Ruins Quotes - Page 5

• [During difficult times and after mistakes and failures it is helpful to remember ...] Oftentimes calamity turns to our advantage and great ruins make way for greater glories.

  Seneca the Younger

  Mistake, Way, Anticipation

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• He that will do no good offices after a disappointment must stand still, and do just nothing at all. The plough goes on after a barren year; and while the ashes are yet warm, we raise a new house upon the ruins of a former.

  Seneca the Younger

  Disappointment, Years, Office

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• It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery. These may, perhaps, succeed for once, and borrow for awhile, from hope, a gay and flourishing appearance. But time betrays their weakness, and they fall into ruin of themselves. For, as in structures of every kind, the lower parts should have the greatest firmness--so the grounds and principles of actions should be just and true.

  Demosthenes

  Fall, Gay, Should Have

  Demosthenes (1756). “All the orations of Demosthenes, pronounced to excite the Athenians against Philip King of Macedon: Translated into English; digested and connected, so as to form a regular history of the progress of the Macedonian power: with notes historical and critical. By Thomas Leland, ...”, p.26

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• How oft do they rescue or ruin us, through whimsy or design or a combination of both, the adults to whom we entrust our care!

  Rick Yancey

  Design, Adults, Care

  Rick Yancey (2009). “The Monstrumologist”, p.231, Simon and Schuster

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• You want a happy romantic relationship? Don’t ruin it by getting married.

  Meg Cabot

  Want, Married, Romantic Relationship

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• Here I am,' I thought, 'back from the jungle, back from the ruins. Here, where wealth is no longer gorgeous and power has no dignity.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Here I Am, Dignity, Gorgeous

  Evelyn Waugh (1958). “The world of Evelyn Waugh”

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• Yes, he’s like a rash for which there’s no cure. It only goes away for a bit before returning unexpectedly to ruin every pleasurable experience. He should have been named Herpes rather than ZT. Or maybe just Herpes Z, since he’s a very special irritant. (Arik)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Should Have, Special, Cures

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2007). “The Dream-Hunter”, p.126, Macmillan

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• But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

  Marcel Proust

  Past, Essence, Smell

  Marcel Proust (2015). “Swann's Way”, p.50, Vintage

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• Anarchy wears two faces, both Creator and Destroyer. Thus Destroyers topple empires; make a canvas of clean rubble where creators can then build a better world. Rubble, once achieved makes further ruins' means irrelevant. Away with our explosives, then! Away with our Destroyers! They have no place within our better world. But let us raise a toast to all our bombers, all our bastards, most unlovely and most unforgivable, let's drink their health, then meet with them no more.

  Alan Moore

  Mean, Two, Bombers

  "V for Vendetta". Book by Alan Moore, September 1988 – May 1989.

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• The ruins proclaim the building was beautiful.

  Mohsin Hamid

  Beautiful, Building, Fundamentalist

  Mohsin Hamid (2007). “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, p.144, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Looks like I’m going to ruin your day, Big Boy. I choose to live my crappy life a little longer. (Susan)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Boys, Looks, Littles

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2007). “Dark Side of the Moon”, p.75, Macmillan

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• Come on, Megeara. Walk on the wild side with me. Let’s get naked and ruin Solin’s upholstery. It serves two purposes. We’re happy and he’s pissed. (Arik)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Two, Wild Side, Naked

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• A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reform. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.

  Anatole France

  Military, War, Patriotic

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• Vitamins ruined my life. Not that there was much left to ruin, but still. I know that blaming vitamins for my horrible life sounds strange. After all, vitamins are supposed to keep people healthy. Also, they're inanimate objects. But thanks to them I was stuck in the Jackson Center Mall watching my father run around in a bee costume.

  Elizabeth Scott

  Running, Father, People

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• I’m not dead yet. It’s all good. (Omari) Good. That whole spontaneous combustion thing can be a real buzzkill. Ruins your clothes, too. (Nero)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Real, Clothes, Nero

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2009). “Born of Ice”, p.207, Macmillan

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• A great hope fell You heard no noise The ruin was within.

  Emily Dickinson

  Hope, Noise, Heard

  Emily Dickinson, Ralph William Franklin (1998). “The Poems of Emily Dickinson”, p.1029, Harvard University Press

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• Sadness to me is the happiest time, When a shining city rises from the ruins of my drunken mind. Those times when I'm silent and still as the earth, The thunder of my roar is heard across the universe.

  Rumi

  Spiritual, Sadness, Cities

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• Oh, ma petite, you are growing gargantuan." I looked at him and it was not a friendly look. "Never tease a woman about her weight, Jean-Claude. At least not an American twentieth-century one." He Spread his hands wide. "My deepest apologies." "When you apologize, try not to smile at the same time. It ruins the effect.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Apology, Hands, Trying

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2002). “Burnt Offerings: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel”, p.63, Penguin

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• When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced The rich proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main, Increasing store with loss and loss with store; When I have seen such interchange of state, Or state itself confounded to decay; Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, That Time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

  William Shakespeare

  Ocean, Loss, Winning

  William Shakespeare (1973). “Shakespeare’s Sonnets: The Problems Solved”, p.130, Springer

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• You can't let the past ruin your future.

  Maria V. Snyder

  Past, Your Future

  Maria V. Snyder (2013). “Storm Glass”, p.405, Harlequin

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• Falling into ruin was a bit like falling in love: Both descents stripped you bare and left you as you were at your core. And both endings are equally painful.

  J.R. Ward

  Falling In Love, Painful, Descent

  J.R. Ward (2011). “J.R. Ward The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8”, p.370, Penguin

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• 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

  Voice, Smell, Hair

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• And he hated himself and hated her,too, for the ruin they'd made of each other.

  Dennis Lehane

  Lost Love, Made, Love And Lost

  Dennis Lehane (2009). “The Given Day: A Novel”, p.44, Harper Collins

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• She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation. In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. What he said, what she said, what they did, what they did then. Even the times they argued, fought, parted, agonized, rejoined. How they’d loved to cut themselves on each other, taste their own blood. We were ruinous together, she thinks. But how else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin?

  Margaret Atwood

  Cutting, Thinking, Doors

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.408, Anchor

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• Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it, and by the same token save it from that ruin which except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.

  Hannah Arendt

  Children, Responsibility, Our World

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