Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud; / Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun.
He who boasts of being perfect is perfect in folly. I never saw a perfect man. Every rose has its thorns, and every day its night. Even the sun shows spots, and the skies are darkened with clouds. And faults of some kind nestle in every bosom.--_Spurgeon._
hope you two boys can dig. There’ll be some digging to do.” “Graves?” Eddie asked, not sure if he was joking or not. “Graves come later.” Roland looked up at the sky, but the clouds had advanced out of the west and stolen the stars. “Just remember, it’s the winners who dig them.
Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies in a twinkling. It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.
A pleasing land of drowsyhed it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, Forever flushing round a summer sky: There eke the soft delights that witchingly Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast, And the calm pleasures always hover'd nigh; But whate'er smack'd of noyance or unrest Was far, far off expell'd from this delicious nest.
Light is, in reality, more awful than darkness; modesty more majestic than strength; and there is truer sublimity in the sweet joy of a child, or the sweet virtue of a maiden, than in the strength of Ant?us or the thunder-clouds of ?tna.
I wonder at the boldness with which these persons undertake to speak of God, in addressing their words to the irreligious. Their first chapter is to prove Divinity by the works of nature. I should not be astonished at their undertaking if they addressed their argument to the faithful, for it is certain that those who have a lively faith in their heart see at once that all that exists is none other than the work of the God whom they adore. But for those in whom this light is extinguished, and in whom we desire to revive it, men destitute of faith and grace who, seeking with all their light whatever they see in nature to lead them to this knowledge, find only clouds and darkness,--to tell them they need only look at the smallest things which surround them in order to see God unveiled, to give them as the sole proof of this great and important subject, the course of the moon and planets, and to say that with such an argument we have accomplished the proof; is to give them ground for belief that the proofs of our Religion are very feeble. Indeed I see by reason and experience that nothing is more fitted to excite contempt.
When you beat a drum, you create NOW, when silence becomes a sound so enormous and alive it feels like you're breathing in the clouds and the sky, and your heart is the rain and the thunder.
He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar. Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
It was a perfect spring day. The air was sweet and gentle and the sky stretched high, an intense blue. Harold was certain that the last time he had peered through the net drapes of Fossebridge Road (his home), the trees and hedges were dark bones and spindles against the skyline; yet now that he was out, and on his feet, it was as if everywhere he looked, the fields, gardens, trees, and hedgerows and exploded with growth. A canopy of sticky young leaves clung to the branches above him. There were startling yellow clouds of forsythia, trails of purple aubrietia; a young willow shook in a fountain of silver. The first of the potato shoots fingered through the soil, and already tiny buds hung from the gooseberry and currant shrubs like the earrings Maureen used to wear. The abundance of new life was enough to make him giddy.
Be not downcast if difficulties and trials surround you in your heavenly life. They may be purposely placed there by God to train and discipline you for higher developments of faith. If He calls you to "toiling in rowing," it may be to make you the hardier seaman, to lead you to lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and, above all, to drive you to a holier trust in Him who has the vessel and its destinies in His hand, and who, amid gathering clouds and darkened horizon and crested billows is ever uttering the mild rebuke to our misgivings--"Said I not unto thee, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God."--_Macduff._
In the early days of the world, the world was too full of wonders to require any other miracles. The whole world was a miracle and a revelation, there was no need for any special disclosure. At that time the heavens, the waters, the sun and moon, the stars of heaven, the showers and dew, the winds of God, fire and heat, winter and summer, ice and snow, nights and days, lightnings and clouds, the earth, the mountains and hills, the green things upon the earth, the wells, and seas and floods--all blessed the Lord, praised Him and magnified Him for ever. Can we imagine a more powerful revelation? Is it for us to say that for the children of men to join in praising and magnifying Him who revealed Himself in His own way in all the magnificence, the wisdom and order of nature, is mere paganism, polytheism, pantheism, and abominable idolatry? I have heard many blasphemies, I have heard none greater than this.
Yes, social friend, I love thee well, In learned doctors' spite; Thy clouds all other clouds dispel, And lap me in delight.
It’s like that one time you woke up and tripped down a rabbit hole and a blond girl in a blue dress kept asking you for directions but you couldn’t tell her, you had no idea, you kept trying to speak but your throat was full of rain clouds and it’s like someone has taken the ocean and filled it with silence and dumped it all over this room.
Caput inter nubila condit=--(Fame) hides her head amid the clouds.
Joy is a sunbeam between two clouds.
The two are perfectly consistent. Man standing between the celestial and terrestrial worlds is related to both; and resembling neither a flower, which, springing from the dust and returning to it, belongs altogether to the earth, nor a star which, shining far remote from its lower sphere, belongs altogether to the heavens, our hearts may be fitly likened to the rainbow that, rising into heaven but resting on earth, is connected both with the clods of the valley and the clouds of the sky.--_Guthrie._
As clouds obscure the sun, so bad thoughts darken and destroy the brightness of the soul.--VEN. LOUIS OF GRANADA.
Sorrows are like thunder-clouds--in the distance they look black, over our heads hardly gray.
Thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.
'Tis the mind that makes the body rich; / And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, / So honour peereth in the meanest habit.
I cannot but mention among these precepts a new means of study, which, although it may seem trivial and almost ridiculous, is nevertheless extremely useful in arousing the mind to {105} various inventions. It is as follows: when you look at walls mottled with various stains or stones made of diverse substances, if you have to invent some scene, you may discover on them the likeness of various countries, adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, great valleys and hills in diverse arrangement; again, you may be able to see battles and figures in action and strange effects of physiognomy and costumes, and infinite objects which you could reduce to complete and harmonious forms. And the effect produced by these mottled walls is like that of the sound of bells, in the vibrating of which you may recognize any name or word you choose to imagine. I have seen blots in the clouds and in mottled walls which have stimulated me to the invention of various objects, and although the blots themselves were altogether devoid of perfection in any one of their parts, they lacked not perfection in their movement and circumstance.
Ah, I believe Schacht. Only too willingly; that’s to say, I think what he says is absolutely true, for the world is incomprehensibly crass, tyrannical, moody, and cruel to sickly and sensitive people. Well, Schacht will stay here for the time being. We laughed at him a bit, when he arrived, that can’t be helped either, Schacht is young and after all can’t be allowed to think there are special degrees, advantages, methods, and considerations for him. He has now had his first disappointment, and I’m convinced that he’ll have twenty disappointments, one after the other. Life with its savage laws is in any case for certain people a succession of discouragements and terrifying bad impressions. People like Schacht are born to feel and suffer a continuous sense of aversion. He would like to admit and welcome things, but he just can’t. Hardness and lack of compassion strike him with tenfold force, he just feels them more acutely. Poor Schacht. He’s a child and he should be able to revel in melodies and bed himself in kind, soft, carefree things. For him there should be secret splashings and birdsong. Pale and delicate evening clouds should waft him away in the kingdom of Ah, What’s Happening to Me? His hands are made for light gestures, not for work. Before him breezes should blow, and behind him sweet, friendly voices should be whispering. His eyes should be allowed to remain blissfully closed, and Schacht should be allowed to go quietly to sleep again, after being wakened in the morning in the warm, sensuous cushions. For him there is, at root, no proper activity, for every activity is for him, the way he is, improper, unnatural, and unsuitable. Compared with Schacht I’m the trueblue rawboned laborer. Ah, he’ll be crushed, and one day he’ll die in a hospital. or he’ll perish, ruined in body and soul, inside one of our modern prisons.
~Rain.~--Clouds dissolved the thirsty ground supply.--_Roscommon._
The clouds that gather round the setting sun / Do take a sober colouring from an eye / That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality.
I saw two clouds at morning Tinged by the rising sun, And in the dawn they floated on And mingled into one.
In nubibus=--In the clouds.
But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet Lessen like sound of friends' departing feet; And Death is beautiful as feet of friend Coming with welcome at our journey's end. For me Fate gave, whate'er she else denied, A nature sloping to the southern side; I thank her for it, though when clouds arise Such natures double-darken gloomy skies.
Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind / Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind; / His soul proud science never taught to stray / Far as the solar walk or milky way; / Yet simple nature to his hope has given, / Behind the cloud-topt hills, a humbler heaven.
Surgit post nubila Ph?bus=--The sun rises after the clouds.
When the sky is free from clouds we can see more clearly the brightness of the sun. In like manner, when the soul is free from sin and the gloom of passion, it participates in the divine light.--VEN. LOUIS DE GRANADA.
When clouds appear, wise men put on their cloaks; / When great leaves fall, the winter is at hand.
'T is a common proof, That lowliness is young ambition's ladder, Whereto the climber-upward turns his face; But when he once attains the upmost round, He then unto the ladder turns his back, Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend.
The hooded clouds, like friars, Tell their beads in drops of rain.
The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality.
Truths are first clouds, then rain, then harvests and food.
The poet bestrides the clouds, the wise man looks up at them.
The stormy March has come at last, With winds and clouds and changing skies; I hear the rushing of the blast That through the snowy valley flies.
I saw young Harry, with his beaver on, His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm'd, Rise from the ground like feather'd Mercury, And vaulted with such ease into his seat As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds, To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus And witch the world with noble horsemanship.
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life, The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!
Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly, books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon, of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars; actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as they rise and roll.--_Alcott._
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way.
Have I begun this path of heavenly love and knowledge now? Am I progressing in it? Do I feel some dawnings of the heavenly light, earnests and antepasts of the full day of glory? Let all God's dealings serve to quicken me in my way. Let every affection it may please Him to send, be as the moving pillar-cloud of old, beckoning me to move my tent onward, saying, "Arise ye and depart, for this is not your rest." Let me be often standing now on faith's lofty eminences, looking for "the day of God"--the rising sun which is to set no more in weeping clouds. Wondrous progression! How will all earth's learning, its boasted acquirements and eagle-eyed philosophy sink into the lispings of very infancy in comparison with this manhood of knowledge! Heaven will be the true "_Excelsior_," its song, "_a song of degrees_," Jesus leading His people from height to height of glory, and saying, as He said to Nathaniel, "_Thou shalt see GREATER things than these!_"--_Macduff._
Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.
When clouds appear like rocks and towers, / The earth's refreshed with frequent showers.
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds, In ranks and squadrons and right form of war, Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol.
Post nubila Ph?bus=--After clouds the sun.
Nothing quickens the perceptions like genuine love. From the humblest professional attachment to the most chivalric devotion, what keenness of observation is born under the influence of that feeling which drives away the obscuring clouds of selfishness, as the sun consumes the vapor of the morning.--_Tuckerman._
Rising genius always shoots forth its rays from among clouds and vapours, but these will gradually roll away and disappear as it ascends to its steady and meridian lustre.
Great souls attract sorrows as mountains do storms. But the thunder-clouds break upon them, and they thus form a shelter for the plains around.
Ye may darken over the blue heavens, ye vapoury masses in the sky. It matters not! Beyond the howling of that wrath, beyond the blackness of those clouds, there shines, unaltered and serene, the moon that shone in Paradise.... The moon that promises a paradise restored.
His eyes were blued steel, lined in coal and cut through with silver. They were like clouds and storms and all the things she’d never understood about poetry and romance novels.
As Jupiter On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds That shed May flowers.
Never king dropped out of the clouds.
The impression made on me by the look of a child who is not yet conscious of himself and of the world round him is that of still undisturbed godliness. Only when self-consciousness wakes little by little, through pleasure or pain, when the spirit accustoms itself to its bodily covering, when man begins to say _I_ and the world to call things _his_, then the full separation of the human self from the Divine begins, and it is only after long struggles that the light of _true_ self-consciousness sooner or later breaks through the clouds of earthly semblances, and makes us again like the little children 'of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven.' In God we live and move and have our being, that is the sum of all human wisdom, and he who does not find it here, will find it in another life. All else that we learn on earth, be it the history of nature or of mankind, is for this end alone, to show us everywhere the presence of a Divine providence, and to lead us through the knowledge of the history of the human spirit to the knowledge of ourselves, and through the knowledge of the laws of nature to the understanding of that human nature to which we are subjected in life.
There are cloudy days for the mind as well as for the world, and the man who has the most genius is twenty times a day in the clouds.
Raindrops are my only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. That I have one, too. I always wonder about raindrops. I wonder about how they’re always falling down, tripping over their own feet, breaking their legs and forgetting their parachutes as they tumble right out of the sky toward an uncertain end. It’s like someone is emptying their pockets over the earth and doesn’t seem to care where the contents fall, doesn’t seem to care that the raindrops burst when they hit the ground, that they shatter when they fall to the floor, that people curse the days the drops dare to tap on their doors. I am a raindrop.
The clouds treat the sea as if it were a mill-pond or a spring-run, too insignificant to make any exceptions to.
What is thy _season_ this morning? Is it the season of drought? Then that is the season for showers. Is it a season of great heaviness and black clouds? Then that is the season for showers. "As thy days so shall thy strength be." "I will give thee _showers_ of blessing." The word is in the plural. All kinds of blessings God will send. All God's blessings go together, like links in a golden chain. If He gives converting grace, He will also give comforting grace. He will send "showers of blessings." Look up to-day, O parched plant, and open thy leaves and flowers for a heavenly watering.--_Spurgeon._
The rapid increase of natural knowledge, which is the chief characteristic of our age, is effected in various ways. The main army of science moves to the conquest of new worlds slowly and surely, nor ever cedes an inch of the territory gained. But the advance is covered and facilitated by the ceaseless activity of clouds of light troops provided with a weapon--always efficient, if not always an arm of precision--the scientific imagination. It is the business of these _enfants perdus_ of science to make raids into the realm of ignorance wherever they see, or think they see, a chance; and cheerfully to accept defeat, or it may be annihilation, as the reward of error. Unfortunately the public, which watches the progress of the campaign, too often mistakes a dashing incursion of the Uhlans for a forward movement of the main body; fondly imagining that the strategic movement to the rear, which occasionally follows, indicates a battle lost by science. And it must be confessed that the error is too often justified by the effects of the irrepressible tendency which men of science share with all other sorts of men known to me, to be impatient of that most wholesome state of mind--suspended judgment; to assume the objective truth of speculations which, from the nature of the evidence in their favour, can have no claim to be more than working hypotheses.
Our sorrows are like thunder-clouds, which seem black in the distance, but grow lighter as they approach.
Whoso boasteth himself of a false gift is like clouds and wind without rain.
Though Christianity has given us a purer and truer idea of the Godhead, of the majesty of His power and the holiness of His will, there remains with many of us the conception of a merely objective Deity. God is still with many of us in the clouds, so far removed from the earth and so high above anything human, that in trying to realise fully the meaning of Christ's teaching we often shrink from approaching too near to the blinding effulgence of Jehovah. The idea that we should stand to Him in the relation of children to their father seems to some people almost irreverent, and the thought that God is near us everywhere, the belief that we are also His offspring, nay, that there has never been an absolute barrier between divinity and humanity, has often been branded as Pantheism. Yet Christianity would not be Christianity without this so-called Pantheism, and it is only some lingering belief in something like a Jove-like Deus Optimus Maximus that keeps the eyes of our mind fixed with awe on the God of Nature without, rather than on the much more awful God of the soul within.
The prophecies which foretell the time foretell him only as master of the Gentiles and suffering, and not as in the clouds nor as judge. And those which represent him thus as judge and in glory do not specify the time.
Never king dropped out of the clouds.
Earthly faithfulness is possible only by the reception of heavenly gifts. As surely as every leaf that grows is mainly water that the plant has got from the clouds, and carbon that it has got out of the atmosphere, so surely will all our good be mainly drawn from heaven and heaven's gifts. As certainly as every lump of coal that you put upon your fire contains in itself sunbeams that have been locked up for all these millenniums that have passed since it waved green in the forest, so certainly does every good deed embody in itself gifts from above. And no man is pure except by impartation; and every good thing and every perfect thing cometh from the Father of lights.--_Alex. McLaren._
Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies, or like a cradled creature lies.--_Barry Cornwall._
Shrouded in baleful vapours, the genius of Burns was never seen in clear, azure splendour, enlightening the world; but some beams from it did, by fits, pierce through; and tinted those clouds with rainbow and orient colours into a glory and stern grandeur which men silently gazed on with wonder and tears.
A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.
The fog hung thick and heavy as the kids formed into a single line on the south side of Helicopter Hill. Mellas felt as if the clouds above him were slabs of slate. The kids were fatigued and filled with despair at the insanity of it all. Yet they were all checking ammunition, sliding bolts back and forth, preparing to participate in the insanity. It was as if the veterans of the company, succumbing to this insanity, had decided to commit suicide. Mellas, sick with exhaustion, now knew why men threw themselves on hand grenades.
For 'tis the mind that makes the body rich: / And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, / So honour peereth in the meanest habit.
The clouds in the movies have always seemed more real to me than those on TV. There would be no clouds on Modern Family, that was certain, and I was not sure I could work in a world without clouds.