Desecrated Quotes

Shame on those who remain unmoved, whose pace fails to quicken, on entering one of these old habitations, a manor-house falling to wrack and ruin or a desecrated church! ~ Petrus Borel

Is it always this awkward?" Sara asked. Her voice was hushed.
Derek turned to look at her, his gaze falling to the white rose in her hands. She had taken it from the arrangement of hothouse flowers. Nervously her fingers ruffled the fragile petals.
Self-consciously Sara sniffed the pale blossom and began to insert it back into the huge vase. "It's nice to have roses in January," she murmured. "Nothing in the world has such a lovely scent."
She was so innocently beautiful, with the disordered waves of her hair falling around her face. His muscles tightened in response. He would like to have her painted this way, standing by the table with her head turned toward him, the white flower caught in her fingers. "Bring it here," he said.
She obeyed, coming to him and handing him the rose. He closed his fingers around the plump head of the flower and pulled gently, freeing the petals from their tenuous moorings. Tossing aside the desecrated stem, he opened his hand over the bed. The petals scattered in a fragrant shower. Sara drew in a quick breath, staring at him as if mesmerized. ~ Lisa Kleypas

To disrespect a person made in the image and likeness of God is a lot worse than desecrating a flag. We should be offended and repulsed in the same way when God's image bearers are desecrated – abused, beaten, neglected, discriminated against, and not loved and taken care of as they should be. ~ James MacDonald

How to Be a Poet"

(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill - more of each
than you have - inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came. ~ Wendell Berry

The Jew is contrary to our being ... He desecrated our people, spit on our ideals, paralyzed the strength of the nation, made our customs rotten, and polluted the morale. ~ Joseph Goebbels

I stumble across the sea of tarmac, finding pavement, concealment and a brick wall. Palms brace against the scrubby surface. My stomach churns and then bubbles over, burning my throat as acrid yellow acid spills from my lips in frothy discomposure. It splatters the pavement like a spray of blood. ~ Rebecca Clare Smith

The idea that some day another wife would be added to our household was ever present in my mind, but, somehow, when the fact was placed before me in so many unmistakable words, my heart sank within me, and I shrank from the realization that our home was at last to be desecrated by the foul presence of Polygamy. ~ T. B. H. Stenhouse

I don't think I had a Catherine Bach poster, but I know a lot of my friends desecrated those, big time. ~ Sean William Scott

Unfortunately the hostility that the European displayed toward the native cultures he encountered he carried even further into his relations with the land. The immense open spaces of the American continents, with all their unexploited or thinly utilized resources, were treated as a challenge to unrelenting war, destruction, and conquest. The forests were there to be cut down, the prairie to be plowed up, the marshes to be filled, the wildlife to be killed for empty sport, even if not utilized for food or clothing.

In the act of 'conquering nature' our ancestors too often treated the earth as contemptuously and as brutally as they treated its original inhabitants, wiping out great animal species like the bison and the passenger pigeon, mining the soils instead of annually replenishing them, and even, in the present day, invading the last wilderness areas, precious just because they are still wildernesses, homes for wildlife and solitary human souls. Instead we are surrendering them to six-lane highways, gas stations, amusement parks, and the lumber interests, as in the redwood groves, or Yosemite, and Lake Tahoe-though these primeval areas, once desecrated, can never be fully restored or replaced. ~ Lewis Mumford

Her library would have been valuable to a bibliophile except she treated her books execrably. I would rarely open a volume that she had not desecrated by underlining her favorite sections with a ball-point pen. Once I had told her that I would rather see a museum bombed than a book underlined, but she dismissed my argument as mere sentimentality. She marked her books so that stunning images and ideas would not be lost to her. ~ Pat Conroy

Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest - thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood. You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated. ~ Beau Taplin

There are not sacred and profane things, places, and moments. There are only sacred and desecrated things, places, and moments-and it is we alone who desecrate them by our blindness and lack of reverence. It is one sacred universe, and we are all a part of it. ~ Richard Rohr

What would you think of an engineer who expounded the art of flying without revealing the secrets of the engine and propeller? That's what you do, you engineer of the human soul. Just that. You're a coward. You want the raisins out of my cake but you don't want the thorns of my roses. Haven't you too, little psychiatrist, been cracking silly jokes about me? Haven't you ridiculed me as "the prophet of bigger and better orgasms"? Have you never heard the whimpering of a young wife whose body has been desecrated by an impotent husband? Or the anguished cry of an adolescent bursting with unfulfilled love? Does your security still mean more to you than your patient? How long will you go on valuing your respectability above your medical mission? How long will you refuse to see that your pussyfooting procrastination is costing millions their lives? ~ Wilhelm Reich

Today millions of people are living who will never do it again. Millions are being born for the first time-and millions are doing nothing because it's the best offer they've had this week ... It is for these people and many others that the Surprise Party is conceived and desecrated, founded upon the principle that everybody is just as good as anybody else, even though they aren't quite so smart. ~ Gracie Allen

They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and if they irrigated, they took as little water as would serve their needs. The land and all that it bore they treated with consideration; not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it. ~ Willa Cather

It was a peculiar odor, the smell of sexual violation, a mixture of rotting flesh and underarm stench. They shivered even though the heat belowdecks would've suffocated the weak. Our desecrated brothers survived because, as best we could, we reminded them of who they were. ~ Daniel Black

He's basically a good man. But he doesn't know me. Any more than he knew that girl that looked after your mother. He can't know me, not the way I know him. Maybe some of these Hawaiians can, or the Indians on the reservation. They've seen their fathers humiliated. Their mothers desecrated. But your grandfather will never know what that feels like. ~ Barack Obama

We desecrated the traditional values, but new values didn't come along. ~ Rocco Buttiglione

O father, father
Gone from us, lost to us,
The church lies bereft,
Alone,
Desecrated, desolated.
And the heathen shall build
On the ruins
Their world without God.
I see it.
I see it. ~ T. S. Eliot

I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching that had ever been instilled into me, as - under any pretext - with any justification - through any temptation - to become the successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory. I did not give utterance to this conviction: it was enough to feel it. I impressed it on my heart, that it might remain there to serve me as aid in the time of trial. ~ Charlotte Bronte

The questions must be, what were the effects on the people as their lands were stolen and desecrated, relationships destroyed, children taken and violated, lore and ceremonies devalued and dishonoured? What long-term impacts have these separate yet inter-related tragedies had on the survivors? Answers to these questions will provide answers to present distressful circumstances. ~ Judy Atkinson

Jesus Christ ... came into the world to vindicate the infinite worth of God's holiness which had been desecrated by our sin and which seemed ... to be taken lightly because it was being passed over for nothing more than the blood of bulls. ~ John Piper

Bahai Iranians are barred from holding government jobs, their children are excluded from the nation's university system, their marriages are not recognized and their cemeteries and holy places have been desecrated. It is government policy to incite hatred of Bahais in the official media. ~ Elliott Abrams

Turn the anger of the Almighty against the godless Turks and Barbarians who despise Christ the Lord ... In the royal city of the east, they have slain the successor of Constantine and his people, desecrated the temples of the Lord, defiled the noble church of Justinian with their Mohometan abominations. Each success, will only be a stepping stone until he has mastered all the Western Monarchs, overthrow the Christian Faith, and imposed the law of his false prophet on the whole world ~ Pope Pius II

It was "a shape to make men weep," wrote Firdred of Bain when he first saw it: "exactly the shape of a desecrated sea. ~ Sofia Samatar

you desecrated the shrines of our fathers
you pushed our tongue, stole our culture
paraded your wickedness as my savior
you refused the right to let me own my narrative
you butchered our names
you brought war on our land
you call my people "savages"
you stole our histories
and wear them proudly in your museums
you wash away our achievements
you carry it as yours
you "discovered" what was already mine
you plant puppets, assassinating our leaders
you desecrated the shrines of my mothers
when we worshipped nature, you laughed at us
now, you want to carry our ways, learn from us
we refuse to write softness into our stories
for you to feel comfortable
we refuse to let anyone but us own our
narrative
we refuse to believe your lies again

you will not spit in the face of our fathers
and think his children will now sit quietly. ~ Ijeoma Umebinyuo

There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. ~ Wendell Berry

Many people under the influence of science, and particularly neuro-nonsense, will say the sacred is an old concept, it's just a hangover, but you can easily see that's not so, because everyone has a sense of desecration: there are things everybody values which, when they are spoiled are not just moved or destroyed, they are desecrated. Something that is vital not just to you but the world. People have this sense when they see their towns pulled apart and concrete blocks put in the middle of them. You only have to look at Aberdeen to see what happens to a beautiful place when the desecrators get their hands on it. ~ Roger Scruton

I desecrated my own house?" Chance snorted in disbelief. "Then swam out to Fort Sumter and played paint-by-numbers on the walls, all to make Benjamin Blue like me? Don't flatter yourself, kid."
Ben's eyes cut like diamonds. "You act like such a big shot. But you don't fool me. Do you have any friends, Chance? Is there a single person who cares where you are right now?"
"Ben!" I blurted, horrified. "That's not - "
"You're one to talk." Chance stepped closer to Ben and matched him glare for glare. "I've never betrayed my friends. Not like you, eh, Benjamin?"
Ben's whole body went still. "What did you say?"
"Guys, guys!" Hi half rose, palms up. "There's no need for anyone to get upset. I've got Go-Gurt in the mini-fridge. I know when I get hungry, my manners can - "
"Shut up, Hi." Ben and Chance, in unison. ~ Kathy Reichs

What made Jim truly mystical was his ability to live fully conscious of how, every day, a bit more of the sacred becomes desecrated. Still, Jim's awareness of how much had been lost didn't stop him from appreciating what remained. ~ Robert Jensen

All medieval and classic cultures of the ancient world, including those on which Tolkien modeled his elves, routinely exposed their young and marriageable women to the fortunes of war, because bearing and raising the next generation of warriors is not needed for equality-loving elves.
Equality-loving elves. Who are monarchists. With a class system. Of ranks.
Battles are more fun when attractive young women are dismembered and desecrated by goblins! I believe that this is one point where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and all Christian fantasy writers from before World War Two were completely agreed upon, and it is a point necessary in order correctly to capture the mood and tone and nuance of the medieval romances or Norse sagas such writers were straining their every artistic nerve and sinew to create.
So, wait, we have an ancient and ageless society of elves where the virgin maidens go off to war, but these same virgin maidens must abide by the decision of their father or liege lord for permission to marry?
-- The Desolation of Tolkien ~ John C. Wright