Crumble Quotes

Native Soil

There's
Nobody simpler than us, or with
more pride, or fewer tears.
(1922)

Our hearts don't wear it as an amulet,
it doesn't sob beneath the poet's hand,
nor irritate the wounds we can't forget
in our bitter sleep. It's not the Promised Land.
Our souls don't calculate its worth
as a commodity to be sold and bought;
sick, and poor, and silent on this earth,
often we don't give it a thought.
Yes, for us it's the dirt on our galoshes,
yes, for us it's the grit between our teeth.
Dust, and we grind and crumble and crush it,
the gentle and unimplicated earth.
But we'll lie in it, become its weeds and flowers,
so unembarrassedly we call it - ours. ~ Anna Akhmatova

Say you could view a time lapse film of our planet: what would you see?

Transparent images moving through light, "an infinite storm of beauty."
The beginning is swaddled in mists, blasted by random blinding flashes. Lava pours and cools; seas boil and flood. Clouds materialize and shift; now you can see the earth's face through only random patches of clarity. The land shudders and splits, like pack ice rent by widening lead. Mountains burst up, jutting, and dull and soften before your eyes, clothed in forests like felt. The ice rolls up, grinding green land under water forever; the ice rolls back. Forests erupt and disappear like fairy rings. The ice rolls up- mountains are mowed into lakes, land rises wet from the sea like a surfacing whale- the ice rolls back.

A blue-green streaks the highest ridges, a yellow-green spreads from the south like a wave up a strand. A red dye seems to leak from the north down the ridges and into the valleys, seeping south; a white follows the red, then yellow-green washes north, then red spreads again, then white, over and over, making patterns of color too intricate to follow. Slow the film. You see dust storms, locusts, floods, in dizzying flash-frames.

Zero in on a well-watered shore and see smoke from fires drifting. Stone cities rise, spread, and crumble, like paths of alpine blossoms that flourish for a day an inch above the permafrost, that iced earth no root can suck, and wither in a hour. New cit ~ Annie Dillard

Friendship means never having to be alone, it means there's a constant wall of solidarity even when everything else is crumbling around you. If he's the crumble in your life, then I'll be the damn wall! ~ Emma Hart

To-day I think
Only with scents, - scents dead leaves yield,
And bracken, and wild carrot's seed,
And the square mustard field;
Odours that rise
When the spade wounds the root of tree,
Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,
Rhubarb or celery;
The smoke's smell, too,
Flowing from where a bonfire burns
The dead, the waste, the dangerous,
And all to sweetness turns.
It is enough
To smell, to crumble the dark earth,
While the robin sings over again
Sad songs of Autumn mirth.
- A poem called DIGGING. ~ Edward Thomas

If you truly want to succeed, you have to stay humble - humble or crumble - because it can all go away in the blink of an eye. ~ Raven Goodwin

I can kill with a single word. I can hurl a ball of fire into the midst of my enemies. I rule a squadron of skeletal warriors, who can destroy by touch alone. I can raise a wall of ice to protect those I serve. The invisible is discernible to my eyes. Ordinary magic spells crumble in my presence ... But I bow in the presence of a master.
Lord Soth to Raistlin Majere ~ Margaret Weis

Why does an apple crumble at the sight of cream? ~ Anthony T. Hincks

When I take my old copies of the phenomenologies of religion down from the shelf and thumb through their pages, I feel as if I were walking through the halls of abandoned buildings. My graduate school notes lie heavy in the margins, like scrawls of graffiti on the walls, attesting to the fact that human once contested these spaces. I wonder, each time I close one of these volumes and put it back on the shelf, whether the puff of dust that arises from its binding is not a reminder that systems are built to crumble, and the grander the system, the more spectacular the fall. ~ Malcom David Eckel

I've been cut down, destroyed, and demolished. Someone once told me that the human mind is like a temple. A sound structure. Compiled by bricks, cement, and straw.
Built by sweating slaves after hours and hours of back-breaking labor.
But I disagree ... I disagree because even the most sound and well-built structures can crumble.
I've had days where I felt like my mind was crumbling in the palms of my hands and I was frantic, with fear and desperate with trembling fingers to put the pieces back together.
I felt like that until my husband saved me.
I want to cherish the way I feel about Elijah forever. ~ Lauren Hammond

The foundations of civilization are no stronger and no more enduring than the corporate integrity of the homes on which they rest. If the home deteriorates, civilization will crumble and fall. ~ Billy Graham

I desire you so much that I believe I might lose my reason. My body yearns for yours, and I crumble every single time you touch me. I've tried to be stronger but the memory of you inside me burns me. No man has ever made me feel the way you did. Whether you believe me or not, I will cherish that unforgettable moment for the rest of my life. ~ Chris Lange

Fairy godmother says
without you here,
the moon & the stars
would fall.
Mountains would crack
down the middle.
Castles would crumble
into nothingness.
Books would burst
into flames.
It's not time to go just yet. ~ Amanda Lovelace

Genet suggested that colonialism would crumble from the weight of its ignorance, its arrogance and greed, and that the oppressed would take over the positions of their former masters. They would be no better, no more courageous and no more merciful. I ~ Maya Angelou

Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church. I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education - next, freedom - and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that any Established Church is an established crime, an established slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in my own former day - in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb of time - there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been born in a free country: a "free" country with the Corporation Act and the Test still in force in it - timbers propped against men's liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an Established Anachronism with. ~ Mark Twain

I have seen tyrants come and go, and each seems more invincible and more terrible than the last. They all fail. Empires arise and crumble. What matters is what each of us do where we are, when we are. ~ Christopher R. Taylor

It seems like it's all just remembering and forgetting. Things happen so fast, and then they're gone before you notice them. Events ambush you from out of nowhere, blindside you, and then you have to spend the time afterward trying to remember or forget what the hell it all was to begin with. The more you think about it, the more the events crumble, crack, breakdown, or refuse to change at all. They're either pieces of ice in your hand, changing shape and melting away until they're nothing like what they were to begin with, or pieces of glass. Sharp and irritating, unchanging reminders of pain and unpleasantness - or happiness. ~ Gregory Galloway

I really have to dance more often, and so I travel around. If I don't, I will crumble. ~ Rudolf Nureyev

You know, when I came home after our day in the city, I just crashed, thinking about Remi and how much I missed him. And then the next day was worse, And when you walked up to me at that ice cream machine, I just felt myself crumble inside. Around Remi, I felt like I was always trying to act like I was good enough. But around you, I don't want to pretend or hide. That's why I didn't say anything in the cafeteria that day, I knew that in five seconds, I'd be crying on your shoulder."
"That's what it's there for, Ethan."
Alek leaned in, took Ethan's face in his hands, and kissed him. ~ Michael Barakiva

The Old Man at the Wheel
Measured against the immeasurable
universe, no word you have spoken
brought light. Brought
light to what, as a child, you thought
too dark to be survived. By exorcism
you survived. By submission, then making.
You let all the parts of that thing you would
cut out of you enter your poem because
enacting there all its parts allowed you
the illusion you could cut it from your soul.
Dilemmas of choice given what cannot
change alone roused you to words.
As you grip the things that were young when
you were young, they crumble in your hand.
Now you must drive west, which in November
means driving directly into the sun. ~ Frank Bidart

In so many millennia, the humans never did figurs love out. How much is physical, how much in the mind? How much accident and how much fate? Why did perfect matches crumble and impossible couples thrive? I dont know the answer better than they did. Love simply is where it is. ~ Stephenie Meyer

hardly had my knife severed the head of each, before the whole body began to melt away and crumble into its native dust, as though the death that should have come centuries ago had at last assert himself and say at once and loud, "I am here! ~ Bram Stoker

It's always been the case that you have the really rich, and the really poor. But hey, look, all the great empires have their periods where they rule the world, and then they crumble. ~ Mickey Rourke

My eyes burn. My face flushes. Suddenly I realize that for the past two months I have been completely delusional, that Nikki is never coming back and apart time is going to last forever.
Nikki.
Is.
Never.
Coming.
Back.
Never.
I want to hit Tiffany.
I want to pound her face with my knuckles until the bones in my hands crumble and Tiffany is completely unrecognizable, until she no longer has a face from which she can spew lies. ~ Matthew Quick

Time is relentless, marching forever onward, stripping away everything in its path, with
one exception: me. The people I care for die. The places I call home crumble. The passage of time demonstrates in horrifying detail the follies of immortality…it's a personal hell from which there is no escape, and while Mir doesn't have a key, he'll make a good cellmate. ~ Ken Lange

One day, tens of millions of years from now, someone will find me rusted into the mud of a world they have never seen, and when they crumble me between their fingers, it will be you they find. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Cockroaches are survivors. Turn on the lights and you will see a scattering of casino hosts in three thousand dollar bespoken suits, corporate fruit flies in empty suits, lawyer-class slime on their way to the courthouse to go shopping for other people's money, bankers shilling bad loans by bundling them together with good ones and sending them down the financial pipeline knowing that they stand protected by the political scum from every level of government who have risen to breathtaking heights of mediocrity, tossing a couple of bucks from the public till to the obedient myrmidons in exchange for their votes. While decaying empire crumble, cockroaches multiply among the ruins. - Bonjour Amigos ~ David Gustafson

The house that is built upon the sand will crumble at the first sign of a windstorm. ~ R.C. Sproul

Not enough info makes for a lot of dead cats."
"Dead cats?"
"You know, 'Curiosity killed the cat.' And I have enough curiosity to start a feline genocide."
"Feline genocide?"
"Yeah. If you don't explain Apollo, the cat kingdom will crumble. Cats all over the world will suddenly plop down in unmoving masses of fur, their food will dry up in smelly chunks of fish, and when people call, 'Here, kitty kitty kitty,' no cats will come running; they'll just-" Walter suddenly stopped.
"What's wrong?" Ashley asked.
Walter stared straight ahead. "I just realized . . . if all those things happened, no one would notice the difference." ~Walter~ ~ Bryan Davis

She blames herself. I hurt from knowing that I hurt her. Even when we know all of these other people are to blame. My friends. The media. Not her. Not me.

I can't help myself. I continue the cycle and I say, "I don't want to hurt you."

Lily is quiet for a moment before she says, "I'm tougher than you think. You just need to believe in me. You know, like a fairy."

I do believe in fairies. I do. I do. The jubilant chorus from Peter Pan fills my ears.

I look up at her, tears in both our eyes. Is that how we end this? I trust that I can share my grief with her and that she won't crumble beneath the pain?

She nods to me like go on. I can handle it. ~ Becca Ritchie & Kristia Ritchie

Unnatural, unorthodox, amoral: those pretensions crumble when confronted by true happiness. You shouldn't give another the authority to draw a line defining the boundaries of acceptable joy. ~ Darrell Drake

At least initially, the relationship took on a nineteenth-century epistolatory quality. The only way they could stay in touch was by letter. In 1991, while South Korea was becoming the world's largest exporter of mobile telephones, few North Koreans had ever used a telephone. You had to go to a post office to make a phone call. But even writing a letter was not a simple undertaking. Writing paper was scarce. People would write in the margins of newspapers. The paper in the state stores was made of corn husk and would crumble easily if you scratched too hard. Mi-ran had to beg her mother for the money to buy a few sheets of imported paper. Rough drafts were out of the question; paper was too precious. The distance from Pyongyang to Chongjin was only 250 miles, but letters took up to a month to be delivered. ~ Barbara Demick

To crumble or to fly is aways a choice ... ~ Colleen Mariotti

And there it was, a snap in his chest, the audible noise of his best intentions cracking in half and cracking again, a chain reaction of thick cracks causing hairline cracks, causing the whole goddamned works, the whole vast machinery of his human willpower, to crumble downward into his abdominal cavity, where it lay pretty much useless. ~ Beatriz Williams

Some people when they have taken too much and have been driven beyond the point of endurance, simply crumble and give up. There are others, though they are not many, who will for some reason always be unconquerable. You meet them in time of war and also in time of peace. They have an indomitable spirit and nothing, neither pain nor torture nor threat of death, will cause them to give up. ~ Roald Dahl

When the road you're on begins to crumble, forge ahead - better it crumble behind you than ahead of you. ~ John Avery

I don't know about you, but moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the twin towers crumble to the ground, a side of the Pentagon destroyed, and almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens perish in flames and rubble. ~ Karl Rove

The charred smell came, he assumed, from the pages themselves, burning away invisibly as they had for years in the Impetus vault in New York. Eventually they would crumble and be lost to the world, if they weren't thrown away first. For today, though, they were his to inhale and get lost in. ~ Jonathan Galassi

Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself. ~ Ronald Reagan

He loves me like a monster,
all teeth and talk and
hiding in the dark.
That's my specialty -
men with strong bodies
and fragile hearts,
and if you hold them too tightly
they will crumble beneath you
like an avalanche that's waiting.
Still, he looks at me like all things
beautiful and burning
and we love each other recklessly
with hearts so empty
our names echo against
vandalized walls that say,
"There was someone here before me,
listen closely and you'll hear their name."

He has matches for hands,
and I, a paper heart.
Gasoline will drip
from our mouths
and we will call that holy.
We will burn at the stake
and pollute the sky with
smoke and selfishness,
and we will say it was
in the name of a crooked love.
We will burn our own bodies
to the ground and we will
call that sacrifice.
We will tear ourselves open
like there's something left inside.

Nobody ever taught us how to love. ―Lindsey Hobart ~ Lindsey Hobart

His eyes flickered with amusement, reflecting sunlight and shade. The rough beard on his chin gave him a wild, dangerous look. Stiffly, she lifted herself onto her toes, bracing a hand against his shoulders. He was steel beneath her grasp. Did he have to watch her so intently? She closed her eyes. It was the only way she would have the courage to do this. Still he waited. It would be a brief meeting of lips. Nothing to be afraid of. If only her heart would remember to keep beating. Holding her breath, she let her lips brush over his. It was the first time she'd ever kissed a man and her mind raced with it. She hardly had a sense of his mouth at all, though the shock of the single touch rushed like liquid fire to her toes. Her part of the bargain was fulfilled. It could be done and over right then. Recklessly, after a moment's hesitation, she touched her lips once again to him. This time she lingered, exploring the feel of him little by little. His mouth was warm and smooth and wonderful, all of it new and unexpected. He still hadn't moved, even though her knees threatened to crumble and her heart beat like a thunder drum. Finally he responded with the barest hint of pressure. The warmth of his breath mingled with hers. Without thinking, she let her fingers dig into the sleek muscle of his arms. A low, husky sound rumbled in his throat before he wrapped his arms around her. Heaven and earth. She hadn't been kissing him at all. The thin ribbon of resistance uncoiled within her ~ Jeannie Lin

If Heaven were not clear it might rend. If Earth were not firm it might crumble. ~ Laozi

Civilizations come and go; they conquer the earth and crumble into dust; but faith survives every desolation. ~ Will Durant

I am incomplete without my work. I am so closely bound to it, so much identified by it, that without it I think I would crumble into dust and drift away. ~ Terry Brooks

[Norm said,] 'To all those who argue this war is a mistake, I'd like to point out that we've removed from power one of history's most ruthless and belligerent tyrants. A man who cold-bloodedly murdered thousands of his own people. Who built palaces for his personal pleasure while schools decayed and his country's health care system collapsed. Who maintained one of the world's most expensive armies while he allowed his nation's infrastructure to crumble. Who channeled resources to his cronies and political allies, allowing them to siphon off much of the country's wealth for their own personal gain. ~ Ben Fountain

Think about it. The industry generates billions of dollars of profit and revenue each year. They do so by selling answers. But if they had the answers, then these so-called answers would just be copied and pasted and handed out, and the industry itself would crumble. ~ Scott Abel

I thought it was a novel."
"It is."
"What's it about??"
"You'll have to buy it to find out, but it's got everything: love, death and an amusing dog."
"This one's got a recipe for apple crumble," I said.
"Don't you love that about the novel? The capaciousness?" he said. ~ Marcel Theroux

When a heart breaks a substance spills out like cement and pours through the bloodstream, hardening everything. In time, I know my heart will mend and the rock inside will crack and crumble away. But for now I'm as solid as a column. And alone I stand. ~ Sarah Noffke

And when I feel
the masks beneath
crumble and fade with
time I build new ones
to replace the old.
"Masks"- Sins Within ~ Shay Leigh

In the United States, France, and most other countries, talk about the virtues of the national meritocratic model is seldom based on close examination of the facts. Often the purpose is to justify existing inequalities while ignoring the sometimes patent failures of the current system. In 1872, Emile Boutmy created Sciences Po with a clear mission in mind: "obliged to submit to the rule of the majority, the classes that call themselves the upper classes can preserve their political hegemony only by invoking the rights of the most capable. As traditional upper-class prerogatives crumble, the wave of democracy will encounter a second rampart, built on eminently useful talents, superiority that commands prestige, and abilities of which society cannot sanely deprive itself. ~ Thomas Piketty

I've a belt that I have worn for every single stand-up comedy session since I was 19. I fear if I ever lose it, my career would crumble. That's my one OCD. ~ Vir Das

He realized then that he'd never want to be with anyone else, he'd never want to be anywhere else, and he would surely crumble to ash if this woman walked out his life. ~ Justine Dell

when the moon rises on this coast
but the sun still burns shamelessly on yours
i crumble knowing even our skies are different
- long distance ~ Rupi Kaur

Remember that on any world the wind eventually wears away the stone, because the stone can only crumble; the wind can change. ~ A.C. Crispin

She'd lost so much in the process of becoming Zyne, but somewhere in the middle of it all, she'd found herself. Her heritage had shattered her illusions of a tranquil life. Destiny swept behind in a blaze, decimating everything she tried to hold on to. She was left alone, like the solitary tree standing after a forest fire. She'd thought she would crumble to ash, just another memory on the wind. But as blackened pieces of her cracked and fell away, she saw the truth. Under all that charred wreckage was the heartwood. Bruised. Scarred. But still good. Still capable of growth. When she looked in the mirror, she no longer saw a victim, but a survivor. ~ Gwen Mitchell

If they built a love to withstand time, why did it crumble? ~ Stewart Lewis

Homes that are built on anything other than love are bound to crumble. ~ Billy Graham

The leaves that are green turn to brown. And they wither with the wind. And they crumble in your hand. ~ Paul Simon

There is no neatness in any life- great or small. It is only an illusion men foolishly pursue.
All lived lives are a mess.
The neatness in my life had begun to crumble some time before, but now it disintegrated completely as I vanished into a world of endlessly opening doors, teasing riddles and lives without boundaries.
For the first time I began to understand how shallow neatness is.
How cramping, how limiting.
For the first time I understood neat lives are comatose lives. (the Alchemy of Desire 304) ~ Tarun J. Tejpal

Wither to dust, crumble like rust,
Only by your side. ~ Kristen Ashley

We didn't crumble after 9/11. We didn't falter after the Boston Marathon. But we're America. Americans will never, ever stand down. We endure. We overcome. We own the finish line. ~ Joe Biden

I was a war correspondent. I've watched great people crumble under pressure and make bad decisions. ~ Peter Landesman

Sometimes while sitting there staring out the window, I imagined a place in my mind, a white room. A simple space coated in white paint. The white represented responsibility, obligation. It didn't require what responsibility and obligation required, but it had the same effect. It maintained the person in the room; it kept the person alive and well, along with everything and everyone that person cared for, but nothing the person held dear existed in the room. The person was alone. The person experienced no joy from bearing the weight of responsibility, earned no prize.

I imagined a particular person in the room - a woman, also clothed in white. This woman constantly faced a dilemma. She longed for freedom. She longed to be the bird.

Her open palms grazed the rutted expanse of the wall. She knew that something lay beyond - beyond the white. She could burst out into the world of grass, sky, and lavender, but she knew that if she broke through the barricade, everything she protected would crumble, suffocate, and wither behind her. Her own freedom would last only moments because she, too, couldn't survive without the white. Earth and water would smother her, and radiant light would slice through her like a blade.

I imagined her pressing with both hands, weighing freedom against existence and all that depended on her, but in the end she lightened her stance and stepped away. She always chose to stay, to fulfill her obligation.

I thought ~ Stephanie Carroll

I know I would crumble if I lost you. ~ Shannon Hale

I'm just going to crumble like a wreck. I'll go home, become an alcoholic and maybe! jump of a bridge. ~ Gordon Strachan

Our cities with their swollen populations and cliff dwelling high-rise buildings are breeding places for loneliness. Neighborhoods crumble under the housing development bulldozers and families scatter in pursuit of jobs and professions everywhere. In a world of wheels, old and comfortable groupings of people have disappeared. ~ Allan Fromme

I think politics is deadly to write about, frankly. If you have a political agenda and you set out to write a novel to prove that, say, capitalism should crumble, then it's going to be a really bad novel. Very few people have been able to deal with political fiction - Dickens, Dostoyevsky. But even Tolstoy got really tiresome when he was talking about the serfs. You have to let characters be characters, not [gruff voice] Mr Capitalism or [girlie voice] Miss Anti-Fur. ~ Donna Tartt

We understand how that can make a girl crumble. ~ Nova Ren Suma

When you understand, that what you're telling is just a story. It isn't happening anymore. When you realize the story you're telling is just words, when you can just crumble up and throw your past in the trashcan, then we'll figure out who you're going to be. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I had, I'll admit, effected a certain style - a method, if you will - of cupcake eating. To begin, you remove the cupcake liner carefully so as not to unnecessarily crumble the cake, and set it aside. You then turn the cupcake slowly in your hand, taking bites along the line where cake meets icing, your mouth filling with a perfect combination of both components. Once you've come full circle, you gently twist off the bottom half inch of cake, a move that takes considerable finesse and leaves a delicate sliver of cake - the ideal size for lying flat on your tongue and allowing it to slowly dissolve, building anticipation for that final bite. To finish, you are left with the center cylinder of cake and icing, the cupcake's very heart, sometimes filled with a surprising burst of custard or jam or mousse, sometimes not, but always, always, the most moist, flavorful bite of the entire cupcake. Take a breath before diving into that final, perfect bite; it is to be savored for as long as possible. Finally, of course, you scavenge the crumbs from the cupcake liner you set aside during step one, then ball the liner into your fist and overhand it into the nearest receptacle. Make the shot? You get another cupcake. ~ Meg Donohue

I've always thought that the most extraordinary special effect you could do is to buy a child at the moment of its birth, sit it on a little chair and say, "You'll have three score years and ten," and take a photograph every minute. "And we'll watch you and photograph you for ten years after you die, then we'll run the film." Wouldn't that be extraordinary? We'd watch this thing get bigger and bigger, and flower to become extraordinary and beautiful, then watch it crumble, decay, and rot. ~ Clive Barker

I felt the protective dam I'd built around my heart began to crumble. I turned my eyes back to him and felt the love finally start to trickle out through the fissures. And hoped that one day it would become a torrent. ~ Lucinda Riley

The earth will always be the same - only cities and history will change, even nations will change, governments and governors will go, the things made by men's hands will go, buildings will always crumble - only the earth will remain the same, there will always be men on the earth in the morning, there will always be the things made by God's hands - and all this history of cities and congress now will go, all modern history is only a littering Babylon smoking under the sun, delaying the day when men again will have to return to earth, to the earth of life and God - ~ Jack Kerouac

Any society that derives its power and authority from the will of man alone lives apart from God and will crumble in the end. ~ Joshua

If faith is the first step or principle of the gospel and is eliminated, what happens to the gospel plan? The very foundation will crumble. I submit that there is a divine reason why all things cannot be proven by concrete evidence. ("Faith - The First Step," Ensign, May 1975, 37) ~ Howard W. Hunter

When my world seems to crumble all around, and foolish people try to bring me down, I just think of your smile face, and I'm flying. ~ Madonna Ciccone

Interesting Avil, the priests and the acolytes of the various religions and temples of Torea build their whole lives on a lie. At first, as children they believe it. Maybe as they grow older and more wise they see the absurdness of their beliefs, but by that time they have invested time and emotional energy into those beliefs, then seeing them crumble and fall apart would be too hard for them to bear. So the protect the lie, they shore it up with more lies and they ebb out their short lives, knowing what they preach is untrue, but preaching it all the same ... Almost as if preaching it hard enough will make it true ... Are they trying to convince their congregation? Or themselves? You are wiser than you look Avil. ~ Martyn Stanley

Gods of all the world, say something," she cried, and Talat startled beneath her.
"I love you," said Luthe. "I will love you till the stars crumble, which is a less idle threat than is usual to lovers on parting. Go quickly, for I cannot bear this."
She closed her legs violently around the nervous Talat, and he leaped into a gallop. Long after Aerin was out of sight, Luthe lay full length upon the ground, and pressed his ear to it, and listened to Talat's hoofbeats carrying Aerin farther and farther away. ~ Robin McKinley

Let the statues crumble. You have always been the place. ~ Sarah Kay

Nakajima's past would always be there, so the foundation could crumble at any moment. That's what happens, I realized, when people destroy other people. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

She's figured out the brakes by this time, and she slows, intimidated by the echoing bellow of Rosie's engines in these desolate landscapes. She feels for a sickening moment that she might be the last human being left alive on the face of a necrotic planet. And that it might not matter after all. To have the race that built these mausoleums lie in them finally, quiet and resigned, and crumble into dust. Who'd ~ M.R. Carey

One neither of us could bear. Life sometimes puts so much weight on our shoulders we crumble, bends us so far we break. ~ A.L. Jackson

I wouldn't mind a bit seeing all civilization crumble like a mason's scaffolding before the building was finished
~ Gustave Flaubert

THE LIFE THEORETIC W hile I have been fumbling over books And thinking about God and the Devil and all, Other young men have been battling with the days And others have been kissing the beautiful women. They have brazen faces like battering-rams. But I who think about books and such - I crumble to impotent dust before the struggling, And the women palsy me with fear. But when it comes to fumbling over books And thinking about God and the Devil and all, Why, there I am. But perhaps the battering-rams are in the right of it, Perhaps, perhaps ... God knows. ~ Aldous Huxley

No, I'll repine at death no more, But with a cheerful gasp resign To the cold dungeon of the ground These dying, withering limbs of mine. Let worms devour my wasting flesh, And crumble all my bones to dust:
My God shall raise my frame anew, At the revival of the just. ~ Isaac Watts

You fuckin' bulldozed me, Pix. You, my tiny dark pixie, made all my defences crumble to dust. ~ Tillie Cole

When we crumble under the exorbitant weight of conspicuous commodities and the material pressure in a universe of illusion, life may become disheveled and devastated, while our mind has been dumbed down and our willpower crippled. ( "Buying now. Dying later " ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

I once knew a woman who liked to imagine Love in the guise of a sturdy dog, one that would always chase down the stick after it was thrown and return with his ears flopping around happily. Completely loyal, completely unconditional. And I laughed at her, because even I knew that love is not like that. Love is a delicate thing that needs to be cosseted and protected. Love is not robust and love is not unyeilding. Love can crumble under a few harsh words, or be tossed away with a handful of careless actions. Love isn't a steadfast dog at all; love is more like a pygmy mouse lemur. ~ Andrew Davidson

From the failure of the humanist tradition to participate fully or to act decisively, civilizations may perhaps crumble or perish at the hands of barbarians. But unless the humanist tradition itself in some form survives, there can really be no civilization at all. ~ Louis Kronenberger

God's love is based on nothing, and the fact that it is based on nothing makes us secure. Were it based on anything we do, and that 'anything' were to collapse, then God's love would crumble as well. But with the God of Jesus no such thing can possibly happen. People who realize this can live freely and to the full. ~ Brennan Manning

Our castle would crumble before us but that doesn't mean it can't be rebuilt, rebuilt for real, this time without the errors and a little more caution. ~ Chirag Tulsiani

Anything we create ourselves is not meant to carry the weight of our strongest desires and dreams. Anything we put our hope in, short of the Creator himself, will either crumble or fall short of the joy that God intended for us to have in him. ~ David Boudia

Walls get made, walls crumble, buildings get built, buildings collapse, memories get made, memories last. ~ Jill Telford

Respect is not so different from love," said Jill Anna. "And he's a young man quite worthy of it. I'd rather hear that you respect him, and don't love him, than love him, and not respect him. Love can grow from respect, but love without respect will crumble away. ~ Kendra E. Ardnek

And so we come to the last crisis, that of integrity versus disgust and despair. Throughout the life-cycle the pieces have been assembled, structure built on structure around the ego's continuity. Now with death not too far away, can it all hold up or will it crumble? Are the links of love and meaning strong enough so that we are ourselves content to fall away. ~ Charles Hampden-Turner

Faolan launched himself across the bridge, uttering a prayer to any deity that might be prepared to listen. Let me reach her in time, let her keep hold, let this wretched apology for a bridge not crumble under my feet ... ~ Juliet Marillier

You're really cute, Midori," I corrected myself.
"What do you mean really cute?"
"So cute the mountains crumble and the oceans dry up. ~ Haruki Murakami

Eventually, 'Dad is dead' turned into 'I will die', which was my introduction to the fear. The fear of gone. The fear of nothing at all, of what happens to me, of I am the main character and the story will crumble if I'm not there to see it through. ~ Savannah Brown

At Oxford University, the certainties of my atheist faith (and atheism is a faith) began to crumble ~ Alister E. McGrath

There are always rebels and radicals, I suppose,' McCleethy allows. 'Those who live on the fringes of society. But what do they contribute to the society itself? They reap its rewards without experiencing its costs. No. I submit that loyal, hardworking citizens who push aside their own selfish desires for the good of the whole are the backbone of the world. What if we all decided to run off and live freely without thought or care for society's rules? Our civilization would crumble. There is a joy in duty and a security in knowing one's place ... It is the only way. ~ Libba Bray

We are tiny flames, Helikaon, and we flicker alone in the great dark for no more than a heartbeat. When we strive for wealth, glory and fame, it is meaningless. The nations we fight for will one day cease to be. Even the mountains we gaze upon will crumble to dust. To truly live we must yearn for that which does not die. ~ David Gemmell