failed to walk backwards across

the Menai Bridge playing the bagpipes.  "It was raining heavily and my

drone got waterlogged," he said.

    A TV cameraman thwarted Mr. Bob Specas' attempt to topple 100,000

dominoes at the Manhattan Center, New York on 9 June 1978.  97,500 dominoes

had been set up when he dropped his press badge and set them off.

        -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

Fortune Cookie

It was raining heavily, and the motorist had car trouble on a lonely country

road.  Anxious to find shelter for the night, he walked over to a farmhouse

and knocked on the front door.  No one responded.  He could feel the water

from the roof running down the back of his neck as he stood on the stoop.

The next time he knocked louder, but still no answer.  By now he was soaked

to the skin.  Desperately he pounded on the door.  At last the head of a

man appeared out of an upstairs window.

    "What do you want?" he asked gruffly.

    "My car broke down," said the traveler, "and I want to know if you

would let me stay here for the night."

    "Sure," replied the man. "If you want to stay there all night, it's

okay with me."

Fortune Cookie

Ladies and Gentlemen, Hobos and Tramps,

Cross-eyed mosquitos and bowlegged ants,

I come before you to stand behind you

To tell you of something I know nothing about.

Next Thursday (which is good Friday),

There will be a convention held in the

Women's Club which is strictly for Men.

Admission is free, pay at the door,

Pull up a chair, and sit on the floor.

It was a summer's day in winter,

And the snow was raining fast,

As a barefoot boy with shoes on,

Stood sitting in the grass.

Oh, that bright day in the dead of night,

Two dead men got up to fight.

Three blind men to see fair play,

Forty mutes to yell "Hooray"!

Back to back, they faced each other,

Drew their swords and shot each other.

A deaf policeman heard the noise,

Came and arrested those two dead boys.

Fortune Cookie

It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if at any moment it might cease and the sky clear, but after a short break it began raining harder than before. The saturated road no longer absorbed the water, which ran along the ruts in streams.

Leo Tolstoy     War and Peace

In this second half of the nineteenth century in which we are now living, the mayor and his scarf, the priest and his chasuble, the law and God no longer suffice; they must be eked out by the Postilion de Lonjumeau; a blue waistcoat turned up with red, and with bell buttons, a plaque like a vantbrace, knee-breeches of green leather, oaths to the Norman horses with their tails knotted up, false galloons, varnished hat, long powdered locks, an enormous whip and tall boots. France does not yet carry elegance to the length of doing like the English nobility, and raining down on the post-chaise of the bridal pair a hail storm of slippers trodden down at heel and of worn-out shoes, in memory of Churchill, afterwards Marlborough, or Malbrouck, who was assailed on his wedding-day by the wrath of an aunt which brought him good luck. Old shoes and slippers do not, as yet, form a part of our nuptial celebrations; but patience, as good taste continues to spread, we shall come to that.

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

"Ah, come now!" exclaimed Gavroche, "what's the meaning of this? It's re-raining! Good Heavens, if it goes on like this, I shall stop my subscription."

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

Enjolras and his friends had been on the Boulevard Bourdon, near the public storehouses, at the moment when the dragoons had made their charge. Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre were among those who had taken to the Rue Bassompierre, shouting: "To the barricades!" In the Rue Lesdiguieres they had met an old man walking along. What had attracted their attention was that the goodman was walking in a zig-zag, as though he were intoxicated. Moreover, he had his hat in his hand, although it had been raining all the morning, and was raining pretty briskly at the very time. Courfeyrac had recognized Father Mabeuf. He knew him through having many times accompanied Marius as far as his door. As he was acquainted with the peaceful and more than timid habits of the old beadle-book-collector, and was amazed at the sight of him in the midst of that uproar, a couple of paces from the cavalry charges, almost in the midst of a fusillade, hatless in the rain, and strolling about among the bullets, he had accosted him, and the following dialogue had been exchanged between the rioter of fire and the octogenarian:--

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

The second replied: "It's raining hard enough to put out the very devil's fire. And the bobbies will be along instanter. There's a soldier on guard yonder. We shall get nabbed here."

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining for four days. Having changed horses twice and galloped twenty miles in an hour and a half over a sticky, muddy road, Bolkhovitinov reached Litashevka after one o'clock at night. Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle fence hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF, and throwing down his reins, he entered a dark passage.

Leo Tolstoy     War and Peace

On her side, Cosette languished. She suffered from the absence of Marius as she had rejoiced in his presence, peculiarly, without exactly being conscious of it. When Jean Valjean ceased to take her on their customary strolls, a feminine instinct murmured confusedly, at the bottom of her heart, that she must not seem to set store on the Luxembourg garden, and that if this proved to be a matter of indifference to her, her father would take her thither once more. But days, weeks, months, elapsed. Jean Valjean had tacitly accepted Cosette's tacit consent. She regretted it. It was too late. So Marius had disappeared; all was over. The day on which she returned to the Luxembourg, Marius was no longer there. What was to be done? Should she ever find him again? She felt an anguish at her heart, which nothing relieved, and which augmented every day; she no longer knew whether it was winter or summer, whether it was raining or shining, whether the birds were singing, whether it was the season for dahlias or daisies, whether the Luxembourg was more charming than the Tuileries, whether the linen which the laundress brought home was starched too much or not enough, whether Toussaint had done "her marketing" well or ill; and she remained dejected, absorbed, attentive to but a single thought, her eyes vague and staring as when one gazes by night at a black and fathomless spot where an apparition has vanished.

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

"Stupid," said he, accenting the insulting word, with a caressing intonation, "it's outside that it is black. Outside it's raining, here it does not rain; outside it's cold, here there's not an atom of wind; outside there are heaps of people, here there's no one; outside there ain't even the moon, here there's my candle, confound it!"

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

The village was illuminated; nobody went to bed again; it was the greatest night the little town had ever seen. During the first half-hour a procession of villagers filed through Judge Thatcher's house, seized the saved ones and kissed them, squeezed Mrs. Thatcher's hand, tried to speak but couldn't--and drifted out raining tears all over the place.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

When Suchet says:--"Capitulate,"--Palafox replies: "After the war with cannon, the war with knives." Nothing was lacking in the capture by assault of the Hucheloup wine-shop; neither paving-stones raining from the windows and the roof on the besiegers and exasperating the soldiers by crushing them horribly, nor shots fired from the attic-windows and the cellar, nor the fury of attack, nor, finally, when the door yielded, the frenzied madness of extermination. The assailants, rushing into the wine-shop, their feet entangled in the panels of the door which had been beaten in and flung on the ground, found not a single combatant there. The spiral staircase, hewn asunder with the axe, lay in the middle of the tap-room, a few wounded men were just breathing their last, every one who was not killed was on the first floor, and from there, through the hole in the ceiling, which had formed the entrance of the stairs, a terrific fire burst forth. It was the last of their cartridges. When they were exhausted, when these formidable men on the point of death had no longer either powder or ball, each grasped in his hands two of the bottles which Enjolras had reserved, and of which we have spoken, and held the scaling party in check with these frightfully fragile clubs. They were bottles of aquafortis.

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

The little fellows nudged each other, the gamin frightened and inspired them with confidence at one and the same time, and then, it was raining very hard. The elder one undertook the risk. The younger, on seeing his brother climbing up, and himself left alone between the paws of this huge beast, felt greatly inclined to cry, but he did not dare.

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

They went by way of the boulevard. The first wedding coach held Cosette and Aunt Gillenormand, M. Gillenormand and Jean Valjean. Marius, still separated from his betrothed according to usage, did not come until the second. The nuptial train, on emerging from the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, became entangled in a long procession of vehicles which formed an endless chain from the Madeleine to the Bastille, and from the Bastille to the Madeleine. Maskers abounded on the boulevard. In spite of the fact that it was raining at intervals, Merry-Andrew, Pantaloon and Clown persisted. In the good humor of that winter of 1833, Paris had disguised itself as Venice. Such Shrove Tuesdays are no longer to be seen now-a-days. Everything which exists being a scattered Carnival, there is no longer any Carnival.

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

It is probable that sailors would be inclined to restrict the use of the word to the surface clouds met with in comparatively calm weather, and that the obscurity of the atmosphere when it is blowing hard and perhaps raining hard as well should be indicated by the terms "thick weather" or "very thick weather" and not by "fog"; but the term "fog" would be quite correctly used on such occasions from the point of view of cautious navigation. If cloud, drizzling rain, or heavy rain cause such obscurity that passing ships are not visible within working distances the sounding of a fog-horn becomes a duty. Entry: FOG

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 10, Slice 5 "Fleury, Claude" to "Foraker"     1910-1911

1. LATIUM ANTIQUUM consisted principally of an extensive plain, now known as the Campagna di Roma, bounded towards the interior by the Apennines, which rise very abruptly from the plains to a height of between 4000 and 5000 ft. Several of the Latin cities, including Tibur and Praeneste, were situated on the terrace-like underfalls of these mountains,[2] while Cora, Norba and Setia were placed in like manner on the slopes of the Volscian mountains (Monti Lepini), a rugged and lofty limestone range, which runs parallel to the main mass of the Apennines, being separated from them, however, by the valley of the Trerus (Sacco), and forms a continuous barrier from there to Terracina. No volcanic eruptions are known to have taken place in these mountains within the historic period, though Livy sometimes speaks of it "raining stones in the Alban hills" (i. 31, xxxv. 9--on the latter occasion it even did so on the Aventine). It is asserted, too, that some of the earliest tombs of the necropolis of Alba Longa (q.v.) were found beneath a stratum of peperino. Earthquakes (not of a violent character within recent centuries, though the ruin of the Colosseum is probably to be ascribed to this cause) are not unknown even at the present day in Rome and in the Alban Hills, and a seismograph has been established at Rocca di Papa. The surface is by no means a uniform plain, but is a broad undulating tract, furrowed throughout by numerous depressions, with precipitous banks, serving as water-courses, though rarely traversed by any considerable stream. As the general level of the plain rises gradually, though almost imperceptibly, to the foot of the Apennines, these channels by degrees assume the character of ravines of a formidable description. Entry: 1

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 16, Slice 3 "Latin Language" to "Lefebvre, François-Joseph"     1910-1911

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