Family Ruins Quotes & Sayings

I'm looking at the ruins of my own existence and knowing, with a sickening certainty, that my old home and my old life have been truly destroyed. — K.C. Finn

The clock had been Sylvie's, and her mother's before that. It had gone to Ursula on Sylvie's death and Ursula had left it to Teddy, and so it had zigzagged its way down the family tree ...
... The clock was a good one, made by Frodsham and worth quite a bit, but Teddy knew if he gave it to Viola she would sell it or misplace it or break it and it seemed important to him that it stayed in the family. An heirloom. ('Lovely word,' Bertie said.) He liked to think that the little golden key that wound it, a key that would almost certainly be lost by Viola, would continue to be turned by the hand of someone who was part of the family, part of his blood. The red thread. — Kate Atkinson

Three years of changes, moves, uncertainties, upheavals; the war, the revolution; scenes of destruction, scenes of death, shelling, blown-up bridges, fires, ruins - all this turned suddenly into a huge, empty, waste space. The first real event since the long interruption was this vertiginous home-coming by train, in the knowledge that his home was still safe, still existing somewhere, with every smallest stone in it dear to him. This was the point of life, this was experience, this was the quest of adventure seekers and what artists had in mind - this coming home to your family, to yourself, this renewal of life. — Boris Pasternak

I was robbed, Errin." He strokes my face with his thumb before turning it back to him. "Of my life. Of my inheritance. Snuffed out at barely twenty-two years old. I have spent five hundred years asleep. I woke to nothing. The legacy my family spent generations building is ash, scattered to the wind. I was promised a kingdom," he snarls. "I was promised the greatest kingdom the world had ever known. And I will have one. If it means cobbling one together from the ruins of Lormere and Tregellan. — Melinda Salisbury

I'm subject to occasional theological nightmares. The one that leaves me in a cold sweat every time is, I arrive at the pearly gates and the first thing I'm asked is where I went to college. — Mark Vonnegut

This then is Borgia Rome: a city where a traveler entering the gates must still cross acres of country before he reaches the center, where animals still outnumber citizens, goats and cattle grazing the imperial ruins, their insistent teeth pulling weeds - and mortar - from between the stones of history. A city still struggling with a chasm of hardship between rich and poor, still ripped apart by gross family violence. But also a place of growing magnificence and confidence where, for the first time in centuries, the future no longer looks bleaker than the past, and where the new Pope has chosen for himself a name designed to foster a belief in magnificence again. Alexander — Sarah Dunant

Epithets like that are an attempt to dehumanize a group so that you won't feel as bad about killing them. — James S.A. Corey

I beseech those whose piety will permit them reverently to petition, that they will pray for this union, and ask that He who buildeth up and pulleth down nations will, the mercy preserve and unite us. For a Nation divided against itself cannot stand. I wish, if this Union must be dissolved, that its ruins may be the monument of my grave, and the graves of my family. I wish no epitaph to be written to tell that I survive the ruin of this glorious Union. — Sam Houston

You have to believe that it is what you want to do with your life and you have to be dedicated to it. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

We have been cut off, the past has been ended and the family has broken up and the present is adrift in its wheelchair ... That is no gap between the generations, that is a gulf. The elements have changed, there are whole new orders of magnitude and kind. [ ... ]
My grandparents had to live their way out of one world and into another, or into several others, making new out of old the way corals live their reef upward. I am on my grandparents' side. I believe in Time, as they did, and in the life chronological rather than in the life existential. We live in time and through it, we build our huts in its ruins, or used to, and we cannot afford all these abandonings. — Wallace Stegner

The American family is failing in its job of turning out stable human beings ... It is failing because Americans do not dare to cultivate in themselves those characteristics which would make family life creative and rewarding. To do so, would ruin them financially. — Margaret Halsey

When everything else is in ruins, family is all we have. And God, of course. — Chris Womersley

PS. Docendo discimus. (Latin. By teaching, we learn.) — Matthew Quick

We believe that war is an inevitable consequence of the current global economic situation. — Kyle Bass

People say love is weak, but they're wrong: love is strong. In nearly everyone it trumps all other things - patriotism and ambition, religion and upbringing. And every kind of love - the epic and the small, the noble and the base - the one that a parent has for their child is the greatest of them all. That was the lesson I learned that day, and I'll be forever grateful I did. Some years later, deep in the ruins called Theatre of Death, it salvaged everything. — Terry Hayes

A person that doesn't read and doesn't have any ethics complaining about a writer feels like a Chihuahua barking at a Rottweiler. — Robin Sacredfire

To meet her fate beneath the rowan trees in the hills near — Diana Gabaldon

Sometimes a person needs us to abandon them, but we hang-on anyway, which can be devastating for both parties. — Bryant McGill

The Wikks are regular kids given a Galactic size challenge. Readers will follow Oliver, Tiffany, and twins, Mason and Austin as they trek through eerie catacombs, mysterious ruins, and creepy castles that defy imagination. One part Indiana Jones, a handful of Swiss Family Robinson, and some Intergalactic excitement, the Quest for Truth is a riveting tale of just how far mankind will go for the ultimate prize. — Wayne Thomas Batson

Integrity, like humility, is a quality which vanishes the moment we are conscious of it in ourselves. We see it only in others. — Madeleine L'Engle

Some things need to be believed to be seen. — Guy Kawasaki

If you do not forgive, you are demanding something your offender does not choose to give, even if it is only confession of what he did. This "ties" him to you and ruins boundaries. Let the dysfunctional family you came from go. Cut it loose, and you will be free. — Henry Cloud

A thousand happy moments succumbed to history. It was the happiest hour of the year, worst time of our lives. I can still smell the ruins from that cold dark brute stormy October night. — Parul Wadhwa

He also thinks there's something in the Carpathian woman's chemistry that makes it impossible for the female chromosome to beat out the male."
"Wouldn't you know he'd think it was the woman," Shea sniffed contemptuously. — Christine Feehan

Digital intimacy ruins the appetite for the real thing. So, when kids are gaming or even when spouses are gaming, they lose their appetite for genuine intimacy. Kids lose their appetite for getting their intimacy needs, their hunger for significance and attachment, with the family, and it erodes the relationship between them and their parents. — Gordon Neufeld

My brothers went to work at 12 and put themselves through school and brought the family out of ruin into food and clothing. — Mel Brooks

The curious thing about fishing is you never want to go home. If you catch something, you can't stop. If you don't catch anything, you hate to leave in case something might bite. — Gladys Taber

Botha swimmer and a drowned man are in the water; the latter is borne by the water and controlled by it, while the swimmer is borne along by his own power and of his own volition. Every movement made by the drowned man - indeed, every act and word that issue from him - comes from the water, not from him ... The saints are like this. They have died before death. — Rumi