Quotes Tagged "ruins"

There’s no such thing as ruining your life. Life’s a pretty resilient thing, it turns out.

Everybody is equally weak on the inside, just that some present their ruins as new castles and become kings –

Heroes and scholars represent the opposite extremes... The scholar struggles for the benefit of all humanity, sometimes to reduce physical effort, sometimes to reduce pain, and sometimes to postpone death, or at least render it more bearable. In contrast, the patriot sacrifices a rather substantial part of humanity for the sake of his own prestige. His statue is always erected on a pedestal of ruins and corpses... In contrast, all humanity crowns a scholar, love forms the pedestal of his statues, and his triumphs defy the desecration of time and the judgment of history.

Sometimes, what we need the most is the strength to survive in this world. Which forces us to pay, to watch the demons destroy the paradises we built and dance on its ruins.

Ruins are more beautiful than adorned castles, for ruins are the cathedrals of time.

Antique Foundation Here I built the ruin in My voice on either side of me In the temple the ocean could Not be a crowd I mined The shore with fog the sun dries These bricks I built the vision in The cinder block that is the city Wall this grave Tone I speak with a picture Of myself in my wallet • Don’t be fooled by grass and these words Grass whispers Because they are real they are Ruinous Here, the gossip is in the dust Not the sea cloud enters the open Child’s window dimming the silver Flute’s sheen Where is he Who hears inside the brick those notes? There is a rumor in the city we’ll exist If he plays his song no one knows • Follow that shadow don’t tell me it’s mine Here there is no being alone Here are my hands which tore the leaves so Quietly in the temple the god Emerging from marble points at the chisel At the base of his stone Did I tell you Where I’m going? To the old man Who sings the margin Where on wave-tip swords turn edge over edge Wound us and the shore with foam • My face on either side of my face I tore My picture in half to show the gate You must climb inside your breath to leave As fog the wind will bear you— If you’re lovely—away In the spare clouds The children’s chorus Do you hear?— Where were you, and where are you going? Here I built the ruin in the stone-crushed Sage leaves my hands scented as long ago When I liked to press the desert against my head to think

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

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.

Detroit's industrial ruins are picturesque, like crumbling Rome in an 18th-century etching.

One and all, the orthodox creeds are crumbling into ruins everywhere.

Spell-check ruins my work. It fixes all my slang and dialect into standard English. So I'm caught in a tangle of technology that feels very foreign to me.

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.

The prudent person may direct a state, but it is the enthusiast who regenerates or ruins it.

Success produces confidence; confidence relaxes industry, and negligence ruins the reputation which accuracy had raised.

The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins.

The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.

Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.

Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.

A thousand years may scare form a state. An hour may lay it in ruins.