Quotes about ruin
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“You're an Apprentice! You're not ready to think!"
Gilan and Halt.
The Ruins of Gorlan.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Variant: You're an apprentice, you're not ready to think yet.
-Ranger's Apprentice

“He doesn’t anger easily. This is good. (Takeshi)
Yes, I’m more of a simmer slowly until it boils over and ruins everything kind of man. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

Anger

“But you always fall for somebody else and then it's all right. Fall for them but don't let them ruin you.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“Where we're standing right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

“Pulling heads off Barbies, sticking them on the TV antenna and ruining the reception. But thats how witch babies are.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Baby

“All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. These are the rooms of ruin where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one…”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

Dead

“Being in Love means being willing to ruin yourself for the other person.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

Love, Personality

“Nothing made sense to me anymore. I knew I was young, I knew I was small. But I was worried that I might already be ruined.”

Augusten Burroughs book A Wolf at the Table

Source: A Wolf at the Table

Sense

“Who ya gonna call?"
"Ghostbusters!"
"That phrase is ruined forever.”

James Patterson book Maximum Ride

Source: Max

“Strider: Red hots dude. He'd ruin anything for a mouthful of those. Now pull over.
William: Gummy Bears. You should have said so.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Secret

“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Soul

“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 (1969) Swiss writer

Life, Idea, Change

“It's not bad enough I am exiled? It's not bad enough you take away the few good heroes I'm allowed to meet? You think it's funny to send me this this ― this charbroiled runt of a boy to ruin my tranquility? This is NOT FUNNY! Take him back!”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Boy, Thinking

“There is always somebody about to ruin your day, if not your life.”

Charles Bukowski book Pulp

Source: Pulp

Life

“Cat, you ruined mom's dress!"
"Honey, it was ruined when she bought it.”

Dr. Seuss book The Cat in the Hat

Source: The Cat in the Hat

Cats, Moms

“Hurry ruins saints as well as artists.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Source: Seeds of Contemplation

“Yeah, Atatsuki, don't call him by that name. It's rude! Kuran-sama is handsome, well-behaved, and a perfect honor student. Calling him "gang leader" would ruin his image!! At least call him "SUPREME GANG LEADER!!”

Matsuri Hino Japanese manga artist

Perfection

“Life and love are life and love, a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets, and to drag in the idea of a point is to ruin everything. Live and let live, love and let love, flower and fade, and follow the natural curve, which flows on, pointless.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Love, Life, Flowers, Idea

“Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all, that fatal madness—she with those delicate feet of hers, never touching the earth, gliding over the heads of men to trap us all. She entangles one man, now another.”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

Men, Daughters, Madness

“Further, an excess of legislation defeats its own ends. It makes the whole population criminals, and turns them all into police and police spies. The moral health of such a people is ruined for ever; only revolution can save it.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: Cocaine: Impressions & Opinions

People, Health

“With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he’ll never know.”

Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Life, Men, Thinking

“He prefers not to ruin things with any more questions. What it is is what it is.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

Question

“God Almighty, your ruined, and you didn't even eat the gingerbread.”

Eloisa James (1962) American academic

Source: When Beauty Tamed the Beast

God

“A man who is used to acting in one way never changes; he must come to ruin when the times, in changing, no longer are in harmony with his ways.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

Way, Change, Time

“ONE THING I AM NEVER GOING TO DO WHEN I GROW UP
Is fall in love, drop out of college, learn to subsist on water and air, have a species named after me, and ruin my life.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Love, Life, Learning, Water

“Can you please crawl out your window? Use your arms and your legs, it won't ruin you”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: Lyrics: 1962-2001

“Do not dwell on past failures or it will ruin your future.”

Audrey Phillips

Failure, Past, Future

“Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara.
O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac”

Frank O'Hara (1926–1966) American poet, art critic and writer

“But after a moment a sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well been half the world apart.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

World, Sense

“If you ever manage to become perfect, you have to die instantly before you ruin things for everyone else.”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

Perfection

“If ever the Time should come, when vain & aspiring Men shall possess the highest Seats in Government, our Country will stand in Need of its experienced Patriots to prevent its Ruin.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Letter to James Warren (24 October 1780) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2094

Men, Time, Country

“Very few of the people who accentuate the futility of life remark the futility of themselves. Perhaps they think that in proclaiming the evil of living they somehow salvage their own worth from the ruin - but they don't, even you and I…”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Life, People, Thinking, Evil

“There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.”

Pablo Neruda book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Source: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Hunger

“Love is the most dangerous craving of all, if you ask me. It turns us into people we aren't. It makes us feel like hell, and makes us walk on water. It ruins us for anything else.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

Love, People, Feeling, Hell

“Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

Soul

“I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Beauty, Beauty, Art, Thinking

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

Dennis Lehane The Given Day

Source: The Given Day

Hate

“This is the first adventure I’ve survived without being kidnapped, attacked, knocked unconscious or possessed by evil spirits. A ripped blouse? Ruined skirt? Bad hair? I’d call this progress. ~Jaime Vegas”

Kelley Armstrong book No Humans Involved

Source: No Humans Involved

Evil

“I guessed life was like that. You gained and you lost, and if you saved anything from the ruins, even if only a shred of self-respect, it was enough to take you through the next bit.”

Dick Francis Whip Hand

Source: Whip Hand

Life

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

Sophie Kinsella book The Undomestic Goddess

Source: The Undomestic Goddess

Life

“When you apologize, try not to smile at the same time. It ruins the effect”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Burnt Offerings

Source: Burnt Offerings

Smile, Time

“It is not the terrible occurrences that no one is spared, — a husband’s death, the moral ruin of a beloved child, long, torturing illness, or the shattering of a fondly nourished hope, — it is none of these that undermine the woman’s health and strength, but the little daily recurring, body and soul devouring care s. How many millions of good housewives have cooked and scrubbed their love of life away! How many have sacrificed their rosy checks and their dimples in domestic service, until they became wrinkled, withered, broken mummies. The everlasting question: ‘what shall I cook today,’ the ever recurring necessity of sweeping and dusting and scrubbing and dish-washing, is the steadily falling drop that slowly but surely wears out her body and mind. The cooking stove is the place where accounts are sadly balanced between income and expense, and where the most oppressing observations are made concerning the increased cost of living and the growing difficulty in making both ends meet. Upon the flaming altar where the pots are boiling, youth and freedom from care, beauty and light-heartedness are being sacrificed. In the old cook whose eyes are dim and whose back is bent with toil, no one would recognize the blushing bride of yore, beautiful, merry and modestly coquettish in the finery of her bridal garb.”

Dagobert von Gerhardt (1831–1910) German writer

To the ancients the hearth was sacred; beside the hearth they erected their lares and household-gods. Let us also hold the hearth sacred, where the conscientious German housewife slowly sacrifices her life, to keep the home comfortable, the table well supplied, and the family healthy."
"von Gerhardt, using the pen-name Gerhard von Amyntor in", A Commentary to the Book of Life. Quote taken from August Bebel, Woman and Socialism, Chapter X. Marriage as a Means of Support.

Love, Life, Death, God

“Milosevic was convinced that he could create Greater Serbia on the ruins of Yugoslavia, which is why he entered the war adventure that left thousands and thousands dead, a destroyed economy, infrastructure, homes, cities and villages. That politics did not succeed. Dodik, basically, wants to achieve Milosevic’s aims, but not with artillery, but thinks that some sort of politics will lead to people saying: okay, let them break away, let them link with Serbia. That cannot pass.”

Stjepan Mesić (1934) Former Croatian and Yugoslav president

President: Dodik Carries Out Milosevic's Politics, Dalje, 28 February 2009, 17 January 2013 http://www.javno.com/en-croatia/president--dodik-carries-out-milosevics-politics_238621, Criticizing Republika Srpska and its leader Milorad Dodik.

War, People, Home, Thinking

“Tombed in the solid night of starless space;
From nearest living orb so far removed,
That light, of all material things most swift,
Myriads on myriads of earth's years must speed,
Ere the mere outskirts of that Stygian gloom,
If ever, it might reach,-at rest eterne,
Lies the cold wreck of an extinguished sun.
Prime glory once of all heaven's radiant host;
Body, for soul of purest light most fit-
'Tween its first darkening, and eclipse complete,
Streamed years which might eternity appear;
While into ether, like the particles,
Invisible, which are the breath of flowers,
The mighty bulk its softer elements
Still ever was exhaling. As when flesh
And sinew of earth's monster Mastodon,
By the slow wasting of the elements,
All are dissolved, and hard, enduring bones
Alone remain,- even so, of this immense,-
When, by the ocean waves of centuries,
Millions succeeding millions, worn away,-
The adamantine skeleton alone,
In darkness, silence, utter solitude,
A ruin for eternity, was left.”

Edwin Atherstone (1788–1872) British writer

Israel in Egypt, Book the First (1861)

Soul, Flowers, Solitude, Light

“It's really quite simple. Mr. Isinglass robbed my father, destroyed my mother, exiled my brothers, and ruined me. If I catch him asleep I'll kill him. I do hope you like this pudding. I had to ride quite a way to find the plums.”

Larry McMurtry (1936) American novelist, essayist, bookseller and screenwriter

Anything For Billy (1988).

Hope, Way

“Stay away from philosophy, kids: it will ruin your mind.”

Rex Murphy (1947) Canadian journalist

In CBC Newss "At Issue", Oct 1, 2009 edition.
On a French philosopher's defense of Roman Polanski, following the later's arrest in Switzerland and extradition to the US.

“Tsar Nicholas the Bloody, who has dispersed the First and Second Dumas, who has drowned Russia in blood, enslaved Poland and Finland, and is in alliance with out — and-out reactionaries conducting a policy of stifling the Jews and all “aliens”, the tsar whose loyal friends shot down the workers on the Lena and ruined the peasants to the point of starvation all over Russia — that tsar pretends to be the champion of Slav independence and freedom!"”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 41, pp. 262–66
Collected Works

Freedom

“This ideal University of Life … would never take the importance of culture for granted. It would know that culture is kept alive by a constant respectful questioning—not by an excessive and snobbish attitude of respect. Therefore, rather than leaving it hanging why one was reading Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, an ideal course covering nineteenth-century literature would ask plainly “What is it that adultery ruins in a marriage?” Students in the ideal University of Life would end up knowing much the same material as their colleagues in other institutions, they would simply have learned it under a very different set of headings.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

“Reclaiming the Intellectual Life for Posterity,” Liberal Education, vol. 95, no. 2 http://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/le-sp09/le-sp09_MyView.cfm

Life, Marriage, Literature, Question

“The question we must ask ourselves as a culture is whether we want to embrace the change that must come, or resist it. Are we so attached to the dietary fallacies with which we were raised, so afraid to counter the arbitrary laws of eating taught to us in childhood by our misinformed parents, that we cannot alter the course they set us on, even if it leads to our own ruin? Does the prospect of standing apart or encountering ridicule scare us even from saving ourselves?”

Howard F. Lyman (1938) American activist

Source: Mad Cowboy (1998), Ch. 9: Going Home, p. 188

Law, Question, Parent, Change

“In manufactures, a very small advantage will enable foreigners to undersell our own workmen, even in the home market. It will require a very great one to enable them to do so in the rude produce of the soil. If the free importation of foreign manufactures were permitted, several of the home manufactures would probably suffer, and some of them, perhaps, go to ruin altogether, and a considerable part of the stock and industry at present employed in them, would be forced to find out some other employment. But the freest importation of the rude produce of the soil could have no such effect upon the agriculture of the country.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II

Home, Suffering, Parting, Country

“Let us learn wisdom from this illustrious example. We have passed the Red Sea of slaughter; our garments are yet wet with its crimson spray. We have crossed the fearful wilderness of war, and have led our four hundred thousand heroes to sleep beside the dead enemies of the Republic. We have heard the voice of God amid the thunders of battle commanding us to wash our hands of iniquity, to 'proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.' When we spurned his counsels we were defeated, and the gulfs of ruin yawned before us. When we obeyed his voice, he gave us victory. And now at last we have reached the confines of the wilderness. Before us is the land of promise, the land of hope, the land of peace, filled with possibilities of greatness and glory too vast for the grasp of the imagination. Are we worthy to enter it? On what condition may it be ours to enjoy and transmit to our children's children? Let us pause and make deliberate and solemn preparation. Let us, as representatives of the people, whose servants we are, bear in advance the sacred ark of republican liberty, with its tables of the law inscribed with the 'irreversible guaranties' of liberty. Let us here build a monument on which shall be written not only the curses of the law against treason, disloyalty, and oppression, but also an everlasting covenant of peace and blessing with loyalty, liberty, and obedience; and all the people will say, Amen.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1866)

Wisdom, God, War, Children

“Here you may suppose the Father to say when driving His bargain with Christ for you. The Father speaks. "My Son, here is a company of poor, miserable souls that have utterly undone themselves and now lay open to my justice. Justice demands satisfaction for them, or will satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them." The Son responds. "Oh my Father. Such is my love to and pity for them, that rather than they shall perish eternally I will be responsible for them as their guarantee. Bring in all thy bills, that I may see what they owe thee. Bring them all in, that there be no after-reckonings with them. At my hands shall thou require it. I would rather choose to suffer the wrath that is theirs then they should suffer it. Upon me, my Father, upon me be all their debt." The Father responds. "But my Son, if thou undertake for them, thou must reckon to pay the last mite. Expect no abatement. Son, if I spare them… I will not spare you." The Son responds. "Content Father. Let it be so. Charge it all upon me. I am able to discharge it. And though it prove a kind of undoing to me, though it impoverish all my riches, empty all my treasures… I am content to take it."”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

The Works of John Flavel, Vol.1, "A Display of Christ in His Essential and Mediatorial Glory", 42 Sermons, Sermon Number 3, "The Covenant of Redemption between the Father and the Redeemer", Use 6.

Love, Justice, Soul, Suffering

“Roger doesn't have the right at present to tell me what to do with my life, although he believes that he does. And he'll not ruin my career, although lately he's been trying to.”

David Gilmour (1946) guitarist, singer, best known as a member of Pink Floyd

As quoted in Penthouse (September 1988)

Life

“It is not always our faults that ruin us, but the manner of our conduct after we have committed them.”

Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert (1647–1733) writer from France

Source: A Mother's Advice to Her Daughter, 1728, p. 200

“Do you know what Margaret Thatcher did in her first Budget? Introduced VAT on yachts! It somewhat ruined my retirement.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

1992.[citation needed]
Post-Prime Ministerial

“This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and begging through the round of every man's acquaintance, which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give--who does not often give--the warning, "Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!"”

Charles Dickens book Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 1

Hope, Courage, Suffering, Heart

“If I were the type of artist that didn't care whether or not my works communicated with viewers then I wouldn't bother exhibiting them, I might as well stock them in a warehouse. But I do exhibit and I do care because I want to communicate back to the viewer what I've viewed. My paintings are inspired by my homeland's traditional spaces. My colors are the colors of monasteries and mosques, the color of ruins of Sassanid and Seljuq era, colors of Bazaars of Isfahan and Shiraz, and colors of northern-Iran's ceramics. I have sensed all these colors, forms and everything within my painting's frame from the viewer's own world.”

Guity Novin (1944) artist

Source: Negin (1971), p. 57

World, Color, Communication, Sense

“Ministers who deal with billions of dollars cannot be paid low salaries without risking a system malfunction. Low salaries will not attract able men who are or can be successful in their professions or business. Low salaries will draw in the hypocrites who sweet talk their way into power in the name of public services, but once in charge will show their true colour, and ruin the country. This has happened in many countries.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

SM Lee Kuan Yew, Speech to the National Trade Union Congress at the Singapore Conference Hall, 19 July 1996 https://fcpp.org/pdf/SPEECH%20BY%20MR%20LEE%20KUAN%20YEW%202004.pdf 1990s

Men, Way, Business, Success

“And if a man consider the original of this great Ecclesiastical Dominion, he will easily perceive, that the Papacy, is no other than the Ghost of the deceased Romane Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: For so did the Papacy start up on a Sudden out of the Ruines of that Heathen Power.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Fourth Part, Chapter 47, p. 386(See also: Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Volume I)
Leviathan (1651)

“We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.”

W. H. Auden book The Age of Anxiety

Epilogue
The Age of Anxiety (1948)

Change

“A keyhole speech is very simple, especially mine. First it states the issues. An issue is just a difference of opinion, which is why we put erasers on horse races. And as I always say, as long as we have issues, we can’t have everything. Second, the speech goes on to attack the present administration and show how it has ruined the country. Then it goes on to attack the other candidates and show how they’ll keep it ruined, and generally builds up a warm and friendly atmosphere.”

Gracie Allen (1902–1964) American actress and comedienne

Source: How to Become President (1940), Ch. 5 : Issues and how to pick them

Horse, Country

“And this is where it went. In places all around the eastern Mediterranean the sea is separated from the mainland by strips of flat marshy land like this. Made up of the soil that once clothed the hills beyond. All this was deposited during the last 2000 years. This is the marsh that now separates the sea from the city of Ephesus. These ruined buildings mark the edge of the quay where once merchant ships lay moored. As the harbour died, so did the trade upon which the city's wealth was based, and so, well, ultimately did Ephesus itself. What was once one of the most splendid cities in the Roman Empire fell into decay and was abandoned.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

50 min 10 sec
The First Eden (1987)

Sea, Clothes, Wealth

“I was thrilled, and I mean really thrilled, when I read that parts of the Merzbau could still be buried under the ruins. Whatever the circumstances. I will try and come to Hannover to salvage it.... wait until I arrive, for the Merzbau is made of plaster of Paris and could easily be damaged. However by working slowly I am sure I can save parts. And it is certainly worth it, because it [his 'Merzbau'] is my life's work. And in the opinion of people abroad it was seen as a new form of art.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

Source: 1940s, I is Style (2000), p. 47 : in a letter to Käthe Steinitz (24 June 1945)

Life, People, Art, Waiting

“As for history, we are living in its ruins. And as for biographies, we are living with the consequences of all the decisions ever made in them. I tend not to read them for pleasure. It‘s not unlike carefully scrutinizing the map when one has already reached the destination.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies (2007), Chapter 2 “Requin” section 4 (pp. 100-101)

Pleasure, History, Decision, Reading

“Final Ruin fiercely drives
Her plowshare o'er creation.”

Edward Young Night-Thoughts

Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night IX, Line 167. Compare Robert Burns, To a Mountain Daisy: "Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate / Full on thy bloom".

“The poor man is ruined as soon as he begins to ape the rich.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 941
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

“Now I gazed upon him, no longer in a passionate frenzy, but in a cold contempt. I visualized long days and nights of vengeance, of fiendish ingenuity and complete consumation. My enemy was at my mercy; he lived; all the plans of hate and torture I had concieved through the long years of wrong and insult I would wreak upon him. My plans were carefully laid; I knew exactly what tortures I would use, how long I could inflict them without causing death, until my enemy at last went forth, a man ruined of soul and body. I was at peace, and content.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From “Revenge” in a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith (c. late Aug/early September 1927)
Letters

Death, Hate, Peace, Soul

“Food should come from the place of its origin, and stay there. It shouldn’t spend its time crisscrossing the globe for the sake of profit. We went down that path once, and it brought us to ruin.”

Paolo Bacigalupi book The Windup Girl

Source: The Windup Girl (2009), p. 93

Food, Time

“The crowd of ragged Confederates on the White House lawn had doubled and more since he went in to confer with Lincoln. The trees were full of men who had climbed up so they could see over their comrades. Off in the distance, cannon occasionally still thundered; rifles popped like firecrackers. Lee quietly said to Lincoln, "Will you send out your sentries under flag of truce to bring word of the armistice to those Federal positions still firing upon my men?" "I'll see to it," Lincoln promised. He pointed to the soldiers in gray, who had quieted expectantly when Lee came out. "Looks like you've given me sentries enough, even if their coats are the wrong color." Few men could have joked so with their cause in ruins around them. Respecting the Federal President for his composure, Lee raised his voice: "Soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia, after three years of arduous service, we have achieved that for which we took up arms-" He got no further. With one voice, the men before him screamed out their joy and relief. The unending waves of noise beat at him like a surf from a stormy sea. Battered forage caps and slouch hats flew through the air. Soldiers jumped up and down, pounded on one another's shoulders, danced in clumsy rings, kissed each other's bearded, filthy faces. Lee felt his own eyes grow moist. At last the magnitude of what he had won began to sink in.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 180

Men, Color, Kiss, Tree

“The people of England will curse themselves for having preferred ruin from Churchill to peace from Hitler.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

Broadcast, Radio Bremen, 2 August 1940.

People, Peace

“So long as man is protected by madness he functions and flourishes, but when he frees himself from the fruitful tyranny of fixed ideas, he is lost, ruined.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Idea, Madness

“The greatest danger to the British Empire and to the British people is not to be found among the enormous fleets and armies of the European Continent, nor in the solemn problems of Hindustan; it is not in the 'Yellow Peril' nor the 'Black Peril' nor any danger in the wide circuit of colonial and foreign affairs. No, it is here in our midst, close at home, close at hand in the vast growing cities of England and Scotland, and in the dwindling and cramped villages of our denuded countryside. It is there you will find the seeds of Imperial ruin and national decay—the unnatural gap between rich and poor, the divorce of the people from the land, the want of proper discipline and training in our youth, the exploitation of boy labour, the physical degeneration which seems to follow so swiftly on civilized poverty, the awful jumbles of an obsolete Poor Law, the horrid havoc of the liquor traffic, the constant insecurity in the means of subsistence and employment which breaks the heart of many a sober, hard-working man, the absence of any established minimum standard of life and comfort among the workers, and, at the other end, the swift increase of vulgar, joyless luxury—here are the enemies of Britain. Beware lest they shatter the foundations of her power.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), pp. 139-140
Early career years (1898–1929)

Life, People, Youth, Law

“It is often said that in prosperity we have many friends, but that we are usually neglected when things go badly. I disagree. Not only do malicious people flock about us in order to witness our ruin, but other unfortunates as well, who have been kept away by our happiness, and now feel close to us on account of our troubles. When Shelley was poor and unknown, he had more friends than the triumphant Lord Byron. It takes great nobility of soul to be able, without any taint of self-interest, to be friends with fortunate people.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

People, Feeling, Soul, Happiness

“What second love could she [Olympias] make out of her ruined first love? The second love that most women make out of their first love for husbands grows from a mutual and tacit sadness in both husband and wife that he is only in rare moments the man both would like him to be.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

Lives of Wives (London: Cassell, 1939)

Love, Women, Sadness

“Some aspects of the Spanish economy are going well, […] but it is not because you govern […] What has been your main virtue as a ruler? Not ruining the economy, and therefore I applaud. He could have razed everything he found, […] but no, he had the right to leave the economy as it was before.”

Mariano Rajoy (1955) Spanish politician

3 July, 2007 As Opposition Leader, 2007 Source: Diario de Sesiones del Congreso http://www.congreso.es/portal/page/portal/Congreso/PopUpCGI?CMD=VERDOC&CONF=BRSPUB.cnf&BASE=PUW8&PIECE=PUW8&DOCS=1-1&FMT=PUWTXDTS.fmt&OPDEF=Y&QUERY=%40FECH%26gt%3B%3D20070703+%26+%40FECH%26lt%3B%3D20070704+Y+CDP200707030269.CODI.#1

“A year ago we liberated them from the Fascist Monster, and they still sit doing their best to smile politely at us, as hungry as ever, more disease-ridden than ever before, in the ruins of their beautiful city where law and order have ceased to exist. And what is the prize that is to be eventually won? The rebirth of democracy. The glorious prospect of being able one day to choose their rulers from a list of powerful men, most of whose corruptions are generally known and accepted with weary resignation. The days of Benito Mussolini must seem like a lost paradise compared with this.”

Norman Lewis book Naples '44

Naples '44

Men, Disease, Law, Smile

“One was there who left all his friends behind;
Who going inland ever more and more,
And being left quite alone, at last did find
A lonely valley sheltered from the wind,
Wherein, amidst an ancient cypress wood,
A long-deserted ruined castle stood.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

“To those who doubt and deny the preponderance of good over evil in human nature; who think the few are made to rule, and the many to serve; who put rank above brotherhood, and race above humanity; who attach more importance to ancient forms than to the living realities of the present; who worship power in whatever hands it may be lodged and by whatever means it may have been obtained; our government is a mountain of sin, and, what is worse, it seems confirmed in its transgressions. One of the latest and most potent European prophets, one who felt himself called upon for a special deliverance concerning us and our destiny as a nation, was the late Thomas Carlyle. He described us as rushing to ruin, and when we may expect to reach the terrible end, our gloomy prophet, enveloped in the fogs of London, has not been pleased to tell us. Warning and advice from any quarter are not to be despised, and especially not from one so eminent as Mr. Carlyle; and yet Americans will find it hard to heed even men like him, while the animus is so apparent, bitter and perverse.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men, Mountain, Nature, Thinking

“All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"The Harlem Ghetto" in Commentary (February 1948); republished in Notes of a Native Son (1955)

Girl, Boy

“The greatest blow for freedom that was ever struck in the world's history, perhaps, was when Abraham Lincoln decided that the slaves of the South were to be free and he freed them. The South collapsed. The gentlemen who could spend their time fighting, sure of supplies from slave-tended lands, began to starve and go ragged. Their homes began to fall into ruin and their families to be hungry. Their morale was broken. The war was really won by the pen upon the paper which wrote these words, "are and henceforward shall be free."”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: What America Means to Me (1943), p. 193

War, World, Family, Home

“It is not on the ruin of liberty that we may (in the future… - "pourra", Fr.) build justice.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 46.

Justice, Future

“On 11 October 1908, having worked for six years at my international magazine Poesia, in an attempt to free the Italian lyrical genius that was under sentence of death from its traditional and commercial fetters, I suddenly felt that articles, poetry and controversies were no longer enough. It was absolutely crucial to switch methods, get out into the streets, lay siege to theaters, and introduce the fisticuffs into the artistic struggle... My Italian blood raced faster when my lips coined out loud the word FUTURISM.
It was the new formula of Action-Art and a code of mental health. It was a youthful and innovative banner, anti-traditional, optimistic, heroic and dynamic, that had to be hoisted over the ruins of all attachment to the past.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

quote from 'Guerra sola igiene del mundo', in Edizione Futuriste di Poesia', Milan 1915; as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 21
1910's

Death, Health, Youth, Art

“I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I'm never gonna get, and just enjoy it while it lasts.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).

Life, Search

“We are a solid and united nation, which would rather go down to ruin than admit the domination of the Nazis…If the enemy does try to invade this country, we will fight him in the air and on the sea; we will fight him on the beaches with every weapon we have…We shall be fighting…with the conviction that our cause is the cause of humanity and peace against cruelty and wars; a cause that surely has the blessing of Almighty God.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast (30 June 1940), quoted in Keith Feiling, Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), p. 449.
Post-Prime Ministerial

God, War, Peace, Fight

“After all, in both languages we were dealing in large measure not with English and French, but with Scots and Irish, Bretons and Normans…. There could be no more eloquent illustration of the colonial mind-set than a bunch of Celts and Vikings in a distant northern territory insulting each other as les anglais and the French as if they were the descendants of the people who had subjected and ruined them.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997)

People, Distant

“This whole theory [of John Law and Jean Terrasson], as dear to French financial schemers in the eighteenth century as to American "Greenbackers" in the nineteenth, had resulted, under the Orleans Regency and Louis XV, in ruin to France financially and morally, had culminated in the utter destruction of all prosperity, the rooting out of great numbers of the most important industries, and the grinding down of the working people even to starvation.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 169-170

People, Law

“[T]he doctrine of a plurality of Gods is as prominent in the Bible as any other doctrine…. The head God organized the heavens and the earth. I defy all the world to refute me. In the beginning the heads of the Gods organized the heavens and the earth. Now the learned priests and the people rage, and the heathen imagine a vain thing. If we pursue the Hebrew text further, it reads, 'The head one of the Gods said, Let us make a man in our own image.' I once asked a learned Jew, 'If the Hebrew language compels us to render all words ending in heim in the plural, why not render the first Eloheim plural?' He replied, 'That is the rule with few exceptions; but in this case it would ruin the Bible.' He acknowledged I was right…. In the very beginning the Bible shows there is a plurality of Gods beyond the power of refutation. It is a great subject I am dwelling on. The word Eloheim ought to be in the plural all the way through—'Gods'. The heads of the Gods appointed one God for us; and when you take [that] view of the subject, its sets one free to see all the beauty, holiness and perfection of the Gods. All I want is to get the simple, naked truth, and the whole truth.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 6:474-76 (7 April 1844)
1840s, King Follett discourse (1844)

God, People, Truth, World

“Take him, earth, for cherishing,
To thy tender breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring thee,
Noble even in its ruin.”
Nunc suscipe, terra, fovendum, gremioque hunc concipe molli. Hominis tibi membra sequestro, generosa et fragmina credo.

Prudentius (348–413) Roman writer

Nunc suscipe, terra, fovendum,
gremioque hunc concipe molli.
Hominis tibi membra sequestro,
generosa et fragmina credo.
"Hymnus X: Ad Exequias Defuncti", line 125 ; translation from Helen Waddell Mediaeval Latin Lyrics (London: Constable, [1929] 1943) p. 45.

“With the proper understanding of the economic system, the workers will soon find means to end that system, and to raise on its ruins a development of society having for its goal the benefit of the whole, instead of a part, of the community.”

William Earsman (1884–1965) Australian left-wing activist

The Proletariat and Education: The Necessity for Labor Colleges

Communication, Understanding, Parting

“Judah Benjamin said, "The nations of Europe continue to abhor our policy, try as we will to convince them that we cannot do otherwise. Mr. Mason has written from London that Her Majesty's government might well have been willing to extend us recognition two years ago, were it not for the continuation of slavery among us: so Lord Russell has assured him, at any rate. Mr. Thouvenel, the French foreign minister, has expressed similar sentiments to Mr. Slidell in Paris." Slavery, Lee thought. In the end, the world's outside view of the Confederate States of America was colored almost exclusively by its response to the South's peculiar institution. Never mind that the U. S. Constitution was a revocable compact between independent states, never mind that the North had consistently used its numerical majority to force through Congress tariffs that worked only to ruin the South. So long as black men were bought and sold, all the high ideals of the Confederacy would be ignored.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 234

Men, World, Color

“It were but reasonable to hope that this sacred influence should never have been overshadowed, and that in the history of other nations, no less than in our own past, we might find beacon-lights for our guidance. In part this has been realized, and might have reached the height of our expectations if it had not been for the blasting effects of slavery, whose deadly pall has so long spread its folds over this nation, to the destruction of peace, union, and concord. Most particularly has its baneful influence been felt in the south, causing the people to be at once restless and discontented. Even now, sir, after the great conflict between slavery and freedom, after the triumph achieved at such a cost, we can yet see the traces of the disastrous strife and the remains of disease in the body-politic of the south. In proof of this witness the frequent outrages perpetrated upon our loyal men. The prevailing spirit of the southron is either to rule or to ruin. Voters must perforce succumb to their wishes or else risk life itself in the attempt to maintain a simple right of common manhood.”

Joseph Hayne Rainey (1832–1887) politician

1871, Speech on the the Ku Klux Klan Bill of 1871 (1 April 1871)

Life, Men, People, Disease

“For centuries knowledge meant proven knowledge… Einstein's results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or can be, proven knowledge. But few realize that with this the whole classical structure of intellectual values falls in ruins and has to be replaced.”

Imre Lakatos (1921–1974) Hungarian mathematician, philosopher

Source: Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, 1970, p. 92 as cited in: Anthony C. Thiselton (2007) The Hermeneutics of Doctrine. p. 166.

Knowledge, Thinking

“She has confessed her parentage to me. Since then, the first enchantment ruined.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Goebbels diary entry in 1924 after finding out his girlfriend Else Janke had a Jewish mother.
Diary excerpts

“From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation. The feelings of human nature revolt against the supposition of a state so situated as that it may not in any emergency provide against dangers which perhaps threaten immediate ruin. While those bodies are in existence to whom the people have delegated the powers of legislation, they alone possess and may exercise those powers; but when they are dissolved by the lopping off one or more of their branches, the power reverts to the people, who may exercise it to unlimited extent, either assembling together in person, sending deputies, or in any other way they may think proper.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1770s, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

People, Way, Feeling, Exercises

“Home influences alone never saved the New England boy from ruin, though sometimes they may have helped to ruin him; and the influences outside of home were negative. If school helped, it was only by reaction. The dislike of school was so strong as to be a positive gain. The passionate hatred of school methods was almost a method in itself. Yet the day-school of that time was respectable, and the boy had nothing to complain of. In fact, he never complained. He hated it because he was here with a crowd of other boys and compelled to learn by memory a quantity of things that did not amuse him. His memory was slow, and the effort painful. For him to conceive that his memory could compete for school prizes with machines of two or three times its power, was to prove himself wanting not only in memory, but flagrantly in mind. He thought his mind a good enough machine, if it were given time to act, but it acted wrong if hurried. Schoolmasters never gave time.

In any and all its forms, the boy detested school, and the prejudice became deeper with years. He always reckoned his school-days, from ten to sixteen years old, as time thrown away.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Pain, Hate, School, Home

“It may be a very little thing for you to say to a young man the few words that turn him from the way of ruin, and win him back to life and hope. It may be a very little thing to you; but it is every thing to the young man.”

John Bartholomew Gough (1817–1886) Anglo-American temperance orator

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 561.

Life, Hope, Way

“It is a great tribute to the good qualities of the strikers, who are our own people, that they showed that sense of discipline and restraint in obedience to their instructions. Many of them obeyed their orders from their sense of loyalty, orders of which they disapproved themselves, but if that strike had been successful it would have meant industrial ruin, not only to the miners, but to the whole country.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926) on the General Strike, quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 167.
1926

People, Sense, Success, Loyalty

“The trouble with most entrepreneurs is that they would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p.115

“Sequels and remakes are just a part of the business- it's not something that ruins that whole thing. Once in a while we see a movie that surprises us- you can say that American is contaminated with remakes and sequels, but I think that's what makes the whole machinery keep going. I'm not a fan of sequels or remakes but I think it doesn't damage.”

Andy Muschietti (1973) Argentine film director and screenwriter

Mama: Interview With Director Andrés Muschietti http://whatculture.com/film/mama-interview-with-director-andres-muschietti (June 8, 2013)

Business, Thinking, Parting

“A people under the menace of war and of invasion is very easy to govern. It does not claim social reforms, it does not cavil over armaments or military equipment. It pays without haggling, it ruins itself at it, and that is excellent for the syndicates, the financiers, and the heads of industry to whom patriotic terrors open an abundant source of gain.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

[1914-01-22, Anatole France on Education. Speech at the Inauguration of the Education Part of the Socialist "Maison de Peuple," at Brussels, Translated for "The New Age" by Leonard J. Simons, The New Age (Volume 14, Number 12), 363, http://www.modjourn.org/render.php?id=1165338028234375&view=mjp_object, Modernist Journals Project, 2017-01-04]

War, People

Quotes about ruin page 3

Quotes about ruin
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