A Quote by Elihu Burritt

Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are the loudest when least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of nature; she often gives us the lightning without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning.

Elihu Burritt

Quote Topics

Argument Give Gives Great Least Less Lesson Lightning Little Loudest Lucid Many Much Nature Never Noise Often Orators She Should Take Those Thunder Us Volume Wit Without Words

Quote Author

Elihu Burritt
December 8, 1810 - March 6, 1879

did you ever see anybody so disgusting: said lightning to thunder, "never" thunder growled thunder, "lets give him the works

William Steig

You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.

Mark Twain

They that are loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. It is probable that he who is killed by lightning hears no noise; but the thunder-clap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety.

Charles Caleb Colton

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

Mark Twain

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.

Frederick Douglass

But the time has come; the revelation has already occurred, and the guardian seers have seen the lightning strike the darkness we call reality. And now we sleep in the brief interval between the lightning and the thunder.

William Irwin Thompson

If there were no thunder, men would have little fear of lightning.

Jules Verne

If I see one kid dressed up like Thunder or Lightning or Black Lightning, I'll feel like I influenced the culture in a very positive way. That's the endgame for me. If this happens, my mission will be complete.

Salim Akil

You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.

Mark Twain

Never insult a mans beard, you either get thunder or lightning

Si Robertson

Pain. I seem to have an affection, a kind of sweettooth for it. Bolts of lightning, little rivulets of thunder. And I the eye of the storm.

Toni Morrison

She could walk through a lightning storm without being touched; grab a bolt of lightning in the palm of her hand; use the heat of lightning to start the kindling going under her medicine pot. She turned the moon into salve, the stars into swaddling cloth, and healed the wounds of every creature walking up on two or down on four.