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Destruction Quotes

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Destruction Quotes

“By 'coming to terms with life' I mean: the reality of death has become a definite part of my life; my life has, so to speak, been extended by death, by my looking death in the eye and accepting it, by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death or the refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich it.”

“Creation and destruction are one, to the eyes who can see beauty.”

Eye Creation Destruction Creation And Destruction

Book:A Warning to the Hindus

Source: A Warning to the Hindus

“Why cannot the ear be closed to its own destruction? Or the glistening eye to the poison of a smile?”

Eye Regret Destruction Ears Poison

Book:Collected Poems

Source: Collected Poems

“She wanted to leave, she wanted to lie alone face down on her bed and savor the vile piquancy of the moment, and go back down the lines of branching consequences to the point before the destruction began. She needed to contemplate with eyes closed the full richness of what she had lost, what she had given away, and to anticipate the new regime.”

Moments Eye Wanted Faces Lying Lost Given Lines Needed Bed Consequence Destruction Regimes Contemplating Richness Anticipate

Book:Atonement

Source: Atonement

“All things are in the hand of heaven, and Folly, eldest of Jove's daughters, shuts men's eyes to their destruction. She walks delicately, not on the solid earth, but hovers over the heads of men to make them stumble or to ensnare them.”

Men Hands Eye Earth Heaven Walks Daughter All Things Destruction Folly Eldest Fate In The Iliad Rage From The Iliad Achilles Fate

Book:The Iliad

Source: The Iliad

“I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction -- if a house is falling upon you, for instance -- one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one's eyes and wait, come what may . . .”

Ifs Thinking Feels May Eye Fall House Waiting Destruction Longing Instance Inevitable

Author:Fyodor Dostoevsky

“At the most we gaze at it in wonder, a kind of wonder which in itself is a form of dawning horror, for somehow we know by instinct that outsize buildings cast the shadow of their own destruction before them, and are designed from the first with an eye to their later existence as ruins.”

Knows Firsts Kind Eye Form Existence Wonder Building Horror Shadow Destruction Instinct Casts Ruins

Book:Austerlitz

Source: Austerlitz

“I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret, overruling decree, that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it with our eyes open.”

Knows Eye Secret Destruction Instruments Urges Decree

Book:The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner with an Account of His Travels Round Three Parts of the Globe

Source: The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner with an Account of His Travels Round Three Parts of the Globe

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

People Long States Reality Eye Turns Destruction Monsters Innocence Invites

Author:James A. Baldwin

“Humanity has passed through a long history of one-sidedness and of a social condition that has always contained the potential of destruction, despite its creative achievements in technology. The great project of our time must be to open the other eye: to see all-sidedly and wholly, to heal and transcend the cleavage between humanity and nature that came with early wisdom.”

“If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of his history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted by some built-in mental disorder which drives him towards self-destruction. Murder within the species on an individual or collective scale is a phenomenon unknown in the whole animal kingdom, except for man, and a few varieties of ants and rats.”

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.”

People Reality Eye Religion Destruction Innocence Invites

Author:James A. Baldwin

“And violence is impractical, because the old eye for an eye philosophy ends up leaving everybody blind .. It is immoral because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for everybody. Means and ends are inseparable. The means represent the ideal in the making; in the long run of history destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.”

“Kali is the goddess of destruction, the Clawed Hands, the Blood Drinker... And that's one side of her, as it is for any god. If you knew her for thousands of years you'd know she could be all colors. The sky is black at night, but if your eyes were good enough, they could see the different lights of a million stars. Death is part of her because death is part of life.”

Ifs Knows Years Different Enough Hands Light Eye Night Stars Sides Black Millions Blood Sky Color Destruction Good Enough Goddess Parts Of Life Drinkers Kali

Book:Gypsy in Amber

Source: Gypsy in Amber

“Even in a minute instance, it is best to look first to the main tendencies of Nature. A particular flower may not be dead in early winter, but the flowers are dying; a particular pebble may never be wetted with the tide, but the tide is coming in. To the scientific eye all human history is a series of collective movements, destructions or migrations, like the massacre of flies in winter or the return of birds in spring.”

“I do not believe that our relationship to the earth is liable to change for the better until it gets catastrophically worse. Our record indicates that we can walk with our eyes wide open straight into sheer destruction if there is a profit on the way-and that seems to me to be what we are doing now. I have no great expectation that human cussedness will somehow be quickly modified and turned into generosity or that humanity's care of the earth will improve much. But I do go around planting trees on the campus.”