Quotes About Ruins

They still spoke a thousand languages—Spanish, too, to be sure, but also a thicket of songs and grammars. Mexico—the sound of wind in the ruins. Mexico—the waves rushing the shore. Mexico—the sand dunes, the snowfields, the steam of sleeping Popocatépetl

Victory is no longer a truth. It is only a word to describe who is left alive in the ruins

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. —MARCEL PROUST, REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST

he lived among fallen empires, and in reading these languages that had not been spoken by the common man in centuries, he had all about him the ruins of language, evidence of toppled suburbs, grass growing among the mosaics, and voices that had been choked with poison, iron, age, or ash. He

Alas, poor gentleman, He look'd not like the ruins of his youth But like the ruins of those ruins.

I have a strange illusion quite often. I think I've become deaf. I have to make a little noise to prove I'm not. I clear my throat to show myself that everything is normal. It's like the little Japanese girl they found in the ruins of Hiroshima. Everything dead; and she was singing to her doll.

Images are inherently fascistic because they overstamp the truth, however dim and blurred, of the real past experience; as if, faced with ruins, we must turn architects, not archeologists.

Tenho, com frequência, uma estranha ilusão: julgo que me tomei surda. Cuido então de fazer um ruído para saber que não é verdade. Tenho de tossir, por exemplo, para verificar que ouço normalmente. É como a mocinha japonesa que encontraram nas ruínas de Hiroshima. Estava tudo morto, e ela cantava para a sua boneca.

The site of the burned house was located, and the police found the remains of what appeared to be a jawbone. This was soon reported in the Ada Evening News.

The Old Provost's Lodging had been razed to its foundation. All that remained was a pile of rubble.

Uruk retained a certain importance, but it never recovered its former political power. Its ruins now lie isolated in the deserts of Iraq.

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.

What is experience? A poor little hut constructed from the ruins of the palace of gold and marble called our illusions.

Loss alone is but the wounding of a heart; it is memory that makes it our ruin.

There is no desert in the memory I have of you And no enemies from now on for the rose That bursts forth from the ruins of your house!

It's as if some master perfumer and necromancer had foreseen all the broken promises of your life to come, all the pangs of unrequited love and unreturned letters; the torment of watching a phone that never rings; the bright expectancy of fresh hope at breakfast, in ruins by sunset ... it was as if he took all these things and blended them into a single fragrance and called it whatever the French is for Disappointment — Désolé or Chagrin or something.

A visitor in the seventh century could still see triumphal arches, baths, palaces, theatres, bridges, aqueducts and fountains,

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

I couldn't stand back and watch the strong economy that my father envisioned go to ruins.

Bitterness ruins your chance at finding happiness.

Behold the word: Destroy, destroy, destroy. Destroy within yourself; destroy what surrounds you. Make space for your soul and for all other souls. Destroy all good and all evil. Their ruins are the same. Destroy the old dwellings of man and old the dwellings of the soul; what is dead is a distorting mirror. Destroy, for all creation comes from destruction. And for higher benevolence you must annihilate lower benevolence. And thus new good appears saturated with evil.

Standing on the bridge, looking across at that empty city, everything in the compass of my gaze had been set there by a human hand. Somehow those pylons had been strung with wire, and those towers raised, and roofs tiled. There had been food and drink for millions of mouths. I don't cry easy, but my vision blurred as I stared on the ruins of what we had been, and I watched the small band of men in rags move toward it to pick at it like birds on the carcass of some giant.

Every step stranger. The bones of buildings had torn through their stone skin and lay exposed. Collapsed walls buried the cobblestones. Shattered glass dusted the scene with razor-edged glitter. The dust clouds were lit brighter by a dozen fires burning out of sight.