Ruins Quotes

So," I demanded, trying to sound confident, "where can we find this trod to New Orleans?"
"The frost giant ruins," Ash replied, looking thoughtful. "Very close to Mab's court." At Puck's glare, he shrugged and offered a tiny, rueful smirk. "She goes to Mardi Gras every year."
I pictured the Queen of the Unseelie Court flashing a couple of drunken partygoers, and giggled uncontrollably. All three shot me a strange look. "Sorry," I gasped, biting my lip. "Still kind of giddy, I guess. ~ Julie Kagawa

Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we have never known them. ~ Angela Carter

There is no more deadly peril than disobedience;
States are devoured by it, homes laid in ruins,
Armies defeated, victory turned to rout.
White simple obedience saves the lives of hundreds
Of honest folk." - Creon ~ Sophocles

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate ... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins. ~ Franz Kafka

Extensive powers not exercised as far as was necessary have, I believe, scarcely ever failed to ruin the possessor. ~ George Washington

Let them storm on. In fury let them rage!
Firm is this castle, and beneath its ruins
I will be buried ere I yield to them.
- Johanna, answer me! only be mine,
And I will shield thee 'gainst a world in arms. ~ Friedrich Schiller

It was through this viewer that he got his first reply from Tralfamadore. The reply was written on Earth in huge stones on a plain in what is now England. The ruins of the reply still stand, and are known as Stonehenge. The meaning of Stonehenge in Tralfamadorian, when viewed from above, is: Replacement part being rushed with all possible speed. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

If the world had two gods, it would surely go to ruin-this is the first premise. Now it is known that it has not gone to ruin-this is the second premise. From these premises the conclusion must of necessity follow, that is, the denial of two gods. ~ Al-Ghazali

In 1952, I had gone to England on a literary pilgrimage, but what I also saw, even at that distance from the blitz, were bombed-out ruins and an enervated society, while the continent was still, psychologically, in the grip of its recent atrocities. ~ Cynthia Ozick

Since they are our right, let us be vigilant to preserve them uninfringed, and free from encroachments. If animosities arise, and we should be obliged to resort to party, let each of us range himself on the side which unfurls the ensigns of public good. Faction will then vanish, which, if not timely suppressed, may overturn the balance, the palladium of liberty, and crush us under its ruins. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Sophie swallowed, tears rising to her eyes again. It was an odd legacy to hand from mother to daughter: the ability to stand proud among the ruins of one's marriage. ~ Eloisa James

Really, this horrid House of Commons quite ruins our husbands for us. I think the Lower House by far the greatest blow to a happy married life that there has been since that terrible thing called the Higher Education of Women was invented. ~ Oscar Wilde

Intellect and love are made of two different materials. Intellect ties people in knots and risks nothing, but love dissolves all tangles and risks everything. Intellect is always cautious and advises, "Beware too much ecstasy," whereas Love says, "Oh never mind. Take the plunge!" Intellect does not easily break down, whereas love can effortlessly reduce itself to rubble. But treasures are hidden amongst ruins. A broken heart hides treasure. (5) ~ Various

Sixty-two years passed since that battle, I can remember it as if it was yesterday. It made me the king I am now, not with the power of swords, but with the power of words.
Enemies invaded our land like black death until they reached our city. My father, the king, was preparing for the final battle; even women were given swords and asked to fight. It was a battle like no other battle; we fought like Titans not humans, and we crushed our enemies although they outnumbered us.
" The king is wounded ! The king is wounded ! " shouted one of the soldiers . I rushed towards the source of the sound to find my father bleeding on the ground, I tried to take off his armor but he refused and asked me to get closer to him. He squeezed my arm with his old hand and said :

"Don't build your life on illusions,
Don't build your opinion on hypotheses,
Don't build your style on imitation,
Don't build your image on lies,
Don't build your respect on fear,
Don't build your dreams on others' nightmares,
Don't build your friendships on benefits,
Don't build your heroism on foolish acts,
Don't build your kingdom on the backs of the poor,
Don't build your palace on the soft sands of injustice"

Then he looked up to the sky and closed his eyes forever.
He left me a kingdom in ruins, but left me the richest king. ~ Muhammad Nusair

But to hear Mozart in a bombed city: how much more beautiful it sounds, as if it were composed to somehow soothe the ruins, to promise a wiser future rising from the rubble. ~ Ben Okri

From that house there has come so much life that it ought never to die or fall into ruin ... For me that house was a gateway to America. ~ Pearl S. Buck

When you look at the startling ruins of Nuremberg, you are looking at a result of the war. When you look at the prisoners on view in the courthouse, you are looking at 22 of the causes. ~ Janet Flanner

It was like coming home to a place that he held dear and finding that the wood had burnt to the ground and the house was in ruins. ~ Courtney Milan

The man who first brought ruin upon the Roman people was he who pampered them by largesses and amusements. ~ Plutarch

St. Augustine wrote something once, something I think about often," he said. " 'God triumphs on the ruins of our plans.' And maybe that is what is happening here. We make blunders, we make mistakes, and somehow new doors open, new possibilities arise, opportunities of which we've never dreamed. ~ Anne Rice

IT is not impossible that among the English readers of this book there may be one who in 1915 and 1916 was in one of those trenches that were woven like a web among the ruins of Monchy-au-Bois. In that case he had opposite him at that time the 73rd Hanoverian Fusiliers, who wear as their distinctive badge a brassard with ' Gibraltar ' inscribed on it in gold, in memory of the defence of that fortress under General Elliot; for this, besides Waterloo, has its place in the regiment's history.

At the time I refer to I was a nineteen-year-old lieutenant in command of a platoon, and my part of the line was easily recognizable from the English side by a row of tall shell-stripped trees that rose from the ruins of Monchy. My left flank was bounded by the sunken road leading to Berles-au-Bois, which was in the hands of the English ; my right was marked by a sap running out from our lines, one that helped us many a time to make our presence felt by means of bombs and rifle-grenades.

I daresay this reader remembers, too, the white tom-cat, lamed in one foot by a stray bullet, who had his headquarters in No-man's-land. He used often to pay me a visit at night in my dugout. This creature, the sole living being that was on visiting terms with both sides, always made on me an impression of extreme mystery. This charm of mystery which lay over all that belonged to the other side, to that danger zone full of unseen figures, is one of the strongest impressions that the wa ~ Ernst Junger

Accustomed to the calm aspects of things, she turned, instead, toward the more tumultuous. She loved the sea only for its storms, and greenery only when it grew up here and there among ruins. She needed to derive from things a sort of personal gain; and she rejected as useless everything that did not contribute to the immediate gratification of her heart, - being by temperament more sentimental than artistic, in search of emotions and not landscapes. ~ Gustave Flaubert

But the line of thought that I'd been chasing for several days was implicit in the ruins of the old Roman Empire, which gradually destroyed itself by substituting the faith in a legion of miraculous words for the strength of armies and the weight of walls. ~ Lewis H. Lapham

So the life I have made
May seem wrong to you
But, I've never been surer
It's my life to ruin
My own way ... ~ Morrissey

Like the subconscious, like love, like memory, like time itself, like every single one of us, the church is built on the ruins of subsequent restorations, there is no rock bottom, there is no first anything, no last anything, just layers and secret passageways and interlocking chambers, like the Christian Catacombs, and right along these, even a Jewish Catacomb. ~ Andre Aciman

Leave it to you to find beauty in something others would say ruins a day. ~ Kiera Cass

(The wind does not like to be confused. confusion ruins its sense of direction and direction is everything to the wind.) ~ Erin Morgenstern

You are young. No hungry generations tread you down. The past does not mock you with the ruins of a beauty the secret of whose creation you have lost ~ Oscar Wilde

Sometimes, one gesture comprises an entire drama, the accent of one word ruins an entire existence, and the indifference of one glance kills the happiest passion. ~ Honore De Balzac

The American family is failing in its job of turning out stable human beings ... It is failing because Americans do not dare to cultivate in themselves those characteristics which would make family life creative and rewarding. To do so, would ruin them financially. ~ Margaret Halsey

Geological facts being of an historical nature, all attempts to deduce a complete knowledge of them merely from their still, subsisting consequences, to the exclusion of unexceptionable testimony, must be deemed as absurd as that of deducing the history of ancient Rome solely from the medals or other monuments of antiquity it still exhibits, or the scattered ruins of its empire, to the exclusion of a Livy, a Sallust, or a Tacitus. ~ Richard Kirwan

Why ruin a good story with the truth? ~ Woody Allen

When under the influence of certain (or some) reasons (or causes) (alcohol, war, etc - added Spir here) the low instincts are unbridled (or unrestrained), the brute appears (or come forward, "apparait", Fr.) and rule over (or dominate), stifling every ("toute", Fr.) noble, generous impulse; it is then the ruin (or downfall or decline) of any humanity in man. ~ African Spir

The Rusty Ruins were the remains of an old city, a hulking reminder of back when there'd been way too many people, and everyone was incredibly stupid. And ugly. ~ Scott Westerfeld

Fortune's unjust; she ruins oft the brave, and him who should be victor, makes the slave. ~ John Dryden

Make Your way to the everlasting ruins, to all that the enemy has destroyed in the sanctuary. Psalm 74:3 ~ Beth Moore

Try to imagine its good old days whenever you see a ruin and try to do the same whenever you see an old person! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Know all men, he said, time's ruins build eternity's mansions. ~ James Joyce

Illugastadir, the farm by the sea, where the soft air rings with the clang of the smithy, and gulls caw, and seals roll over in their fat. Illugastadir, where the night is lit by fire, where smoke turns in the early morning to engulf the stars, and in ruins, always Illugastadir, cradling dead bodies in its cage of burnt beams. ~ Hannah Kent

The nature of catastrophe is, after all, reasonably unvarying in the way it ruins, destroys, wounds and devastates. But if something can be learned from the event - not least something as profound as the theory of plate tectonics - then it somehow puts the ruination into a much more positive light. ~ Simon Winchester

In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called "by myself"; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then
ruins more than that, if you're not careful. ~ Elizabeth Kostova

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own. ~ Berenice Abbott

The ruins stood above the hissing traffic like some monument to doomed expectations. ~ Don DeLillo

hardships and trials do not come by accident, and God's purpose never ruins anything that wasn't supposed to be ruined. ~ Steven Stiles

The Devil often transforms himself into an angel to tempt men, some for their instruction, some for their ruin. ~ Saint Augustine

By the delusions of seeming good the people are often misled to desire their own ruin; and they are frequently influenced by great hopes and brave promises. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

There must be a new world if there is to be any world at all! ... These days of universal death must be days of universal new birth, if the ruin is not to be total and final! It is Time to make the dullest man consider; and ask himself, Whence he came? Whither he is bound? ~ Thomas Carlyle

You need to have a life. Have fun. Then ruin it by having a serious relationship ~ Kyle

If this valley is indeed cursed," Atherton continued, "there's the source. The Muslims named this set of ruins Mao Balegh, which means Cursed City. ~ James Rollins

Chad has oil wells, so there are a few grand hotels for rich, who come to quickly take the money away before it ruins the charm of our mud and straw cities. ~ Daoud Hari

Every woman whether rich or poor, married or single, has a circle of influence within which, according to her character, she is exerting a certain amount of power for good or harm. Every woman, by her virtue or her vice, by her folly or her wisdom, by her levity or her dignity, is adding something to our national elevation or degradation. A community is not likely to be overthrown where woman fulfills her mission, for by the power of her noble heart over the hearts of others, she will raise that community from its ruins and restore it again to prosperity and joy. ~ John Angell James

I'm one uncontrollable hunger away from ruin. ~ Lynn Emanuel

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

She felt him tremble with the force of his need. He spoke just beneath her ear, his voice thick with tormented pleasure. You have to leave, Sara ... because I want to hold you like this until your skin melts into mine. I want you in my bed, the smell of you on my sheets, your hair spread across my pillow. I want to take your innocence. God! I want to ruin you for anyone else. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Politics ruins the character ~ Otto Von Bismarck

And who over the ruins of his life pursued its fleeting, fluttering significance, while he suffered its seeming meaninglessness and lived its seeming madness, and who hoped in secret at the last turn of the labyrinth of Chaos for revelation and God's presence ... ~ Hermann Hesse

For wherever mystery serves as a foundation, only ruins may be erected. ~ Thomas Ligotti

Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution. ~ Gustave Flaubert

As soon as you raise a thought and begin to form an idea of it, you ruin the reality itself, because you then attach yourself to form. ~ D.T. Suzuki

The three of us ate a fine supper of grilled trout with sorrel cream sauce, and red potatoes out of Britney's old garden behind the ruins of the Watling place, and watercress sautéed in butter for hardly a moment with a dash of vinegar, and cream custard with wild blackberries for dessert. ~ James Howard Kunstler

They grope before them like blind people and find each the other as they would a door. Almost like children that dread the night, they press close into each other. And yet they are not afraid. There is nothing that might be against them: no yesterday, no morrow; for time is shattered. And they flower from its ruins.
He does not ask: 'Your husband?'
She does not ask: 'Your name?'
For indeed they have found each other, to be unto themselves a new generation.
They will give each other a hundred new names and take them all off again, gently, as one takes an earring off. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Artists of all times are like the gamblers of Monte Carlo, and this blind lottery allows some to succeed and ruins others. In my opinion, neither the winners nor the losers are worth worrying about. ~ Marcel Duchamp

I try to jog in every city I visit, and I particularly enjoy harbour-front paths that let me ogle big ships, railroad bridges and the ruins of factories and warehouses. ~ Steven Pinker

The dignified catastrophes of tragedy bear little resemblance to the slow ruin inflicted by life. ~ Mason Cooley

Destiny is as it is. Nothing can change it. Accept it before it ruins you. ~ J.L. Sheppard

What drew him towards the outside was not the student, not the goat, not even the man in the down-at-heel shoes who joined them. Simply the street, like a blanched life-drained cadaver, fettered his whole attention. Never before had he seen it look so monstrously real, lit by the tired face of the moon, quiet and grave. There was about it, as it were, a sort of despairing dignity. You might have thought that the street had been killed by the weight of its suffering, that it had that moment died after long agony. It was old, the street, hobbling and twisted with age. Some of its houses were already crumbling in ruins. For years now it had sheltered the petty life of men. And now they had elected it to express the extent of their weariness. Naked beneath the prodigious brightness of the moon, it revealed all that men hid in the depths of their beings, the little hopes, the hates so huge. No longer could it hide anything; it cried out its despair from every corner. ~ Albert Cossery

I was sitting on the couch in the living room, pouring through an old sci-fi novel I'd found in one of the ruins, and I could hear the water bubbling as he cooked. The spaghetti smelled good, but I knew he'd probably put something crazy in it like popcorn or marshmallows, so I ignored my rumbling belly. ~ Ash Gray

If men, who in their hearts are friends to a government, forbear giving it their utmost assistance against its enemies, they put it in the power of a few desperate men to ruin the welfare of those who are much superior to them in strength, number, and interest. ~ Joseph Addison

Whatever happens, whether you get rich or stay poor, ruin your health or live to old age, you always end up back where you started: hungry for the one thing everybody loses - young loving. ~ Toni Morrison

Bottom line is, I didn't return to Apple to make a fortune. I've been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn't going to let it ruin my life. There's no way you could ever spend it all, and I don't view wealth as something that validates my intelligence. ~ Steve Jobs

The first thing you do at the end is reflect on the beginning. Maybe it's some form of reverse closure, or just the basic human impulse toward sentimentality, or masochism, but as you stand there shell-shocked in the charred ruins of your life, your mind will invariably go back to the time when it all started. And even if you didn't fall in love in the eighties, in your mind it will fee like the eighties, all innocent and airbrushed, with bright colors and shoulder pads and Pat Benatar or The Cure on the soundtrack. ~ Jonathan Tropper

The model of the human habitat dictated by zoning is a formless, soul-less, centerless, demoralizing mess. It bankrupts families and townships. It disables whole classes of decent, normal citizens. It ruins the air we breathe. It corrupts and deadens our spirit. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Suretyship (Dogma) is the precursor of ruin. ~ Thales

Every ruin gives you a clear message: Even your most durable things will turn into ruins! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

And in your ruins, I breathe to exist. ~ Prachi Prangya Agasti

Maybe here in the ruins of the old world, they could start something new. ~ Kass Morgan

Here is a person who knows that in two weeks' time he has to undergo a surgical operation. In the meantime he is feeling no physical pain; he has plenty to eat; he is surrounded by friends and human affection; he is doing work that is normally of great interest to him. But his power to enjoy these things is taken away by constant dread. He is insensitive to the immediate realities around him. His mind is preoccupied with something that is not yet here. It is not as if he were thinking about it in a practical way, trying to decide whether he should have the operation or not, or making plans to take care of his family and his affair if he should die. These decisions have already been made. Rathre, he is thinking about the operation in an entirely futile way, which both ruins his present enjoyment of life an dcontributes nothing to the solution of any problem. But he cannot help himself. ~ Alan W. Watts

I am fearful that the paper system will ruin the state. Its demoralizing effects are already seen and spoken of everywhere. I therefore protest against receiving any of that trash. ~ Andrew Jackson

The frontiers of the future will be the ruins of the unsustainable. ~ Bruce Sterling

His gaze settles on the discarded book. He leans, reaching until his fingertips graze Dante's Inferno, still on its bed of folded sheets. "What have we here?" he asks.
"Required reading," I say.
"It's a shame they do that," he says, thumbing through the pages. "Requirement ruins even the best of books. ~ Victoria Schwab

We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it). ~ Alain De Botton

Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Kindness is a rotten fruit that poisons anyone who partakes of it. Throw it in the face of your enemies and let it ruin them instead. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

When Christ comes with regenerating grace, he finds no man sitting still, but all posting to eternal ruin, and making haste toward hell; till, by conviction, he first brings them to a stand, and then, by conversion, turn first their hearts, and then their lives, sincerely to himself. ~ Richard Baxter

The disappointment has come - not because God desires to hurt you or make you miserable or to demoralize you or ruin your life or keep you from ever knowing happiness. He wants you to be perfect and complete in every aspect, lacking nothing. It's not the easy times that make you more like Jesus, but the hard times. ~ Kay Arthur

Your heart plays a song like a broken music box, but nothing ever sounded quite so beautiful to me. Together, in the dance of wounded-wing swans we'll rise above the ruins, melting into the golden light. ~ John Mark Green

Archaeology, I found, comprehended all manner of excitement and achievement. Adventure is coupled with bookish toil. Romantic excursions go hand in hand with scholarly self-discipline and moderation. Explorations among the ruins of the remote past have carried curious men all over the face of the earth ... Yet in truth, no science is more adventurous than archaeology, if adventure is thought of as a mixture of spirit and deed. ~ C. W. Ceram

Among the innumerable monuments of architecture constructed by the Romans, how many have escaped the notice of history, how few have resisted the ravages of time and barbarism! And yet even the majestic ruins that are still scattered over Italy and the provinces, would be sufficient to prove that those countries were once the seat of a polite and powerful empire. ~ Edward Gibbon

Strong, generous, and confident, she has nobly served mankind. Beware how you trifle with your marvellous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty, for if we stumble and fall freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin. ~ Henry Cabot Lodge

I fervently believe that people shouldn't stay in bad relationships just because of some artificial rom-com notion of true love being "forever." In fact, I think that the pressure of conforming to that framework ruins-literally RUINS-a lot of people's lives. ~ Lindy West

These fragments I have shored against my ruins ~ T. S. Eliot

An untidy, badly run house will ruin any marriage and is a disgrace to any intelligent woman. ~ Rose Henniker Heaton

My position and the state will never allow me to become a dictator, but an authoritarian style of rule is characteristic of me, and I have always admitted it. You need to control the country, and the main thing is not to ruin people's lives. ~ Alexander Lukashenko

He used to say that he never felt the hardness of the human struggle or the sadness of history as he felt it among those ruins. He used to say, too, that it made one feel an obligation to do one's best. ~ Willa Cather

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

A dog starved at his master's gate Predicts the ruin of the state. ~ William Blake

The causes which have been specified produced at first only unequal and disproportionate degrees of compliance with the requisitions of the Union. The greater deficiencies of some States furnished the pretext of example and the temptation of interest to the complying, or to the least delinquent States. Why should we do more in proportion than those who are embarked with us in the same political voyage? Why should we consent to bear more than our proper share of the common burden? These were suggestions which human selfishness could not withstand, and which even speculative men, who looked forward to remote consequences, could not, without hesitation, combat. Each State, yielding to the persuasive voice of immediate interest or convenience, has successively withdrawn its support, till the frail and tottering edifice seems ready to fall upon our heads, and to crush us beneath its ruins. ~ Alexander Hamilton

Right." A soft, choked laugh. "Kind of ruins the dramatic effect if I'm storming off in the wrong direction, doesn't it? ~ Kelley Armstrong

I thought about it for awhile, hiding it from the rest of my mind. But I didn't ruin my birthday by secretly thinking about it too hard ~ Richard Brautigan

Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings. ~ Gustave Flaubert