Life altogether is but a crumbling ruin when we turn to look behind: a shattered column here, where a massive portal stood; the broken shaft of a window to mark my lady’s bower; and a moldering heap of blackened stones where the glowing flames once leaped, and over all the tinted lichen and the ivy clinging green.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Memory” (1886)
(Source)
First published in Home Chimes (1885-09-26).
Quotations about:
ruin
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
This thing of being a hero, about the main thing to it is to know when to die. Prolonged life has ruined more men that it ever made.
Character is made by many acts; it may be lost by a single one.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher
(Spurious)
Frequently attributed to Aristotle, but not found in his works. One of the earliest references is in J. A. Haigh, "Character," Great Thoughts from Master Minds (5 Oct 1907). Haigh does not present it as his own thought ("Character, it has been well said, is made up ...").John Christensen notes that the sentiment of the quote is very non-Aristotelian, feeling more like a Christian teaching about sin than a philosophical commentary. Aristotle generally speaks about developing a habit toward virtue (1, 2, 3), not some sort of all-or-nothing moral imperative.
There is always someone ready to be lured to ruin by hope of gain.
[ἀλλ᾽ ὑπ᾽ ἐλπίδων ἄνδρας τὸ κέρδος πολλάκις διώλεσεν.]
Sophocles (496-406 BC) Greek tragic playwright
Antigone, l. 221ff [Creon] (441 BC) [tr. Watling (1947)]
(Source)
Original Greek. Alternate translations:
- "But backed by hope, lucre has ruined many." [tr. Donaldson (1848)]
- "Yet hope of gain hath lured men to their ruin oftentimes." [tr. Storr (1859)]
- "But hope of gain full oft ere now hath been the ruin of men." [tr. Campbell (1873)]
- "Yet by just the hope of it, money has many times corrupted men." [tr. Jebb (1891)]
- "Yet lucre hath oft ruined men through their hopes." [tr. Jebb (1917)]
- "Yet money talks, and the wisest have sometimes been known to count a few coins too many." [tr. Fitts/Fitzgerald (1939)]
- "But often we have known men to be ruined by the hope of profit." [tr. Wyckoff (1954)]
- "But love of gain has often lured a man to his destruction." [tr. Kitto (1962)]
- "But all too often the mere hope of money has ruined many men." [tr. Fagles (1982)]
- "But hope -- and bribery -- often have led men to destruction." [tr. Woodruff (2001)]
- "But profit with its hopes often destroys men." [tr. Tyrell/Bennett (2002)] https://diotima-doctafemina.org/translations/greek/sophocles-antigone/#post-1273:~:text=But%20profit,with%20its%20hopes%20often%20destroys%20men.
- "Yet there are men who the mere hope of winning has killed them." [tr. Theodoridis (2004)]
- "And yet men have often been destroyed because they hoped to profit in some way." [tr. Johnston (2005)]
- "But often profit has destroyed men through their hopes." [tr. Thomas (2005)]
- "But the profit-motive has destroyed many people in their hope for gain." [tr. @sentantiq (2018)]
Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love; the shores of existence are strewn with them.
Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) Swiss-French writer, woman of letters, critic, salonist [Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, Madame de Staël, Madame Necker]
Reflections on Suicide [Réflexions sur le suicide], Sec. 1 (1813) [tr. De Finod]
Success has ruined many a man.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard’s Almanack (Dec 1752)
ALBANY: Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
King Lear, Act 1, sc. 4, l. 369 (1.4.369) (1606)
(Source)
