Literary notes about Disaster (AI summary)
In literature, the term “disaster” is employed with remarkable versatility, often indicating sudden calamities that range from personal tragedy to massive historical ruin. It appears in narratives as a descriptor for the chaotic outcomes of battles and political upheavals ([1], [2], [3], [4]), as well as a marker of profound personal loss or impending doom ([5], [6], [7]). At times, it carries an ironic or even colloquial tone, revealing everyday anxieties and human folly ([8], [9], [10]), while in other contexts it suggests mystical or fated events marked by grandeur and monumental impact ([11], [12], [13]). This layered use not only heightens dramatic tension but also invites readers to reflect on the inherent unpredictability and severity of life’s calamities ([14], [15], [16]).
- The male Jacobins sally out; but only to battle, disaster and confusion.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle - Sir, we are in the face of great disaster, and without your help know not whether we shall save our fleet or lose it.
— from The Iliad by Homer - In short, the disaster falling upon the whole town was unsurpassed in magnitude, and unapproached by any in suddenness and in horror.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides - After the Athenian disaster in Sicily, ambassadors came to Sparta from Chios, Lesbos, and Kyzikus.
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4) by Plutarch - This last disaster crushed him completely.
— from Short Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Martin opened it with a premonition of disaster, and read it standing at the open door when he had received it from the postman.
— from Martin Eden by Jack London - Before, I had only imagined the wretchedness of my desolated home; the reality came on me as a new, and a not less terrible, disaster.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - She could not abide such a disaster as that; she couldn’t endure the thought of it.
— from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain - "I wouldn't call her 'that Bassett disaster', Tuppy.
— from Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse - We know that by taking a railroad journey we entail greater chance of disaster than by staying at home.
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud - Still on those dreadful signs he thought,— Sad omens with disaster fraught, And from his troubled heart he cried, “O, may no ill my spouse betide!”
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki - [“To meditate upon banishments, tortures, wars, diseases, and shipwrecks, that thou mayest not be a novice in any disaster.” —Seneca, Ep., 91, 107.]
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne - Whether some overwhelming disaster, a Jena or a Waterloo, followed by instant invasion, would have subdued her stubborn spirit is problematical.
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton - For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds.
— from The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells - Here was disaster, here was a fine scheme gone to sudden destruction!
— from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain - One day, it was the ninth of September, seemed devoted to every disaster, to every harrowing incident.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
