#Destruction Quotes

“Yet writers say, as in the sweetest budThe eating canter dwells, so eating loveInhabits in the finest wits of all.”

“Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.”

“And where two raging fires meet together, they do consume the thing that feeds their fury.”

“And thou, all-shaking thunder,Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at onceThat makes ingrateful man!”

“Contention, like a horse,Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose,And bears down all before him.”

“Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death and death will have his day.”

“We proceeded systematically, village by village and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation.”

“If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.”

“It may be that ... when the advance of destructive weapons enables everyone to kill everybody else nobody will want to kill anyone at all. [Referring to the hydrogen bomb.]”

“Cry "havoc!" and let loose the dogs of war, That this foul deed shall smell above the earth With carrion men, groaning for burial.”

“Tis safter to be that which we destroy Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.”

“Air power may either end war or end civilization.”

“Hatred plays the same part in government as acid in chemistry.”

“Taking to pieces is the trade of those who cannot construct.”

“The Dark Ages may return-the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of Science; and what might now shower immeasureable material blessings upon mankind may even bring about its total destruction. Beware! I say. Time may be short.Referring to the discovery of atomic energy.”

“The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought.”

“To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”

“Thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin up Thine own life's means!”

“What man does not understand, he fears; and what he fears, he tends to destroy.”

“I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.”

“Overcome the Empyrean; hurlHeaven and Earth out of their places,That in the same calamityBrother and brother, friend and friend,Family and family,City and city may contend.”

“Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy.”

“All things fall and are built again,And those that build them again are gay.”

“You ask what I have found and far and wide I go,Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew,The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay,And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen where are they?”

“A tree there is that from its topmost boughIs half all glittering flame and half all greenAbounding foliage moistened with the dew;And half is half and yet is all the scene;And half and half consume what they renew.”

“Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.”

“There is nothing we value and hunt and cultivate and strive to draw to us, but in some hour we turn and rend it.”

“A tempest ceases, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies down, a broken mast can be replaced, a leak can be stopped, a fire extinguished, but what will become of this enormous brute of bronze?”

“Nothing could be smarter, more splendid, more brilliant, better drawn up than two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, cannons, formed a harmony such as never been heard in hell.”

“Wherever the Turkish hoof trods, no grass grows.”

“The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.”

“Unrestrained greed means the ruin of the great woods and the drying up of the sources of the rivers.”

“Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.”

“I hate a man who skins the land.”

“[I]t seems that the Cannibals of Europe are going to eat one another again. A war between Russia and Turkey is like the battle of the kite and snake; whichever destroys the other, leaves a destroyer the less for the world.”

“The wolf is the arch type of ravin, the beast of waste and desolation.”

“They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people.”

“You told me you had destroyed it." "I was wrong. It has destroyed me.”

“Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.”

“Short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things.”

“What is it about fire that's so lovely? No matter what age we are, what draws us to it?...The thing man wanted to invent, but never did...If you let it go on, it'd burn our lifetimes out. What is fire? It is a mystery. Scientists give us gobbledygook about friction and molecules. But they don't really know. Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences.”

“It was a pleasure to burn.”

“Forget them. Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.”

“The books leapt and danced like roasted birds, their wings ablaze with red and yellow feathers.”

“Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan.”

“All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything, you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of.”

“That's life for you," said MacDunn. "Someone always waiting for someone who never comes home. Always someone loving some thing more than that thing loves them. And after a while you want to destroy whatever that thing is, so it can't hurt you no more.”

“"That's sad," said Montag, quietly, "because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that's all it can ever know."”

“We live as if we were unaware of our impending destruction”

“In a theatre it happened that a fire started off stage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed-amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.”