quotations about the Apocalypse
So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky.
JOHN DRYDEN
"A Song for St. Cecilia's Day"
Armageddon is, moreover, the ultimate problem-solver. A wrathful God doesn't just purge Earth of its sinners but credit-card debt and dead-end jobs. For those of us who subscribe to a particular theology that the end will come sans horsemen, trumpeting angels, or Yoda vanishing acts, the apocalypse is also something that -- if we're delusional enough to believe in our own exceptionalism -- can be survived. The smug satisfaction of knowing you were right about catastrophic climate change is great, but base anarchist fantasies are better. The zombie apocalypse isn't about things that eat brains. It's that school's out forever.
BEN GUARINO
"How Psychotic Is It to Secretly Want the Apocalypse", Inverse, February 17, 2016
If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.
G.K. CHESTERTON
"A Defence of Baby-Worship"
That's the thing about the collapse of civilization ... it never happens according to plan -- there's no slavering horde of zombies. No actinic flash of thermonuclear war. No Earth-shuddering asteroid. The end comes in unforeseen ways; the stock market collapses, and then the banks, and then there is no food in the supermarkets, or the communications system goes down completely and inevitably, and previously amiable co-workers find themselves wrestling over the last remaining cookie that someone brought in before all the madness began.
MARK A. RAYNER
The Fridgularity
The world had seen so many Ages: the Age of Enlightenment; of Reformation; of Reason. Now, at last, the Age of Desire. And after this, an end to Ages; an end, perhaps, to everything.
CLIVE BARKER
The Inhuman Condition
How close are we to the end of the world? Well, the Federation of Atomic Science has this atomic clock, also known as the Doomsday Clock. It's a political science-type of perspective that gives us an estimate in minutes. And we are, from a nuclear war perspective, the closest we've been since the '50s.
ROSELLA CAPPELLA
"Apocalyptic theories, misconceptions revealed during BU panel", Daily Free Press, February 16, 2016
Never a good sign, he thought, when the crows showed up.
JUSTIN CRONIN
The Twelve
When Armageddon takes place, parking is going to be a major problem.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
The people liked the prospect of the end of the world because it would be a spectacle, something to relieve the fearful monotony of their lives. Funerals and weddings were commonplace, and nothing could have been so interesting to them as the coming of the end of the world ... unless it had been a first-class circus.
EDWARD EGGLESTON
The End of the World
My Zombie apocalypse plan is simple but effective; I fully intend to die in the very first wave.
GRAHAM PARKE
Unspent Time
If the God of goodness and indulgence who hovers over the worlds does not make a second washing of the human race, it is doubtless because so little success attended the first.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Maybe it's ALWAYS the end of the world. Maybe you're alive for a while, and then you realize you're going to die, and that's such an insane thing to comprehend, you look around for answers and the only answer is that the world must die with you.
JESS WALTER
We Live in Water: Stories
It takes four angels to oversee an apocalypse: a recorder to make the book that would be scripture in the new world; a preserver to comfort and save those selected to be the first generation; an accuser to remind them why they suffer; and a destroyer to revoke the promise of survival and redemption, and to teach them the awful truth about furious sheltering grace.
CHRIS ADRIAN
The Children's Hospital
The end is nigh! The apocalypse is coming, riding on the four elephants of the false Republican god, Donald Trump.
MARCIA PALLY
"The apocalyptic images at the heart of Trump mania", March 9, 2016
Let's face it, one day the world as we know it is going to end. Sure, it might only happen in roughly 6 billion years when our Sun reaches its peak size in the red giant stage, vapourises our planet's atmosphere, and strips away the crust and the mantle, before swallowing up the leftover core. But we probably won't be around for the centuries that will span this devastating process. Chances are something will wipe humanity out -- and perhaps even destroy all life on Earth -- much sooner that the Sun gets around to it.
ANONYMOUS
"Which apocalypse scenario is the most likely, according to science?", Science Alert, December 27, 2015
There's been rumors of war and wars that have been
The meaning of life has been lost in the wind
And some people thinkin' that the end is close by
'Stead of learnin' to live they are learnin' to die
BOB DYLAN
"Let Me Die In My Footsteps"
The apocalypse can paint a big canvas, but it's often the small stories about the end of the world that resonate the most.
TRENT MOORE
"The apocalypse is a terrifying place in new trailer for indie thriller The Survivalist", blastr, January 22, 2016
The destruction of Babylon foretold in the Apocalypse is total and final; as a threat "mill-stone" she is plunged into the deep; there is no recovery. This cannot refer to the mere burning of Rome in A.D. 410, for that event was speedily followed by the complete restoration of the city. When the Babylon of Revelation xviii falls the smoke of its burning goes up forever; it is found no more at all.
JOHANNES BIERMANSKI
The Sacred Scriptures: 29th Special Edition
How would you know if you were the last man on Earth?... I don't guess you would know it. You'd just be it.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Road
The year 1999, seventh month, from the sky will come a great King of Terror: to bring back to life the great King of the Mongols, before and after Mars to reign by good luck. The present time together with the past will be judged by the great Joker: the world too late will be tired of him, and through the clergy oath-taker disloyal. The year of the great seventh number accomplished, it will appear at the time of the games of slaughter: not far from the great millenial age, when the buried will go out from their tombs.
NOSTRADAMUS
The Prophecies of Nostradamus