Quotes About Destruction

People who thus set their lives against destruction have necessarily confronted in themselves the absurdity that they have recognized in their society.

In relation to the natural world, the pleasure of Americans can be destructive in the same way that their work has already proved to be. It is not, certainly, a conscious destructiveness. But in that very unconsciousness it becomes an aspect of one of our worst national failings: our refusal to admit the need to be conscious. Or to put it more meaningfully: our refusal to admit that unconsciousness, in our time, is almost inevitably destructive.

But do the Lords of War in fact hate the world? That would be easy to bear, if so. If they hated their children and the flowers that grow in the warming light, that would be easy to bear. For then we could hate the haters and be right. What is hard is to imagine the Lords of War may love the things that they destroy.

With its array of gadgets and machines, all powered by energies that are destructive of land or air or water, and connected to work, market, school, recreation, etc., by gasoline engines, the modern home is a veritable factory of waste and destruction. It is the mainstay of the economy of money. But within the economies of energy and nature, it is a catastrophe.

And so our reclamation project has been, for me, less a matter of idealism or morality than a kind of self-preservation. A destructive history, once it is understood as such, is a nearly insupportable burden. Understanding it is a disease of understanding, depleting the sense of efficacy and paralyzing effort, unless it finds healing work." Excerpt From The World-Ending Fire Wendell Berry This material may be protected by copyright.

In other words, if you are fearful of the destruction of the environment, then learn to quit being an environmental parasite.

It is altogether conceivable that we may go right along with this business of "business," with our curious religious faith in technological progress, with our glorification of our own greed and violence always rationalized by our indignation at the greed and violence of others, until our land, our world, and ourselves are utterly destroyed.

Somewhere underneath of all the politics, the ambition, the harsh talk, the power, the violence, the will to destroy and waste and maim and burn, was this tenderness. Tenderness born into madness, preservable only by suffering, and finally not preservable at all. What can love do? Love waits, if it must, maybe forever.

The land here is being carelessly killed. (pp 54)

In mir wühlte eine Verlassenheit, wie Termiten in einem gefallenen Baumstamm.

They have been taught nothing but destruction and learned nothing except that a man's desires can be achieved simply by killing anybody who stands in his way.

About nine feet six and I weigh twenty stone, he answered, and almost laughed aloud. And how does it end? It ends with words. Words can kill anything. It ends with cold words; words like fire that stick in the structure and take hold and lick it up, blackening and charring it, bringing it down in smoking ruins. It ends in suspicion of things not done, and in the certainty of things done and remembered. It

Normally and generally men are judged by their ability to produce—except in war, when they are ranked according to their ability to destroy.

Since wealth is an order and procedure of production and exchange rather than an accumulation of (mostly perishable) goods, and is a trust (the "credit system") in men and institutions rather than in the intrinsic value of paper money or checks, violent revolutions do not so much redistribute wealth as destroy it.

Great gaps occur in the history of the art, because most of the early work was ruined by the climate, and much of the remainder was destroyed by Moslem "idol-breakers" from Mahmud to Aurangzeb.

The Roman Republic would soon be destroyed by the unfettered energy of its great men. The redeeming feature of this aristocracy and

Ruin, comes when the trader, whose heart is lifted up by wealth, becomes ruler

Cyrus and Darius created Persia, Xerxes inherited it, his successors destroyed it.

The record is broken and incomplete, not because India ever rested, but because war and the idol-smashing ecstasies of Moslems destroyed uncounted masterpieces of building and statuary, and poverty neglected the preservation of others.

When sakura fall from the branch, the shock waves can shatter entire cities.

Dependence leads to fear; fear leads to comparisons; comparisons lead to competition, and competition eventually destroys us by degrading us to imitation, conformity, infantilism or mediocrity.

O Rose, thou art sick. The invisible worm That flies in the night In the howling storm Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.

The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity, too great for the eye of man.

Aquel que se ata una alegría la alada vida destruye; aquel que besa la alegría según vuela vive en la aurora de la eternidad.