Quotes About Ruins

The people first beheld the destruction of the works of their own hands. Their splendid buildings, and the beautiful gardens and groves where they had placed their idols, were destroyed by lightning from heaven, and the ruins were scattered far and wide. The altars on which human sacrifices had been offered were torn down, and the worshipers were made to tremble at the power of the living God, and to know that it was their corruption and idolatry which had called down their destruction.

Sophie swallowed, tears rising to her eyes again. It was an odd legacy to hand from mother to daughter: the ability to stand proud among the ruins of one's marriage.

Some hells present an appearance like the ruins of houses and cities after conflagrations, in which infernal spirits dwell and hide themselves. In the milder hells there is an appearance of rude huts, in some cases contiguous in the form of a city with lanes and streets.

Hierosolyma est Perdita

It would be a pleasing speculation to see how the arbitrary divisions of kingdoms and provinces vary and become obsolete, and large towns flourish and fall again into ruins: while the great natural features, the mountains, rivers, and seas remain unchanged, by whatever names we please to call them, whatever empire encloses them within its temporary boundaries.

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

Arbitrary power [tyranny, dictatorship] is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness [lawlessness, anarchy]. — George Washington

One day or another, it is true, dust, supposing it persists, will probably begin to gain the upper hand over domestics, invading the immense ruins of abandoned buildings, deserted dockyards; and, at that distant epoch, nothing will remain to ward off night-terrors, for lack of which we have become such great book-keepers...

It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins.

I love ruins and museums but, if I've been working hard, I enjoy a beach holiday.

Rome will exist as long as the Coliseum does; when the Coliseum falls, so will Rome; when Rome falls, so will the world.

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.

I've read quite a bit! "History and biography, mostly what Chains prescribed for you." "What could possibly be wrong with those subjects?" "As for history, we are living in its ruins. And as for biographies, we are living in the consequences of all the decisions ever made in them.

Q: What is the definition of an archaeologist? A: A person whose career is in ruins.

The ruins of time build mansions in eternity.

The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.

Take me disappearing, through the smoke rings of my mind, down the foggy ruins of time.

When the French nation gradually came into existence among the ruins of the Roman civilization in Gaul, a new language was at the same time slowly evolved.

Even the stars had been obscured, their light stolen by Dyson masks: dense orbiting habitat clouds, even solid spheres, asteroids and planets dismantled and made into traps for every stray photon. It was a depressing sight: an engineered sky, a sky full of scaffolding and ruins.

Love among the ruins... I'll tell you something, my friend: Weird love's better than no love at all.

I have no emotions. I just stand there, in the rubble of my life.This… this was my home. If it were a person, this would be a gaping chest wound, the kind no one can recover from.

Love feels like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.

Jordan has a strange, haunting beauty and a sense of timelessness. Dotted with the ruins of empires once great, it is the last resort of yesterday in the world of tomorrow. I love every inch of it.

I detest that fatuity of mind which believes that what is explained is also excused; I hate that vanity which finds it interesting to describe the harm that it has done, and asks to be pitied at the end of its recital, and, as it patrols with impunity among the ruins for which it is responsible, gives to self-analysis the time which should be given to repentance.