Source: 1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836), Ch. 8, Prospects
“But when a man
speeds toward his own ruin,
a god gives him help.”
Source: The Persians (472 BC), line 742 (tr. Janet Lembke and C. J. Herington)
“Prentice: Unnatural vice can ruin a man.
Rance: Ruin follows the accusation not the vice.”
What the Butler Saw (1969), Act II
“Iron has powers to draw a man to ruin.”
XIX. 13 (tr. Robert Fagles); Odysseus to Telemachus.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
“A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.”
December 21, 1762
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I
“God Almighty, your ruined, and you didn't even eat the gingerbread.”
Source: When Beauty Tamed the Beast
“The 'I', the 'self' of the child of God, is born in the midst of the ruins of repented idolatry.”
Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), " Theology amidst the stones and dust http://girardianlectionary.net/res/alison_elijah.htm", p. 40.
“The poor man is ruined as soon as he begins to ape the rich.”
Maxim 941
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave
“I no longer require
your stone gods, your ruins with legible inscriptions.”
"Archeology"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)
Context: Millennia have passed
since you first called me archaeology.
I no longer require
your stone gods, your ruins with legible inscriptions.
Show me your whatever
and I'll tell you who you were.
