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Lava Quotes

Browse 74 quotes about Lava.

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Lava Quotes

“That love, which is the highest joy, which is divine simplicity itself, is not for you moderns, you children of reflection. It works only evil in you. As soon as you wish to be natural, you become common. To you nature seems something hostile; you have made devils out of the smiling gods of Greece, and out of me a demon. You can only exorcise and curse me, or slay yourselves in bacchantic madness before my altar. And if ever one of you has had the courage to kiss my red mouth, he makes a barefoot pilgrimage to Rome in penitential robes and expects flowers to grow from his withered staff, while under my feet roses, violets, and myrtles spring up every hour, but their fragrance does not agree with you. Stay among your northern fogs and Christian incense; let us pagans remain under the debris, beneath the lava; do not disinter us.”

LoveEvilLavaPagansVenus In Furs
Book:Venus in Furs
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“Life is not a bed of roses. When things move in the way one wishes, one becomes overconfident that fate will always be with us. Rarely do we realize that it is only like a dormant volcano, ready to erupt any time. The volcano which would totally devastate was also waiting to make its nasty appearance. It did send its tremors, but we could not decipher it in time. The result was that we spread out like molten lava in various directions.”

LifeLife LessonsFateLavaNeelam Saxena Chandra QuotesVolcano
Book:In the flickering of an eye
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“It would be both foolish and cumbersome to continue our everyday existences in bliss without first denying to ourselves, for the sake of excusing our own repugnance, the inherent cruelty from which modern civilization was conceived...And there can be no other path by which a fiercely competitive, yet social species, as humanity, can afford its members the level of safety, prosperity and stability—such that we enjoy now— without its initial pangs of cannibalism, brutality, dominance and cruelty to forge the foundations, very much like the lava which formed the ground upon which we now stand. Lava still erupts from the core. Brutality, Dominance, and Cruelty similarly erupt from ours; and they are no less prevalent now than in early human history.”

Human NatureCivilizationCrueltyHuman HistoryBrutalityDominanceLavaEarly ManSpecies Proliferation
Book:Only the Deplorable
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“Time passes, and as the hot midday sun and cool mountain nights alternately bake and freeze the blackened landscape of Vesuvius, something remarkable happens. Gradually, the streams of cold lava are colonized by a lichen, stereocaulon vesuvianim. This lichen is so tiny that it is almost invisible to the naked eye, but as it grows, it turns the lava from black to silvery gray. Where the lichen has gone, other plants can follow- first mugwort, valerian, and Mediterranean scrub, but later ilex and birch trees, along with dozens of species of apricot. Meanwhile, the clinkers and ash that covered the landscape like so much grubby gray snow are slowly, inexorably, working their way into the fields and the vineyards, crumbling as they do so, adding their richness to the thick black soil, and an incomparable flavor to tomatoes, zucchini, eggplants, fruit and all the other produce which grows there.”

ProduceItalyFertilizerLavaNew GrowthLichensVolcanic Ash
Book:The Wedding Officer
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“I thought the Mauna Loa lava viewing area on Saddle Road in Hawaii was dangerous. Very dark and isolated in parts. Lots of crazy drivers and people strolling around in dark clothes in the night in the main viewing areas. A lack of police along the old Saddle Road on a major tourist attraction with thousands of people present. The two nights I went through there, it had huge traffic jams! It is at approximately 6,590 feet which is known to induce altitude sickness into people.”

NightDarkCrazyDangerousHawaiiLavaAreaViewingMauna LoaSaddle Road
Author:Steven Magee
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“Old religious factions are volcanoes burned out; on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriae of old eruptions grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine and the sustaining corn.”

GrowsReligiousPeacefulCheerBurnedAshesCornVinesFactionsSustainingOlivesVolcanoesEruptionLavaBurned Out
Book:The Speeches of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, with Memoir and Historical Introductions. By James Burke
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“You people who have survived childhood don't remeber any longer what it was like. You think children are whole, uncomplicated creatures, and if you split them in two with a handy axe there would be all one substance inside, hard candy. But it isn't hard candy so much as a hopeless seething lava of all kinds of things, a turmoil, a mess. And once the child starts thinking about this mess he begins to disintegrate as a child and turns into something else--an adult, an animal.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKindChildrenTwoHardWholeWould BeTurnsAnimalChildhoodLike YouCreaturesAdultsAll KindsMessSubstanceHopelessSplitsSurvivedCandyTurmoilHandyLavaUncomplicatedSeethingHard Candy
Author:Joyce Carol Oates
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“Ninety-nine and nine-tenths of the earth’s volume must forever remain invisible and untouchable. Because more than 97 per cent of it is too hot to crystallize, its body is extremely weak. The crust, being so thin, must bend, if, over wide areas, it becomes loaded with glacial ice, ocean water or deposits of sand and mud. It must bend in the opposite sense if widely extended loads of such material be removed. This accounts for … the origin of chains of high mountains … and the rise of lava to the earth’s surface.”

IfsBodyEarthWaterForeverMaterialsMountainOceanAreasWeakOppositesAccountsHotWideSurfaceNineInvisibleIceChainsSandCentsLoadVolumeMudNinetyLoadedRemovalDepositsNinety NineUntouchablesLavaOcean Water
Author:Reginald Aldworth Daly
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“The stone in quarries is found to be of different and unlike qualities. In some it is soft, in others it is medium, in still others it is hard as in lava quarries. There are also numerous other kinds: for instance, in Campania, red and black tufas; in Umbria, Picenum, and Venetia, white tufa which can be cut with a toothed saw like wood.”

KindStillsDifferentHardFoundBlackWhiteQualitySawsCuttingRedStonesWoodsMediumsInstanceLavaQuarryUmbriaRed And Black
Author:Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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“Leave a cavity behind the [wall] facings, and on the inside build walls two feet thick, made of red dimension stone or burnt brick or lava in courses, and then bind them to the fronts by means of iron clamps and lead. The beds and builds, all settling equally and bonded at the joints, will not let the work bulge out, nor allow the fall of the face walls which have been tightly fastened together.”

MeanHas BeensMadeTwoTogetherFacesFallCoursesBehindsFeetFrontsWallBedRedStonesSettlingDimensionsIronThickBricksJointsLava
Author:Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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“Creation is all things and us. It is us in relationship with all things. All things, the ones we see and the ones we do not; the whirling galaxies and the wild suns, the black holes and the microorganisms, the trees and the stars, the fish and the whales - the molten lava and the towering snow-capped mountains, the children we give birth to and their children, and theirs, and theirs, and theirs.”

GivingChildrenStarsBlackSunTreeCreationBirthMountainAll ThingsFishesHolesSnowGalaxyWhalesBlack HoleLavaMicroorganisms
Author:Matthew Fox
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“I saw bubbling lava, and at the same moment I saw a reflection of a certain kind of inner turmoil. Because at the moment I looked into that crater, I slipped, and a large piece of volcanic rock took a hole out of my leg. The scar is still there 20, 30 years later. But it's one of those things that reminds you of the kind of risk or the kind of moment in order to push yourself.”

YearsKindStillsMomentsCertainOrderSawsPiecesRiskRocksReflectionLegsHolesScarTurmoilPush YourselfLavaCraters
Author:Julie Taymor
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“Teenagers are bored. By everything. Show a teenager an actual volcanic eruption, in progress, featuring giant billowing clouds of smoke, hot rocks raining from the sky, lava floes destroying entire villages, etc., and the teenager, eyebrows arched with sarcasm, will look at you and say, "Gee, this is swell," then return to the rental car, turn on his portable CD player, and listen to a band called Stomach Contents.”

LooksShowsTurnsPlayerProgressSkyRocksCarReturnBandRainFlowHotCloudsSmokeTeenagerBoredGiantsEtcSarcasmVillageStomachDestroyingEyebrowsTurn-onCdsEruptionLavaCar RentalVolcanic EruptionsCd Players
Author:Dave Barry
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“We haven't seen a real volcanic event at least in 74,000 years - [Mount Toba] in Indonesia, in Sumatra, where the crater itself is 100 kilometers across. It was so monumental, what happened, that for a very long time the entire atmosphere of our planet was darkened. It's not the lava and the heat per se; it's the obscuring of the entire atmosphere, and it made it very difficult for the human race to survive.”

YearsHumansLongMadeRealDifficultRaceHappenedEventsHavensPlanetsLong TimeMade ItAtmosphereHuman RaceHeatOur PlanetIndonesiaLavaCraters
Author:Werner Herzog
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