Quotes about ruin
page 4

“Avoid cruelty and injustice for, on the Day of Judgment, the same will turn into several darknesses; and guard yourselves against miserliness; for this has ruined nations who lived before you.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, Hadith 203
Sunni Hadith

“They call us terrorists after they ruined our countries.”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

Death March
Albums, The 3rd World (2008)

Country

“Suppose any person to be put in possession of a large estate of fruitful land, with rich beds of gold in its gravel; countless herds of cattle in its pastures; houses, and gardens, and storehouses full of useful stores; but suppose, after all, that he could get no servants? In order that he may be able to have servants, some one in his neighbourhood must be poor, and in want of his gold — or his corn. Assume that no one is in want of either, and that no servants are to be had. He must, therefore, bake his own bread, make his own clothes, plough his own ground, and shepherd his own flocks. His gold will be as useful to him as any other yellow pebbles on his estate. His stores must rot, for he cannot consume them. He can eat no more than another man could eat, and wear no more than another man could wear. He must lead a life of severe and common labour to procure even ordinary comforts; he will be ultimately unable to keep either houses in repair, or fields in cultivation; and forced to content himself with a poor man's portion of cottage and garden, in the midst of a desert of waste land, trampled by wild cattle, and encumbered by ruins of palaces, which he will hardly mock at himself by calling "his own."”

John Ruskin book Unto This Last

Essay II: "The Veins of Wealth," section 29.
Unto This Last (1860)

Life, Housing, Personality, Clothes

“The theology taught by Milton was dear to the Puritan heart. It was accepted by New England, and it poisoned the souls and ruined the lives of thousands. The genius of Shakespeare could not make the theology of Milton poetic. In the literature of the world there is nothing, outside of the “sacred books,” more perfectly absurd.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Why I Am an Agnostic (1896)

Books, World, Soul, Literature

“After Rome had acquired the undisputed mastery of the world, the Greeks were wont to annoy their Roman masters by the assertion, that Rome was indebted for her greatness to the fever, of which Alexander of Macedon died at Babylon on the 11th of June, 323. As it was not very agreeable for them to reflect on the actual past, they were fond of allowing their thoughts to dwell on what might have happened, had the great king turned his arms towards the west, and contested the Carthaginian supremacy by sea with his fleet, and the Roman supremacy by land with his phalanxes. It is not impossible that Alexander may have cherished such thoughts; nor is it necessary to resort for such an explanation of their origin to the mere difficulty which an autocrat provided with soldiers and ships experiences in setting limits to his warlike career. It was an enterprise worthy of a great Greek king to protect the siceliots against Carthage and the Tarentines against Rome.. and the Italian embassies from the Bruttians, Lucanians, and Etruscans, that long with numerous others made their appearance at Babylon, afforded him sufficient opportunities of becoming acquainted with the circumstances of the peninsula, and of contracting relations with it. Carthage with is many connections in the east could not but attract the attention of the mighty monarch, and it was probably part of his design to convert the nominal sovereignty of the Persian king over the Tyrian colony into a real one: the apprehensions of the Carthaginians are shown by the Phoenician spy in the suite of Alexander. Whether, however, those ideas were dreams or actual projects, the king died without having interfered in the affairs of the west, and his ideas were buried with him. For a few brief years a Grecian ruler had held in his hands the whole intellectual vigour of the Hellenic race combined with the whole material resources of the east. On his death the work to which his life had been devoted - the establishment of a Hellenism in the east - was by no means undone; but his empire had barely been united when it was again dismembered, and, admidst the constant quarrels of the different states that were formed out of its ruins, the object of world-wide interest which they were destined to promote - the diffusion of Greek culture in the east - though not abandoned, was prosecuted on a feeble and stunted scale.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 1., Page 394 - 395. Translated by W.P.Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 1

Life, Death, World, Dreams

“Better than big business is clean business.
To an honest man the most satisfactory reflection after he has amassed his dollars is not that they are many but that they are all clean.
What constitutes clean business? The answer is obvious enough, but the obvious needs restating every once in a while.
"A clean profit is one that has also made a profit for the other fellow."
This is fundamental moral axiom in business. Any gain that arises from another's loss is dirty.
Any business whose prosperity depends upon damage to any other business is a menace to the general welfare.
That is why gambling, direct or indirect, is criminal, why lotteries are prohibited by law, and why even gambling slot-machine devices are not tolerated in civilized countries. When a farmer sells a housekeeper a barrel of apples, when a milkman sells her a quart of milk, or the butcher a pound of steak, or the dry-goods man a yard of muslin, the housekeeper is benefited quite as much as those who get her money.
That is the type of honest, clean business, the kind that helps everybody and hurts nobody. Of course as business becomes more complicated it grows more difficult to tell so clearly whether both sides are equally prospered. No principle is automatic. It requires sense, judgment, and conscience to keep clean; but it can be done, nevertheless, if one is determined to maintain his self-respect. A man that makes a habit, every deal he goes into, of asking himself, "What is there in it for the other fellow?" and who refuses to enter into any transaction where his own gain will mean disaster to some one else, cannot go for wrong.
And no matter how many memorial churches he builds, nor how much he gives to charity, or how many monuments he erects in his native town, any man who has made his money by ruining other people is not entitled to be called decent. A factory where many workmen are given employment, paid living wages, and where health and life are conserved, is doing more real good in the world than ten eleemosynary institutions.
The only really charitable dollar is the clean dollar. And the nasty dollar, wrung from wronged workmen or gotten by unfair methods from competitors, is never nastier than when it pretends to serve the Lord by being given to the poor, to education, or to religion. In the long run all such dollars tend to corrupt and disrupt society.
Of all vile money, that which is the most unspeakably vile is the money spent for war; for war is conceived by the blundering ignorance and selfishness of rulers, is fanned to flame by the very lowest passions of humanity, and prostitutes the highest ideal of men; zeal for the common good; to the business of killing human beings and destroying the results of their collective work.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), Clean Business

Life, Men, Money, War

“A mistake that most people make is to assume that the more followers you can recruit, the better. That's true if you are trying to win an election. A vote is a vote regardless of whether the voter is deeply committed or just barely interested enough to get to the polls. But when you're building a revolutionary movement, the number of people you have is far less important than the quality of your people and the depth of their commitment. Too many lukewarm or otherwise unsuitable people will ruin the movement.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Letters to David Skrbina
The Road to Revolution (2008)

People

“We build our computers the way we build our cities--over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.”

Ellen Ullman (1949) American writer

" The dumbing down of programming http://www.salon.com/1998/05/12/feature_321/" Salon Tue-May-12-1998

Way, Time

“She was getting pally with a scally in the alley
Giving head for gear
She called a spade a spade
Got slit from ear to ear
I showed no decorum
Spilled my heart out on the forum
Like a snapshot of the most tragic day
Carl is kept sedated, for the frontman elevated
While McGee does all he can to ruin my band and keep me out the way
In this industry of fools, musclemen and ghouls
If you're not a puppet or a muppet then you might as well call it a day
The truth gets so distorted
The wall scrapings get snorted
I'm welcome back if I give up crack
But you gave me my first pipe anyway”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Gang of Gin" (never released owing to threats of legal action by pop mogul Alan McGee)
Lyrics and poetry

Truth, Fools, Way, Heart

“Far from preventing gambler's ruin, martingale accelerates it.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Part One, Entropy, Gamblers Ruin, p. 52
Fortune's Formula (2005)

“According to the academic world view that markets are efficient, only the revelation of a dramatic piece of information can cause a crash, yet in reality even the most thorough post-mortem analyses are typically inconclusive as to what this piece of information might have been. For traders and investors, the fear of a crash is a perpetual source of stress, and the onset of the event itself always ruins the lives of some of them.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 1, Financial Crashes: What, How, Why, And When?, p. 3.

World, Fear, Reality

“Already handbills were in circulation; some presenting, in large print, the alternative of justice on the conspirators or ruin to the Republic; others in equally large print urging the observance of the law and the granting of the Appeal. Round these jutting islets of black capitals there were lakes of smaller characters setting forth arguments less necessary to be read: for it was an opinion entertained at that time (in the first flush of triumph at the discovery of printing), that there was no argument more widely convincing than question-begging phrases in large type.”

George Eliot book Romola

Volume III, Chapter XIII
Romola (1863)

Justice, Law, Question, Time

“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Letter 2 (July 17, 1837).
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1837)

Pleasure, History, Selfishness

“And are there no laws of moral health? Can they be outraged and the penalty not paid? Let a man turn out of the bright and bustling Broadway, out of the mad revel of riches and the restless, unripe luxury of ignorant men whom sudden wealth has disordered like exhilarating gas; let him penetrate through sickening stench the lairs of typhus, the dens of small-pox, the coverts of all loathsome disease and unimaginable crimes; let him see the dull, starved, stolid, lowering faces, the human heaps of utter woe, and, like Jefferson in contemplating slavery a hundred years ago in Virginia, he will murmur with bowed head, 'I tremble for this city when I remember that God is just'. Is his justice any surer in a tenement-house than it is in a State? Filth in the city is pestilence. Injustice in the State is civil war. 'Gentlemen', said George Mason, a friend and neighbor of Jefferson's, in the Convention that framed the Constitution, 'by an inscrutable chain of causes and effects Providence punishes national sins by national calamities'. 'Oh no. gentlemen, it is no such thing', replied John Rutledge of South Carolina. 'Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this question. Interest is the governing principle with nations'. The descendants of John Rutledge live in the State which quivers still with the terrible tread of Sherman and his men. Let them answer! Oh seaports and factories, silent and ruined! Oh barns and granaries, heaps of blackened desolation! Oh wasted homes, bleeding hearts, starving mouths! Oh land consumed in the fire your own hands kindled! Was not John Rutledge wrong, was not George Mason right, that prosperity which is only money in the purse, and not justice or fair play, is the most cruel traitor, and will cheat you of your heart's blood in the end?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Men, Money, God, War

“When I went home to my family in May, 1770, from the town meeting in Boston, which was the first I had ever attended, and where I had been chosen in my absence, without any solicitation, one of their representatives, I said to my wife, "I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning, that you may prepare your mind for your fate." She burst into tears, but instantly cried out in a transport of magnanimity, "Well, I am willing in this cause to run all risks with you, and be ruined with you, if you are ruined."”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

These were times, my friend, in Boston, which tried women's souls as well as men's. Letter http://www.readme.it/libri/Letteratura%20Inglese/SELECTIONS%20FROM%20ADAM'S%20CORRESSPONDENCE.shtml to Benjamin Rush (12 April 1809) 1800s

Women, Men, Fate, Children

“…[the] apostles of various kinds of error presented themselves. They were those like Sir Oswald Mosley who were fascinated by the spectacle of brutal power. They would like to use it themselves. They grovelled to Nazi dictatorship in order that they could make people in their turn grovel to them. … At the other end of the political scale were the Trotsky-ite Communists, furious fanatics whose sole aim was to throw the world into one supreme convulsion. Then there was Sir Stafford Cripps, who was in a class by himself. He wished British people to be conquered by the Nazis in order to urge them into becoming Bolsheviks. It seemed a long way round. (Laughter.) And not much enlightenment when they got to the end of their journey. Lastly, there were the absolute non-resisters like Canon Sheppard and Mr. Lansbury. They were pious men, but they would lead the country to ruin, even more surely than all the others.”

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

Speech at the Albert Hall, London (3 December 1936) at a cross-party meeting organised by the League of Nations Union "in defence of freedom and peace", quoted in The Times (4 December 1936), p. 18
The 1930s

Men, People, World, Way

“Conformity to the world has in all ages proved the ruin of the church. It is utterly impossible to live in nearness to God, and in friendship with the world.”

Rowland Hill (preacher) (1744–1833) British preacher

P. 621.

God, Friendship, Age, World

“I am not fond of the Germans by any means but at the present time it is more advantageous to use them than to challenge them. An independent Poland is very dangerous to Soviet Russia: it is an evil which, however, at the present time has also its redeeming features; for while it exists, we may safely count on Germany, because the Germans hate Poland and will at any time make common cause with us in order to strangle Poland. … Everything teaches us to look upon Germany as our most reliable ally. Germany wants revenge, and we want revolution. For the moment our aims are the same. When our ways part they will be our most ferocious and our great enemies. Time will tell whether a German hegemony or a Communist federation is to arise out of the ruins of Europe.”

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

Quoted from a "Speech to followers" by Ost-Information (Berlin), No. 81 (4 December 1920); as quoted in The Foreign Policies of Soviet Russia (1924) by A. L. O. Dennis, p. 154.
Attributions

Hate, Way, Revenge, Evil

“Believe me, if all those endearing young charms
Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,
Were to change by to-morrow and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy gifts fading away.
Thou wouldst still be adored as this moment thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will,
And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart,
Would entwine itself verdantly still.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms, st. 1. Irish Melodies http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/moore.html (1807–1834)

Art, Change, Heart

“As Adam Smith once said, "There is much ruin in a nation". Our basic structure of values and the interwoven network of free institutions will withstand much. I believe that we shall be able to preserve and extend freedom despite the size of the military programs and despite the economic powers already concentrated in Washington. But we shall be able to do so only if we awake to the threat that we face, only if we persuade our fellowmen that free institutions offer a surer, if perhaps at times a slower, route to the ends they seek than the coercive power of the state. The glimmerings of change that are already apparent in the intellectual climate are a hopeful augury.”

Milton Friedman book Capitalism and Freedom

Source: Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 13 Conclusion

Hope, Freedom, Change, Time

“He covered tons of paper with his words and made them his very own words… he branded them like cattle he rustled out there on the free ranges of Literature… Used by another writer who was attempting cut-ups, one single word of Burroughs vocabulary could ruin a whole barrel of good everyday words, run the literary rot right through them. One sniff of that prose and you'd say, 'Why, that's a Burroughs.”

Brion Gysin (1916–1986) Canadian artist

On the prose of William S. Burroughs in Here to Go: Planet R-101 (Interviews with Terry Wilson),Tuning in to the Multimedia Age, p. 159.

Literature

“In Vermont, at a state beach, a mother is reprimanded by Authority for allowing her 6 month old daughter to go about without her diapers on. Now, if children go around naked, they are liable to see each others sexual organs, and maybe even touch them. Terrible thing! If we [raise] children up like this it will probably ruin the whole pornography business, not to mention the large segment of the general economy which makes its money by playing on peoples sexual frustrations.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

1969 essay in the Freeman — as quoted in "You Might Very Well Be the Cause of Cancer": Read Bernie Sanders' 1970s-Era Essays http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/bernie-sanders-vermont-freeman-sexual-freedom-fluoride, by Tim Murphy, Mother Jones (6 July 2015) 1970s

Money, Children, People, Business

“Stern Ruin's plowshare drives elate,
Full on thy bloom.”

Robert Burns To a Mountain Daisy

To a Mountain Daisy, st. 9 (1786)

“Foreign investors did not build South Korea - South Koreans developed their country; the Germans built their economy, an economy that was once in ruins. The Germans suffered a lot but now they are the best.”

Aliko Dangote (1957) Nigerian billionaire entrepreneur

The Scoop NG http://www.thescoopng.com/we-have-scavengers-holding-licences-in-nigeria-10-quotes-by-aliko-dangote-during-birthday-event/

Suffering, Country

“The history of the CIA brims with inquiries that cowed our spies and ruined their careers.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Watching the Watchmen: The CIA’s investigation of its own inspector general is perfectly legitimate (2007)

History

“It changes colour every time I do a film but I have this great guy called Rosario who works at a London salon called Hair Expressions who really knows what he’s doing. I’ve been told 80 times that I’ll have to have it all cut off because it’s ruined and then he fixes it. He’s the best hair man in the world.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

Sienna Guillory Interview by Jenni Baden Howard http://www.kappakoi.com/copy/archives/2007/06/sienna_guillory.html. The Sunday Times. 2001. Guillory speaks about coloring her hair for film roles.

World, Guy, Change, Time

“There is no country in Europe which does not have in some corner or other one or several ruined fragments of peoples (Völkerruinen), the remnant of a former population that was suppressed and held in bondage by the nation which later became the main vehicle of historical development. These relics of a nation mercilessly trampled under foot in the course of history, as Hegel says, these residual fragments of peoples (Völkerabfälle) always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character, just as their whole existence in general is itself a protest against a great historical revolution.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

The Magyar Struggle http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/marx/works/1849/01/13.htm in Neue Rheinische Zeitung (13 January 1849).

People, History, Loss, Country

“Thank you … San Francisco. All right, you're ruining the show. Thank you … for clapping for what my parents are ashamed of.”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

Happy Thoughts (2011)

Parent

“It should be noted that this duration is considerably longer than we naively expect. If two players with 500 dollars each toss a coin until one is ruined, the average duration of the game is 250,000 trials. If a gambler has only one dollar and his adversary has 1000, the average duration is 1000 trials.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter XIV, Random Walk And Ruin Problems, p. 349.

Game

“My little China Girl
You shouldn't mess with me.
I'll ruin everything you are.
I'll give you television.
I'll give you eyes of blue.
I'll give you a man who wants to rule the world.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

China Girl, written with Iggy Pop — Video at YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A34kCOtegQ Song lyrics, Let's Dance (1983)

World, Girl

“In my message last year I emphasized the necessity for further legislation with a view to expediting the consolidation of our rail ways into larger systems. The principle of Government control of rates and profits, now thoroughly embedded in our governmental attitude toward natural monopolies such as the railways, at once eliminates the need of competition by small units as a method of rate adjustment. Competition must be preserved as a stimulus to service, but this will exist and can be increased tinder enlarged systems. Consequently the consolidation of the railways into larger units for the purpose of securing the substantial values to the public which will come from larger operation has been the logical conclusion of Congress in its previous enactments, and is also supported by the best opinion in the country. Such consolidation will assure not only a greater element of competition as to service, but it will afford economy in operation, greater stability in railway earnings, and more economical financing. It opens large possibilities of better equalization of rates between different classes of traffic so as to relieve undue burdens upon agricultural products and raw materials generally, which are now not possible without ruin to small units owing to the lack of diversity of traffic. It would also tend to equalize earnings in such fashion as to reduce the importance of section 15A, at which criticism, often misapplied, has been directed. A smaller number of units would offer less difficulties in labor adjustments and would contribute much to the, solution of terminal difficulties.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Way, Fashion, Support, Nature

“We now look into history with the generous pride of the nationalist, not with the cramped prejudice of the partisan. We do homage to Irish valour, whether it conquers on the walls of Derry, or capitulates with honour before the ramparts of Limerick; and, sir, we award the laurel to Irish genius, whether it has lit its flames within the walls of old Trinity, or drawn its inspiration from the sanctuary of Saint Omer’s. Acting in this spirit, we shall repair the errors and reverse the mean condition of the past. If not, we perpetuate the evil that has for so many years consigned this Country to the calamities of war and the infirmities of vassalage, "We must tolerate each other," said Henry Grattan, the inspired preacher of Irish nationality — he whose eloquence, as Moore has described it, was the very music of Freedom — "We must tolerate each other, or we must tolerate the common enemy…"But, sir, whilst we must endeavour wisely to conciliate let us not, to the strongest foe, nor in the most tempting emergency, weakly capitulate…Let earnest truth, stern fidelity to principle, love for all who bear the name of Irishmen, sustain, ennoble and immortalise this cause. Thus shall we reverse the dark fortunes of the Irish race, and call forth here a new nation from the ruins of the old.Thus shall a Parliament moulded from the soil, pregnant with the sympathies and glowing with the genius of the soil, be here raised up. Thus shall an honourable kingdom be enabled to fulfil the great ends that a bounteous Providence hath assigned her—which ends have been signified to her in the resources of her soil and the abilities of her sons.”

Thomas Francis Meagher (1823–1867) Irish nationalist & American politician

Legislative "Union" with Greath Britain (1846)

Love, War, Truth, Music

“[The Democratic Party] is a criminal enterprise that would rather rule over the ruins than be part of governing a happy and successful Republic.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

Bill Whittle's Keynote speech https://vimeo.com/145285384 at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's 2015 Restoration Weekend on Nov. 6, 2015. 2010s

Success, Parting, Happiness

“When the Shah departed towards the close of the day, a false rumour was spread through the town that he had been severely wounded by a shot from a matchlock, and thus were sown the seeds from which murder and rapine were to spring. The bad characters within the town collected in great bodies, and, without distinction, commenced the work of plunder and destruction…. On the morning of the 11th an order went forth from the Persian Emperor for the slaughter of the inhabitants. The result may be imagined; one moment seemed to have sufficed for universal destruction. The Chandni chauk, the fruit market, the Daribah bazaar, and the buildings around the Masjid-i Jama’ were set fire to and reduced to ashes. The inhabitants, one and all, were slaughtered. Here and there some opposition was offered, but in most places people were butchered unresistingly. The Persians laid violent hands on everything and everybody; cloth, jewels, dishes of gold and silver, were acceptable spoil…. But to return to the miserable inhabitants. The massacre lasted half the day, when the Persian Emperor ordered Haji Fulad Khan, the kotwal, to proceed through the streets accompanied by a body of Persian nasakchis, and proclaim an order for the soldiers to resist from carnage. By degrees the violence of the flames subsided, but the bloodshed, the devastation, and the ruin of families were irreparable. For a long time the streets remained strewn with corpses, as the walks of a garden with dead flowers and leaves. The town was reduced to ashes, and had the appearance of a plain consumed with fire. All the regal jewels and property and the contents of the treasury were seized by the Persian conqueror in the citadel. He thus became possessed of treasure to the amount of sixty lacs of rupees and several thousand ashrafis… plate of gold to the value of one kror of rupees, and the jewels, many of which were unrivalled in beauty by any in the world, were valued at about fifty krors. The peacock throne alone, constructed at great pains in the reign of Shah Jahan, had cost one kror of rupees. Elephants, horses, and precious stuffs, whatever pleased. the conqueror’s eye, more indeed than can be enumerated, became his spoil. In short, the accumulated wealth of 348 years changed masters in a moment.”

Nader Shah (1688–1747) ruled as Shah of Iran

About Shah’s sack of Delhi, Tazrikha by Anand Ram Mukhlis. A history of Nâdir Shah’s invasion of India. In The History of India as Told by its own Historians. The Posthumous Papers of the Late Sir H. M. Elliot. John Dowson, ed. 1st ed. 1867. 2nd ed., Calcutta: Susil Gupta, 1956, vol. 22, pp. 74-98. https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/h_es/h_es_tazrikha_frameset.htm

Pain, People, World, Family

“How widely its agencies vary,—
To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,—
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess,
And now of a Bloody Mary.”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

Her Moral; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century

“Men ruin themselves headlong for unworthy women.”

Wilkie Collins book Man and Wife

Man and Wife - Vol. II [Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1870] ( p. 235 https://books.google.com/books?id=Dp-ZFYLTW6QC&pg=PA235) Also in Wilkie Collins: Man of Mystery and Imagination by Alexander Grinstein [International Universities Press, 2003, 0-823-66681-6] (p. 155)

Women, Men

“Although I cannot accuse myself of being remarkably unstable, I do not pretend that I have never altered my opinion both in respect to men and things. Indeed, I have been very much modified both in feeling and opinion within the last fourteen years. When I escaped from slavery, and was introduced to the Garrisonians, I adopted very many of their opinions, and defended them just as long as I deemed them true. I was young, had read but little, and naturally took some things on trust. Subsequent experience and reading have led me to examine for myself. This had brought me to other conclusions. When I was a child, I thought and spoke as a child. But the question is not as to what were my opinions fourteen years ago, but what they are now. If I am right now, it really does not matter what I was fourteen years ago. My position now is one of reform, not of revolution. I would act for the abolition of slavery through the Government — not over its ruins. If slaveholders have ruled the American Government for the last fifty years, let the anti-slavery men rule the nation for the next fifty years. If the South has made the Constitution bend to the purposes of slavery, let the North now make that instrument bend to the cause of freedom and justice. If 350,000 slaveholders have, by devoting their energies to that single end, been able to make slavery the vital and animating spirit of the American Confederacy for the last 72 years, now let the freemen of the North, who have the power in their own hands, and who can make the American Government just what they think fit, resolve to blot out for ever the foul and haggard crime, which is the blight and mildew, the curse and the disgrace of the whole United States.”

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

1860s, The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (1860)

Men, Justice, Feeling, Question

“I believe in the refusal to take part.
I believe in the ruined career.
I believe in the wasted years of work.
I believe in the secret taken to the grave.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"Discovery"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Could Have (1972)

Secret, Parting

“You pin-heads, you have not understood in communism its admirable, instantaneous manner of appeasing all your ruined tax-payer grudges ferociously, in the name of a new purity, a non-existent proletarian virtue, you deceived jackals. Your intimate personal plan won't wash. I am well acquainted with you.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

128
L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)

Communication, Personality

“The slavery debate has been really a death-struggle from that moment. Mr. Clay thought not. Mr. Clay was a shrewd politician, but the difference between him and Calhoun was the difference between principle and expediency. Calhoun's sharp, incisive genius has engraved his name, narrow but deep, upon our annals. The fluent and facile talents of Clay in a bold, large hand wrote his name in honey upon many pages. But time is already licking it away. Henry Clay was our great compromiser. That was known, and that was the reason why Mr. Buchanan's story of a bargain with J. Q. Adams always clung to Mr. Clay. He had compromised political policies so long that he had forgotten there is such a thing as political principle, which is simply a name for the moral instincts applied to government. He did not see that when Mr. Calhoun said he should return to the Constitution he took the question with him, and shifted the battle-ground from the low, poisonous marsh of compromise, where the soldiers never know whether they are standing on land or water, to the clear, hard height of principle. Mr. Clay had his omnibus at the door to roll us out of the mire. The Whig party was all right and ready to jump in. The Democratic party was all right. The great slavery question was going to be settled forever. The bushel-basket of national peace and plenty and prosperity was to be heaped up and run over. Mr. Pierce came all the way from the granite hills of New Hampshire, where people are supposed to tell the truth, to an- nounce to a happy country that it was at peace — that its bushel-basket was never so overflowingly full before. And then what? Then the bottom fell out. Then the gentlemen in the national rope -walk at Washington found they had been busily twining a rope of sand to hold the country together. They had been trying to compromise the principles of human justice, not the percentage of a tariff; the instincts of human nature and consequently of all permanent government, and the conscience of the country saw it. Compromises are the sheet-anchor of the Union — are they? As the English said of the battle of Bunker Hill, that two such victories would ruin their army, so two such sheet- anchors as the Compromise of 1850 would drag the Union down out of sight forever.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Death, People, Truth, Peace

“People see only their good deeds saying, "I have done this good deed." But they do not see their evil deeds saying, "I have done this evil deed" or "This is called evil." But this (tendency) is difficult to see. One should think like this: "It is these things that lead to evil, to violence, to cruelty, anger, pride and jealousy. Let me not ruin myself with these things."”

Ashoka (-304–-232 BC) Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty

And further, one should think: "This leads to happiness in this world and the next."
Edicts of Ashoka (c. 257 BC)

People, World, Jealousy, Thinking

“Never indulge in people who follow a negative path because they will take you with them on the road of ruin. Show them the way to positivism even if there's a risk of losing their friendship.”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 55
Dark Rooms (2002)

Friendship, People, Way

“The 'I', the 'self' of the child of God, is born in the midst of the ruins of repented idolatry.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), " Theology amidst the stones and dust http://girardianlectionary.net/res/alison_elijah.htm", p. 40.

God

“Ray: Oh God, I'm in trouble…How many young people have I enticed into the gay lifestyle? I'm facing God, covered with the responsibility of ruining their lives.”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " Sin City http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/5003/5003_01.asp" (2001)

God, People

“Let's just ruin all the movies about pterosaurs: they could soar like airplanes, but they couldn't hover like hummingbirds. They couldn't carry things in their feet either, they couldn't perch on tree branches like birds, they didn't look like "bird-monsters", and they didn't look like "lizard-bats". They didn't have four-fingered wings like bats; their wings were based on an elongated pinky finger. The only thing bat-like about them was the way they walked; on all fours. So what are the possibilities for fluffy pterosaurs? We know they were a very diverse and almost certainly colorful group. They looked like a wide range of things, from fluttering bats to darting falcons. Some had powerful shell-crushing jaws and some had ridiculous crests, and some were quite huge. For decades, we were told that Pteranodon was the biggest animal that ever flew, then they discovered Ornithocheirus, then Quetzalcoatlus, then Hatzegopteryx (an apex predator)… These were capable killers of even human-sized prey, with a skull larger than that of even the biggest carnosaurs.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Pterosaurs are Terrible Lizards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_htQ8HJ1cA (December 3, 2013)

Color, Way, Bird, Tree

“The dealer for a nickel
Lord, will sell you lots of sweet dreams
Ah, but the pusher ruin your body
Lord, he'll leave your, he'll leave your mind to scream.”

Hoyt Axton (1938–1999) American country singer

The Pusher (1968)

Dreams

“God walked alone unhonored through the earth;
For Him no heart-built temple open stood,
The soul forgetful of her nobler birth
Had hewn him lofty shrines of stone and wood,
And left unfinished and in ruins still
The only temple he delights to fill.”

Jones Very (1813–1880) American poet and essayist

From Enoch

God, Soul, Birth, Heart

“The Holocaust would have been unimaginable without the Nazi Party; the Nazi Party would have been unimaginable without Hitler; and Hitler’s rise to power would have been unimaginable without the unique circumstances that brought the Weimar Republic to ruin. To hear Goldhagen tell it, mass murder was all set to go: a century-long build-up of eliminationist anti-Semitism simply had to express itself. But the moment when a historian says that something had to happen is the moment when he stops writing history and starts predicting the past.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Ibid.
Essays and reviews, As Of This Writing (2003)

History, Past

“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 (1935) American journalist

Abracadabra, p. 186
Waiting For The Barbarians (1997)

Faith

“It is an assumption brought forth countless of times in various contexts that the world would be better, drifting slower towards the ruin, if women had the "power"; if political leadership, decision making, government and economic life was in the hands of women. I think reality, the observation material, supports the assumption.”

Pentti Linkola (1932) Finnish ecologist

Women As The Protectors Of Life II (1996)

Life, Women, World, Support

“A grimy fly can soil the entire wall and a small, dirty little act can ruin the entire proceedings.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.N. Kanaev (March 26, 1883)
Letters

Flying

“This Irish war, small as it may seem now, will, if it is persisted in, will corrupt and eventually ruin not only your army, but your Empire itself. What right has England to torment and demoralise Ireland?”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

The Daily News, 1919, as cited in "The Riddle of Erskine Childers" By Andrew Boyle, Hutchinson, London, (1977), pg. 260.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918), Last Years: Ireland (1919-1922)

War

“Filmmakers of Cinema Verité resemble tourists who take pictures amid ancient ruins of facts.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Minnesota declaration (1999)

“I have never knew what it was to sacrifice my own judgment to gratify any party and I have no doubt of the time being close at hand when I will be rewarded for letting my tongue speak what my heart thinks. I have suffered myself to be politically sacrificed to save my country from ruin and disgrace and if I am never again elected I will have the gratification to know that I have done my duty.”

Davy Crockett (1786–1836) American politician

Comments on his final election defeat (11 August 1835) Ch. 2; in Dr. Swan's Prescriptions for Job-Itis (2003) by Dennis Swanberg and Criswell Freeman, p. 45, part of this seems to have become paraphrased as "Let your tongue speak what your heart thinks." No earlier publication of this version has been located.
Col. Crockett's Exploits and Adventures in Texas (1836)

Thinking, Suffering, Time, Heart

“But whither am I strayed? I need not raise
Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise;
Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built;
Nor needs thy juster title the foul guilt
Of Eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

On Mr. John Fletcher's Works. Compare: "Poets are sultans, if they had their will; For every author would his brother kill", Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, Prologues (republished in Dramatic Works, 1739); "Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne", Alexander Pope, Prologue to the Satires, line 197.

Men

“I've talked to him on the phone, received notes through the mail, but I've never seen him face to face. I sent him my last LP and I understand that he turned his head away as he took the disc out, saying, "I don't want to see what he looks like. I have this image and I don't want to destroy it." So there's a certain amount of mystery involved. I suppose if he knew I were a gray-haired, older guy with a big paunch, he might say, "Oh, that ruins it."”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

On his working relationship with Prince, as quoted in "He Arranges, Composes, Performs: Fischer: A Renaissance Man Of Music" http://articles.latimes.com/1987-05-14/entertainment/ca-8949_1_clare-fischer by Zan Stewart, in The Los Angeles Times (May 14, 1987)

Guy, Understanding

“Evidently there are plenty of people in journalism who have neither got what they liked nor quite grown to like what they get. They write pieces they do not much enjoy writing, for papers they totally despise, and the sad process ends by ruining their style and disintegrating their personality, two developments which in a writer cannot be separated, since his personality and style must progress or deteriorate together, like a married couple in a country where death is the only permissible divorce.”

Claud Cockburn (1904–1981) Irish journalist

Pages 224-5
A Discord of Trumpets (1956)

Death, People, Sadness, Personality

“The court scribe pays fulsome homage to the sufis who “planted firmly the Faith of Islam” in this region. The pride of place goes to Hazrat Natthar WalI who took over by force the main temple at Tiruchirapalli and converted it into his khãnqãh. Referring to the destruction of the Sivalinga in the temple, he observes: “The monster was slain and sent to the house of perdition. His image namely but-ling worshipped by the unbelievers was cut and the head separated from the body. A portion of the body went into the ground. Over that spot is the tomb of WalI shedding rediance till this day.” Another sufi, Qãyim Shãh, who came to the same place at a later stage, “was the cause of the destruction of twelve temples.” At Vellore, Hazrat Nûr Muhammad Qãdirî, “the most unique man regarded as the invaluable person of his age,” was the “cause of the ruin of temples” which “he laid waste.””

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

He chose to be buried “in the vicinity of the temple” which he had replaced with his khãnqãh.
Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Age, Faith, Housing, Personality

“Scarce a month had elapsed since the law was to have gone into effect before it was clear to the discerning that, for all their professions, most of the "better sort" were not genuine Sons of Liberty at all, but timid sycophants, pliant instruments of despotism, far more intent upon the ruin of Mr. Adams and of America in general than any minister could be shown to be.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Eve of the Revolution (1918)

Law

“Basic truth about the colonies, Heaslop. Any time there's trouble, you can put it down to books. Too many of the wrong ideas getting into the heads of the wrong sorts of people. If ever the Empire comes to ruin, Heaslop, mark my words, the British publisher will be to blame.”

Shashi Tharoor book The Great Indian Novel

The Great Indian Novel

People, Truth, Books, Idea

“The large gray spiked form rising from the bottom of the picture is to me the symbol of death and ruin. And finally the black ovoid form is the symbol of fire, lava and destruction.”

William Baziotes (1912–1963) American painter

in a letter to Alfred H. Barr, Jr. 6 November, 1955; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen, Köln, 2006, p. 34
Baziotes' quote is referring to his painting 'Pompeii', Baziotes painted in 1955
1950s

Death

“Science would be ruined if (like sports) it were to put competition above everything else, and if it were to clarify the rules of competition by withdrawing entirely into narrowly defined specialties. The rare scholars who are nomads by choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the subtle disciplines”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

Benoit Mandelbrot cited in James Gleick (1987) Chaos: Making a New Science p. 70

Sport, Science

“An item,” he said softly, his eyes on the disc, “that passes without provenance, pursued by many who thirst for its cold kiss, on which life and all that lay within life is often gambled. Alone, a beggar’s crown. In great numbers, a king’s folly. Weighted with ruin, yet blood washes from it beneath the lightest rain, and to the next no hint of its cost. It is as it is, says Kruppe, worthless but for those who insist otherwise.”

Steven Erikson book Gardens of the Moon

Source: Gardens of the Moon (1999), Chapter 7 (pp. 233-234)

Life, Kiss

“Virtue is not always amiable. Integrity is sometimes ruined by prejudices and by passions.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

9 February 1779
1750s, Diaries (1750s-1790s)

Passion

“Is terrorism the greatest threat to our country, or a recession? I suggest to you today that the quickest, most direct way to ruin a democracy is to poison the information.”

Scott Pelley (1957) American television journalist, news anchor

21 November 2016 Speech at Arizona State University upon receiving the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism award. CBS News Anchor Scott Pelley Receives Cronkite Award from ASU' https://cronkite.asu.edu/news-and-events/news/cbs-news-anchor-scott-pelley-receives-cronkite-award-asu-0,

Way, Democracy, Country

“With Darwinist-materialist education communism advances and the people would be ruined. It is not enough to put religion classes in the schools. The state needs to stop Darwinist-materialist education.”

Harun Yahya (1956) Turkish author

25 April 2013.
A9 TV addresses, 2013

People, Education, School, Religion

“To gaze up from the ruins of the oppressive present towards the stars is to recognise the indestructible world of laws, to strengthen faith in reason, to realise the "harmonia mundi" that transfuses all phenomena, and that never has been, nor will be, disturbed.”

Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) German mathematician

From the Author's Preface to Third Edition (1919)
Space—Time—Matter (1952)

World, Faith, Law, Star

“All that grave weight of America
Cancelled! Like Greece and Rome.
The future in ruins!”

Louis Simpson (1923–2012) Jamaican poet

Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain (l. 35-37) (1962)
Poetry quotes

Future

“The migration of peoples destroys Europe, but it also ruins the Third World. The shovelling of money that has lasted for half a century into a bottomless well called Africa has led to nothing but increasing misery. Half a century of cultural enrichment in Europe has led to nothing but ghettos and the unprecedented popularity of extreme right-wing parties — perhaps surprisingly, exactly where the culture has been most enriched. I believe that removing this misery is really not the objective, which would for example force the Africans to survive on their own and to strike back at their dictators, who live on “development cooperation”. The Western intellectual zeitgeist is dependent on the misery in Africa. An intellectual needs someone to pamper, because that’s what makes the intellectual necessary. The thought of an independent but truly different African is, to him, intolerable, because only a miserable, helpless and dependent (but of course, similar enough to be understandable and lovable) African offers him a chance to be “good.””

Jussi Halla-aho (1971) Finnish Slavic linguist, blogger and a politician

He can be “good” only if there is a rising mass of “evil” that is tired of the apathy and begging of the Third World. Jussi Halla-aho (2012), published in the blog Gates of Vienna Then the Darkness Will Begin http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.fr/2012/08/then-darkness-will-begin.html, August 16, 2012. (Note: J.H-A has never published anything in the G.o.V. Translations, publications and quotations have been made by other people) 2010 -

Money, People, World, Understanding

“You want to do something that shows some type individuality and talent and imagination ¿ at the same time, you want to be truthful to the predecessors, because obviously the audience liked something about them and you have to replicate that experience to a certain extent. Not to just go ahead and make something that¿s completely different and ruin a franchise. At the same time, you don't want to be embarrassed in front of your peers and look like you¿re just copying something, and there's nothing individual. It's a very tricky balance. There are pressures, because you¿re going to be compared to the predecessors.”

Renny Harlin (1959) Finnish film director and film producer

Interview With Renny Harlin http://www.ign.com/articles/2001/04/27/interview-with-renny-harlin (April 27, 2001)

Truth, Imagination, Time

“Yet, with this ruined Old World for a nest,
Worm-eaten through and through”

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt (1836–1919) American writer

A Word With a Skylark, lines 5-6.

World

“Adieu, LANDOGA, scene most dear,
Farewell we bade to ETHEL'S WIER;
Round many a point then bore away,
Till morn was chang'd to beauteous day:
And forward on the lowland shore,
Silent majestic ruins wore
The stamp of holiness; this strand
The steersman hail'd, and touch'd the land.”

Robert Bloomfield (1766–1823) British writer

Book II. The Banks of the Wye http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/bkwye10.txt (1811)

“Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay;
And if in death still lovely, lovelier there;
Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.”

Edward Young Night-Thoughts

Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night III, Line 104.

Love, Death

“All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

No. 1, volume v, p. 286
Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796)

Men, Nature

“It may be observed, that provinces amid the vicissitudes to which they are subject, pass from order into confusion, and afterward recur to a state of order again; for the nature of mundane affairs not allowing them to continue in an even course, when they have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline. In the same manner, having been reduced by disorder, and sunk to their utmost state of depression, unable to descend lower, they, of necessity, reascend; and thus from good they gradually decline to evil, and from evil again return to good. The reason is, that valor produces peace; peace, repose; repose, disorder; disorder, ruin; so from disorder order springs; from order virtue, and from this, glory and good fortune.”

Niccolo Machiavelli Florentine Histories

Book V, Chapter 1 http://www.readprint.com/chapter-7136/Niccolo-Machiavelli Florentine Histories (1526)

Peace, Spring, Nature, Evil

“If you can manipulate news, a judge can manipulate the law. A smart lawyer can keep a killer out of jail, a smart accountant can keep a thief from paying taxes, a smart reporter could ruin your reputation — unfairly.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

NBC TV (12 August 1986)

Law

“Again she plunges! hark! a second shock
Bilges the splitting vessel on the rock;
Down on the vale of death, with dismal cries,
The fated victims shuddering cast their eyes
In wild despair; while yet another stroke
With strong convulsion rends the solid oak:
Ah Heaven!—behold her crashing ribs divide!
She loosens, parts, and spreads in ruin o'er the tide.”

William Falconer (1732–1769) British writer

Canto III, line 642.
The Shipwreck (1762)

Death, Fate, Strong, Parting

“It was reported that Guy Ritchie has cast his wife Madonna in a small walk-on role in his new movie, Revolver. Madonna will play the part of the woman who ruins the film.”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

citation needed

Guy, Parting

“He calls drunkenness an expression identical with ruin.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Pythagoras, 6.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 8: Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans

“No one but you and one ‘jade’ I have fallen in love with, to my ruin. But being in love doesn’t mean loving. You may be in love with a woman and yet hate her.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Love, Hate

“There's a city, draped in net
Fisherman net
And in the half light, in the half light
It looks like every tower
Is covered in webs
Moving and glistening and rocking
It's babies in rhythm
As the spider of time is climbing
Over the ruins.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sea of Honey (Disc 1)

Light, Time, Baby

“How many people ruin themselves by laying out money on trinkets of frivolous utility? What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much the utility, as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote it. All their pockets are stuffed with little conveniences. They contrive new pockets, unknown in the clothes of other people, in order to carry a greater number. They walk about loaded with a multitude of baubles, in weight and sometimes in value not inferior to an ordinary Jew's-box, some of which may sometimes be of some little use, but all of which might at all times be very well spared, and of which the whole utility is certainly not worth the fatigue of bearing the burden.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part IV

Money, People, Lovers, Time

“The noise against me is only the means by which the Jews and Communists are attempting and with good success to implement a further dismemberment of Germany. I think that if I resigned as I threatened to do yesterday, it would simply discredit me to no purpose... This august lady [Fifteenth Army]... has the job of reviewing the strategy and tactics of the war to see how the former conformed to the unit plans and how the tactics changed. Were it not for the fact that it will be, so far as I am concerned, a kick up stairs, I would like it much better than being a sort of executioner to the best race in Europe.
Later when people wake up to what is going on here, I can admit why I took the job.
Am I weak and a coward? Am I putting my posthumous reputation above my present honor? God how I wish I knew…
P. S. No one gives a damn how well Bavaria is run. All they are interested in now is how well it is ruined.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Letter to Beatrice (29 September 1945), published in The Patton Papers (1996), edited by Martin Blumenson Vol. 2 , p. 786 https://books.google.com/books?id=XGP_AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA786

God, War, People, Thinking

“Put anthrax on your Tampax and slap you 'till you can't stand! Girl, you just blew your chance, don't mean to ruin your plans!”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Superman"
2000s, The Eminem Show (2002)

Girl, Chance

“Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our appetite for power, will lead us inexorably to our ruin.”

Emil M. Cioran book History and Utopia

History and Utopia (1960)

Knowledge

“The town was thus taken by assault, and the carnage endured for three days. The governor of the town, appointed by Dahir, fled and the priests of the temple were massacred. Muhammad marked a place for the Musalmans to dwell in, built a mosque, and left four thousand Musalmans to garrison the place. Ambissa son of Ishak Az Zabbi, the governor of Sindh, in the Khilafat of Mutasim billah knocked down the upper part of the minaret of the temple and converted it into a prison. At the same time he began to repair the ruined town with the stones of the minaret”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

In Debal (Sindh). Futuhu’l-Buldan by Al-Baladhuri. cited in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. I : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 120-21.
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

Time, Parting

“Mark in the meadows the ruin of Time;
Take the hint, and let life be improv'd in its prime.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

"Advice to a Lady in Autumn", published in A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. I. (1763), printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley

Life, Time

“I saw thee in a vision of the night
Transfigured; for it seemed that on thy brows
The heavens did rest with all their stars, like boughs
Laden with blossoms; round thy feet the bright
Green waves, like grass, ran rippling, strewn with white
Star-fragments of rent petals: wasted vows,
And ruined prayers I thought them, such as house
In hearts that love and are not loved aright.”

John Barlas (1860–1914) British writer

XLVI. "I saw thee in a vision of the night" Love Sonnets http://www.sonnets.org/love-sonnets.htm (1889)

Love, Star, Grass, Heart

“We can either passively continue on the road to utter domestication and destruction or turn in the direction of joyful upheaval, passionate and feral embrace of wildness and life that aims at dancing on the ruins of clocks, computers and that failure of imagination and will called work. Can we justify our lives by anything less than such a politics of rage and dreams?”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

Life, Dreams, Imagination, Failure

“Whatever became of Kurt Schwitters' novel 'Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling' [Franz Müller's Wire Spring] several chapters of which we composed together? Is it buried under the bomb ruins of his house on Waldhausenstrasse in Hannover? For hours, Schwitters and I sat together and spun dialogue, in rhapsody. He took these writings and channeled them into his novel…We sat together again, writing 'Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling':
H. A.: The nightingales have had enough of your hymnal Karagösen. Play violin on parrots, but avoid the women red hood ans snow widow.
K. Schw.: Should I pe-trify something for you? Or would you like play cry together?
H. A.: Should we wash our tears or drown them?
K. Schw.: You are a sipsnipper, Since when do your diamonds bark?
H. A.: The water is getting hard. A fruit cries out loud and gives birth to a fish.
K. Schw.: I'll p-ut it in the sea, or should I st-ab you with it?”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Dialogue between Hans Arp and Kurt Schwitters, (1956) with introduction in: Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling-- Memories of Kurt Schwitters; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, commissioned by w:Rudi Fuchs, 2000, pp. 139-140
1950s

Women, Spring, Birth, Fish