Beauty In Destruction Quotes & Sayings

After the near-total destruction of Dresden in the Allied fire-bombing of February 1945, few people believed that its beauty would ever return. Dresden's slow but steady comeback was thus met with great relief. — Gunter Blobel

How was it that destruction could be so beautiful? Was there something in the scale of it? Was there some shadow in people, lusting for it? Or was it just a coincidental combination of the elements, the final proof that beauty has no moral dimension? — Kim Stanley Robinson

There is, in the act o destruction, a beauty which we try to deny, and a joy which we cannot. Children build to knock down, and though we may grow around it, that need runs in us, deeper than our blood. — Mark Lawrence

The beauty of sand, in other words, belonged to death. it was the beauty of death that ran through the magnificence of its ruins and its great power of destruction — Kobo Abe

The destruction of the natural beauty, the ecosystems, and the majesty of mountains affect us in ways we're not even aware of. Every time a mountain is beheaded, we chop off a little part of our souls. — Gloria Reuben

They were alike, and yet they were totally opposite
in the way they viewed the world. He viewed it as it was. It
was a dark place, always holding itself into the shadows.
She saw the beauty that no one else could ever have seen in
the darkness. It was to be said that she both saved and
destroyed him. She was the essence of him and yet she,
beautiful sad eyed angel that she was, was also his
destruction all at the same time. He could be a downright
wretch of a man, yet she took it into herself, and never said
a word, but to love him. It was the love that broke him. — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

I've seen knives pierce the chest,
Children dying in the road
Crawling things hooked and baited,
Rapists bound and then castrated,
Villains singed in public square.
Yet none these sights did make me cringe
Like when my Love cut all her hair. — Roman Payne

More than any other beauty (though it is true of all beauty except in art) passion seems to me to have the seeds of its own destruction in it. — May Sarton

Ciro, who loved machinery and its design, thought the tanks were ugly. What beauty could be found in something that was created with the sole purpose of destruction? — Adriana Trigiani

The streets were full of destruction and rubble, and this town I'd never liked, with its stupid people, stupid streets, and stupid houses, was now unrecognisable, now it had a truly unique beauty, and scantily-clad women traversed it like ghosts. A twelve-storey building in the city centre had totally collapsed. Caught up in her bed sheets, a woman who had fallen from the top floor found herself alive and alone on the pavement. Her husband had been thrown out of bed. From now on she would sleep forever, since reality was now as extraordinary as dreams. — Gherasim Luca

Abraham Zogoiby covered his face that night in August 1939 because he had been assailed by fear, [ ... ] a sudden apprehension that the ugliness of life might defeat its beauty; that love did not make lovers invulnerable. Nevertheless, he thought, even if the world's beauty and love were on the edge of destruction, theirs would still be the only side to be on; defeated love would still be love, hate's victory would not make it other than it was. — Salman Rushdie

Though it is 2500 feet high, the glacier flowed over its ground as a river flows over a boulder; and since it emerged from the icy sea as from a sepulcher it has been sorely beaten with storms; but from all those deadly, crushing, bitter experiences comes this delicate life and beauty, to teach us that what we in our faithless ignorance and fear call destruction is creation. — John Muir

It's perfect," Gregory handed the horse back to me. "And it has such feeling and expression to it. That I expected, but I would never have expected this level of detail from a demon. Honestly, I would have expected you to shoot the bottles off the railing or twist them into a horrific mass. Not create this delicate thing of beauty."
"There is equal beauty in the things called horrific. The act of destruction is an expression of beauty, too. I destroyed the bottle to make the horse. Is a pretty glass horse worth the loss of a bottle, but the sound of shattered glass and bits flying through the air isn't? Is transformation only worthy if you approve of the end result? — Debra Dunbar

Creation and destruction are one, to the eyes who can see beauty.
And the greatest praise to India is this: not only are her people beautiful; not only are her daily life and cult beautiful; but, in the midst of the utilitarian, humanitarian, dogmatic world of the present day, she keeps on proclaiming the outstanding value of Beauty for the sake of Beauty, through her very conception of Godhead, of religion and of life. — Savitri Devi

Let me tell you something about the beauty of destruction. There is a distinct art in boxing, because there is method, strategy, technique rules and all the bells and whistles that the general public knows. However, since the beginning of time mankind was destined to appreciate the art of combat; and that is the mortal sacrifice - you put yourself out there and display a virtual painting, an interactive canvas that portrays the nature of the human body and what it's capable of, and as an outcome, the object of combat is not to sacrifice yourself to entertain spectators, no, but to make the other bastard sacrifice himself to entertain spectators - thus comes the art of honor. It's not a thirst for blood, not at all - but an astonishment, an appreciation for the capabilities of a human that bares his soul naked for the art of combat using strictly his body. That's entertainment. — Ghaleya Aldhafiri

I'm a goddess of destruction. Tell me honestly that you find nothing exciting about the idea of a billion people screaming out for mercy when there's no one left who cares what befalls them. Of the entire earth being rained on by all manner of demons bent on ultimate torture and sacrifice. Them ripping and shredding human flesh as they claw in a drunken frenzy fueled by their hatred of everything. Drinking blood in an orgy of terror ... ahhh, the beauty of annihilation. There's nothing like it.(Apollymi) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

THERE IS, IN the act of destruction, a beauty which we try to deny, and a joy which we cannot. Children — Mark Lawrence

We feel a private thrill, admit it, at the sight of beauty in flames. We wish to blast all the fine old things to oblivion and replace them with tasteless identical
structures. — Don DeLillo

Across the sky
I will come for you
If you ask me to
Demystify
Your uncommon dreams
Stranger things have come true
Fear no more the midnight
Fear no more the sea
Close your eyes, regret nothing
You're safe with me
Look into the shadows
Step into the mist
Search your land but doubt never
I still exist
Ask yourself: is this all there is
Take no answer but the one you find
I have put my faith in aberrations of your kind
But even if you're in my mind.
Should we hear the silence
Should we hear the noise
I don't need this blind acceptance
I have made my choice
Light lives in the darkness
Beauty lives in pain
In destruction we may lose ourselves
But still I will remain
Across the sky
Across the sky
See beyond the moment
Think beyond the day
Hear the word
Hear the word — Emilie Autumn

(The processes are) doubly ruinous: they impoverish the earth by hastily removing, for the benefit of a few generations, the common resources which, once expended and dissipated, can never be restored; and second, in its technique, its habits, its processes, the paleotechnic period is equally inimical to the earth considered as a human habitat, by its destruction of the beauty of the landscape, its ruining of streams, its pollution of drinking water, its filling the air with a finely divided carboniferous deposit, which chokes both life and vegetation. — Lewis Mumford

The sense of beauty puts a brake upon destruction, by representing its object as irreplaceable. When the world looks back at me with my eyes, as it does in aesthetic experience, it is also addressing me in another way. Something is being revealed to me, and I am being made to stand still and absorb it. It is of course nonsense to suggest that there are naiads in the trees and dryads in the groves. What is revealed to me in the experience of beauty is a fundamental truth about being - the truth that being is a gift, and receiving it is a task. This is a truth of theology that demands exposition as such. — Roger Scruton

violent storms. and beautiful smiles. both have electricity. both are equally destructive in nature. — Sanober Khan

What you humans need to do is find beauty in the fact that something is naturally the way it is. Perhaps then you wouldn't be so destructive." [Meems says to Ellani] — A.L. Davroe

Someone created all of this, all of the beauty of the earth, all of the fragility of human life and all of the extraordinary existence of us. Choosing to believe in a god only when you are surrounded by death and destruction is to truly not know God at all. — Rachel Higginson

For me it's really important that the work here displays an aesthetic of decay along with the sunken boat with the broken ceramic pieces. They form a unity in showing the power of destruction, the beauty of destruction, whether it's from nature- because the boat has sunk- or through other forces. It's really the beauty of decay and death that holds a power here. — Cai Guo-Qiang

The love, born of beauty was not mine; I had nothing in common with it: I could not dare to meddle with it, but another love, venturing diffidently into life after long acquaintance, furnace-tried by pain, stamped by constancy, consolidated by affection's pure and durable alloy, submitted by intellect to intellect's own tests, and finally wrought up, by his own process, to his own unflawed completeness, this Love that laughed at Passion, his fast frenzies and his hot and hurried extinction, in this Love I had a vested interest; and whatever tended either to its culture or its destruction, I could not view impassibly. — Charlotte Bronte

How is destruction beautiful?" He asked in a challenging tone.
"You may think that a broken egg is ugly and messy," she answered, "but the cake it goes into is beautiful and won't hold together without it."
"Eggs don't get blown up. They get broken."
"You've never seen me bake," she replied with a smirk. — Amy Neftzger

I don't know why I pause to watch Raffaele. Perhaps I have always done so, so captivated am I by his beauty. Even now, in the midst of death and destruction, he moves with the grace of someone not of this world. His attention is focused entirely on Enzo. The sight breaks my heart, and a small, lost part of me sparks with light. — Marie Lu

One man in one mood will attack Industrial Capitalism for its destruction of beauty; another for its incompetence; another for the vileness of the men who chiefly prosper under it; another for its mere confusion and noise; another for its false values; it was until recently most fiercely attacked for its impoverishment of the workers, its margin of unemployment and the rest - indeed so fiercely that it was compelled to seek palliatives for the evil. With a mass of men it was attacked from a vague but strong sense of injustice; it allowed a few rich to exploit mankind. — Hilaire Belloc

Finally, I say, "long dark hair, blue-violet eyes, slender, tall, she had a Liz Taylor in Black Beauty thing going on." Reluctance sets in. Do I really want to put this together for him? "Like you," he says. Pandora's Box opens. Chocolate anyone? An abundance of heartbreak. Rare happiness. Plenty of self-destruction. Take your pick. Julia's got everything in here. — Katherine Owen

We have reason. It is the entire meaning and purpose of Shangri-La. It came to me in a vision long, long ago. I foresaw a time when man exalting in the technique of murder, would rage so hotly over the world, that every book, every treasure would be doomed to destruction. This vision was so vivid and so moving that I determined to gather together all things of beauty and culture that I could and preserve them here against the doom toward which the world is rushing. Look at the world today. Is there anything more pitiful? What madness there is! What blindness! A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity crashing headlong against each other. The time must come, my friend, when brutality and the lust for power must perish by its own sword. For when that day comes, the world must begin to look for a new life. And it is our hope that they may find it here. — James Hilton

I realized, when I saw the forest burning, how fascinating the firelight is. It's beautiful, and people stare at it, don't they? It destroys things and kills people, but humans love it. Is it because they crave their own destruction, Sam? I want to understand your kind. I am going out into the wider world, and I must learn. But first things first. First, to escape this shell, this egg in which I have gestated, all eyes will be on the fire, all eyes blinded by the smoke, and when I walk out of here, out into your large world with its billions, no one will even see. It's the beauty of light, don't you see, Sam? It reveals, but it also distracts and blinds. It's even better than darkness. — Michael Grant