Earthquake

"Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth In strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth Is with a kind of colic pinchd and vexd By the imprisoning of unruly wind Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving, Shakes the old beldam earth and topples down Steeples and moss-grown towers."

"Then he said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. 11 There will be great earthquakes, and in one place after another food shortages and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and from heaven great signs."

"However, within the hollows of the earth, When from one quarter the wind builds up, lunges,muscles the deep caves with its headstrong power, The earth leans hard where the force of wind has pressed it; Then above ground, the higher the house is built, The nearer it rises to the sky, the worse Will it lean that way and jut out perilously, The beams wrenched loose and hanging ready to fall. And to think, men cant believe that for this world Some time of death and ruin lies in wait, Yet they see so great a mass of earth collapse! And the winds pause for breath—thats lucky, for else No force could rein things galloping to destruction. But since they pause for breath, to rally their force, Come building up and then fall driven back, More often the earth will threaten ruin than Perform it. The earth will lean and then sway back, Its wavering mass restored to the right poise That explains why all houses reel, top floor Most then the middle, and ground floor hardly at all."

"The most remarkable feature about the magnitude scale was that it worked at all and that it could be extended on a worldwide basis. It was originally envisaged as a rather rough-and-ready procedure by which we could grade earthquakes. We would have been happy if we could have assigned just three categories, large, medium, and small; the point is, we wanted to avoid personal judgments. It actually turned out to be quite a finely tuned scale."

"Allah Most High hath created veins in the earth and hath given them into the hands of angels. Wherever the burden of sins increases and Allah Most High wants to scourge the people there, He orders the angels and the angel of that place pulls the vein (i.e., the vein of that region) and the earth there trembles and there occurs the earthquake. (Verily, Allah knoweth best!)"

"Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours."

"That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an airplane — Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn — world serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs."