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Quotes About Destruction

The very freedom we are so proud of is their assurance of success; we are made impotent by it, and cannot imagine taking action against those who use their freedom to destroy ours.
~ Upton Sinclair
Yet there have been known to be philosophers and plain men who swore by Malthus in the books, and would, nevertheless, subscribe to a relief fund in time of a famine. It was the same with Jurgis, who consigned the unfit to destruction, while going about all day sick at heart because of his poor old father, who was wandering somewhere in the yards begging for a chance to earn his bread.
~ Upton Sinclair
What security could there be for any civilized person in any part of the world when bandits were permitted to seize the resources of nation after nation, to murder all the free-minded people and set all the wage-slaves to work producing mass destruction?
~ Upton Sinclair
They had understood that Paris must be abandoned, so as to save it from destruction. But to surrender, to turn all France over to the boches, to desert Britain and give up the promised aid from America?—c'était la honte, la trahison! Some stood with tears running down their cheeks. Lanny thought, it was as he had said to Kurt, the French body had been separated from the head, and the body was paralyzed.
~ Upton Sinclair
He was, after all, like other high officials. I wondered why I thought he would be different. These men, who depended on the President's favour for everything, were bundles of nerves. The great power they excercised went with a constant fear of being destroyed.
~ V.S. Naipaul
One theory holds that the CIA has spotted them already but the information is being withheld until it is ruled out that they are hoarding weapons of mass destruction like blowpipes.)
~ V.S. Ramachandran
Fierce as the world-destroying fire;
~ V?lm?ki
Las fuerzas destructoras, por poderosas que fueran, nunca podrían borrar la belleza de la vida.
~ Vasili Grossman
I don't want to be told that it's the people with power over us who are guilty, that we're innocent slaves, that we're not guilty because we're not free. I am free! I'm building a Vernichtungslager; I have to answer to the people who'll be gassed here. I can say No. There's nothing can stop me—as long as I can find the strength to face my destruction.
~ Vasily Grossman
Quando gli chiedevano perché si inerpicasse sulle macerie e cantasse a rischio della vita, Zubarev si limitava ad allargare le braccia. Forse voleva dimostrare non solo a se stesso e ai suoi compagni, ma anche al nemico, che chi distrugge deve comunque arrendersi di fronte alla bellezza della vita anche là dove il lezzo di cadavere ristagna giorno e notte.
~ Vasily Grossman
No tsar, nor even the Tatars or German Fascists, ever signed such a decree. The decree meant the death by famine of the peasants of the Ukraine, the Don, and the Kuban. It meant the death of them and their children. Even
~ Vasily Grossman
Nun aber weiter, mein Gast, sagte sie [Dido], berichte uns ganz von Anfang die Listen der Danaer, den Untergang der Deinen und deine Irrfahrten [...]
~ Vergil
Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night.
~ Victor Hugo
This will destroy that. The book will kill the edifice.
~ Victor Hugo
I was confided to your loyalty and accepted by your treason; you offer my death to those to whom you had promised my life. Do you know who it is you are destroying here? It is yourself.
~ Victor Hugo
For with love there is no middle course: it destroys, or else it saves. All human destiny is contained in that dilemma, the choice between destruction and salvation, which is nowhere more implacably posed than in love. Love is life, or it is death. It is the cradle, but also the coffin. One and the same impulse moves the human heart to say yes or no. Of all things God has created it is the human heart that sheds the brightest light and, alas, the blackest despair.
~ Victor Hugo
Humanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay. No difference, here below at least, in predestination. The same darkness before, the same flesh during, the same ashes after. But when ignorance is mixed with human dough, it blackens it. This incurable blackness takes over man's insides and there turns into evil… Destroy the dark hold, Ignorance, and you destroy the mole, Crime.
~ Victor Hugo
With love there is no middle course: it destroys, or else it saves. All human destiny is contained in that dilemma, the choice between destruction and salvation, which is nowhere more implacably posed than in love. Love is life, or it is death. It is the cradle, but also the coffin. One and the same impulse moves the human heart to say yes or no. Of all things God has created it is the human heart that sheds the brightest light, and, alas, the blackest despair.
~ Victor Hugo
It is the accursed inventions of this century that are ruining everything--artilleries, bombards, and, above all, printing, that other German pest. No more manuscripts, no more books! printing will kill bookselling. It is the end of the world that is drawing nigh.
~ Victor Hugo
This blind-man's-buff musketry lasted for a quarter of an hour and killed several panes of glass.
~ Victor Hugo
Per distruggere la parola scritta bastano una torcia e un turco. Per distruggere la parola edificata occorre una rivoluzione sociale, una rivoluzione del globo.
~ Victor Hugo
The most destructive forces on earth. Fear had turned her inside out, love had made her stupid.
~ Kristin Hannah
That spring, rain fell in great sweeping gusts that rattled the rooftops. Water found its way into the smallest cracks and undermined the sturdiest foundations. Chunks of land that had been steady for generations fell like slag heaps on the roads below, taking houses and cars and swimming pools down with them.
~ Kristin Hannah
Hiroshima. There are a million ways for this sick, corrupt world to end.
~ Kristin Hannah