Quotes & Sayings About Life Crumbling

Death is the end of all life in the individual or the thing; if physical, the crumbling of the body into dust from whence it came. He who lives not uprightly, dies completely in the crumbling of the physical body, but he who lives well, transforms himself from that which is mortal, to immortal. — Marcus Garvey

Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake, heavy with useless experience, rich with suspicion, rumour, fantasy, crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge of mere fact. In the prime of your life. — Adrienne Rich

Friendship means never having to be alone, it means there's a constant wall of solidarity even when everything else is crumbling around you. If he's the crumble in your life, then I'll be the damn wall! — Emma Hart

It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life. — Haruki Murakami

We have gone far in our public places to push death aside, to consign it to a dusty corner, but in the wilderness it is ever present. It is the lover who makes life. The sensuous, entwined limbs of of predator and prey, the orgasmic death cry, the final spasmodic rush of blood, and even the soundless insemination of the earth by the fallen tree and crumbling leaf; these are the caresses of life's beloved, the indispensable other. — Rick Yancey

I've seen my own blood and broken a few bones. I've been hit, which isn't an entirely bad thing, as at least you have a glimpse of the suffering endured by the people you are photographing. And in a sense, crumbling empires and war have been with me all my life. — Don McCullin

The same trend is noticeable in the scientific realm: research here is for its own sake far more than for the partial and fragmentary results it achieves; here we see an ever more rapid succession of unfounded theories and hypotheses, no sooner set up than crumbling to give way to others that will have an even shorter life - a veritable chaos amid which one would search in vain for anything definitive, unless it be a monstrous accumulation of facts and details incapable of proving or signifying anything. We refer here of course to speculative science, insofar as this still exists; in applied science there are on the contrary undeniable results, and this is easily understandable since these results bear directly on the domain of matter. — Rene Guenon

Historically the first philosopher to enquire deeply into the nature of corruption in society was Ibn Khaldun (1322-1406), whose wandering life was largely spent in the northern littoral of Africa at a time when kingdoms and sultanates were crumbling. — Robert Payne

My life is hard. No one would rob me of that. The clothes I am wearing came out of a knotted up black plastic trash bag from a resale shop downtown. And not the downtown where shiny cars wink at you in the sunlight. If a car winks at you in this area it's being driven by a person you would be best to avoid.
My side of downtown is crumbling and skirted by chain link fences.
Rocky Evans — Gwenn Wright

So, what's the big emergency, princess? You and ice-boy look fine to me, and the Nevernever isn't crumbling around us. What's going on?"
"I'm pregnant, Puck," I said quietly, and watched his eyebrows shoot into his hair. Briefly,I explained what had happened at Elysium, the oracle's mysterious appearance and invitation, and Grimalkin's instruction to meet him at the Wishing Tree. By the time I was done, Puck was still staring at me openmouthed, struck mute for maybe the second time in his life, and I would've laughed if the situation wasn't so serious.
"Oh," he finally managed. "That's, uh ... Wow. That's not something you hear every day. Not exactly what I was expecting, though the entire prophecy thing does get old after a while." He shook himself, seeming to regain his composure, and glanced at Ash. "So, it's the ever so popular Firstborn Child of Doom prophecy, huh, ice-boy? How very cliche. Why can't it be the third nephew twice removed who's fated to destroy the world? — Julie Kagawa

When I can feel you breathing into me i, like a stone gargoyle
atop some crumbling building,
spring to life
a resuscitated
angel. — Saul Williams

Possibly the only way to maintain some sort of resemblance of normalcy was by thinking about insignificant things. That way, it didn't feel like my life was crumbling apart like a pastry. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I wanted someone above me in the chain of life. I didn't want to be alone, a single blue egg in a crumbling nest. — Kathy Hepinstall

[Religion is a way of reconstructing] what has come to feel like a crumbling moral framework in the life of our nation. — Joe Lieberman

Sunset and evening star hunching and bending sleeping and slipping virus pneumonia coughing and crying hope in the small things heaven looks brighter aching and falling earth is still darkness slip into sleeping sleepings of death dead now and buried cold now and crumbling dust now and hope-filled heaven is hope (and loneliness lingers in those left behind) — Chila Woychik

This is us, then, at night. Two men, slowly crumbling, minding our business in the bed we flip four times a year to extend its life. I've got my side, Kenny's got his, and from time to time we meet in the middle to do what Men Like That (like us) do in a bed; it's not always hot, not after all this time, but it's reassuring. Mostly, though, we sleep. We like to. We work hard. We need it. — Richard Kramer

The idea of mind separate from body goes far back in time. The most famous expression of this is the idea of the Platonic image discussed in the Socratic Dialogues (circa 350 BC). Socrates and Plato expressed the opinion that the real world was but a shadow of reality, and that reality existed on a higher, purer plane reachable only through and preserved in the mind. The mind was considered immortal and survived the crumbling corpus in which it dwelt. But only enlightened minds, such as theirs, could see true reality. As such, they believed people like themselves ought to be elevated to the position of philosopher kings and rule the world with purity of vision. (A similarly wacky idea was expressed by the fictional air force General Jack D. Ripper in Kubrick's classic dark satire Dr. Strangelove. General Ripper postulated that purity of essence was the most important thing in life.) — James Luce

My break was a week long, but we stayed in Rome for three. Afterward we flew to San Francisco, where David's latest project was located; I felt elated, like I'd bypassed Yale and young adulthood and graduated straight into the world. When I recall those first weeks with David among the crumbling buildings of Rome, weeks of feeling deliciously older than old, giddy with my own seriousness, it's probably no accident that I can't think of my life without using the word ruined. — Chad Harbach

I've learned of life this bitter truth
Hope not between the crumbling walls Of mankind's gratitude to find repose,
But rather,
Build within thy own soul
Fortresses! — Georgia Douglas Johnson

When everything around me is crumbling to pieces, all I have to do is look at you and I can keep going, keep living. You're warm, Quinn. The warmest person I've ever known. I never realized just how devoid of warmth my life was until you came into it. — Katie Jennings

In the vast cosmical changes, the universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities ... sowing an animalcule here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and winding, ... entangling, from the highest to the lowest, all activities in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism, hanging the flight of an insect upon the movement of the earth ... Enormous gearing, whose first motor is the gnat, and whose last wheel is the zodiac. — Victor Hugo

What drew him towards the outside was not the student, not the goat, not even the man in the down-at-heel shoes who joined them. Simply the street, like a blanched life-drained cadaver, fettered his whole attention. Never before had he seen it look so monstrously real, lit by the tired face of the moon, quiet and grave. There was about it, as it were, a sort of despairing dignity. You might have thought that the street had been killed by the weight of its suffering, that it had that moment died after long agony. It was old, the street, hobbling and twisted with age. Some of its houses were already crumbling in ruins. For years now it had sheltered the petty life of men. And now they had elected it to express the extent of their weariness. Naked beneath the prodigious brightness of the moon, it revealed all that men hid in the depths of their beings, the little hopes, the hates so huge. No longer could it hide anything; it cried out its despair from every corner. — Albert Cossery

You are strong, tempered like steel in the fire and by the blows of the hammer of life. Nothing will break you again, only make you stronger and more whole. Perfection is the pride of those who have not lived, who know not these things in their arrogance. They remain the same - raw and without form. The hammer never touches them, and they lie on the shelf, gathering dust, slowly tarnishing and fading and crumbling. the blows of the hammer in the fire refine us into bright shining glory for the roles we play in life - until we are one with the anvil, becoming immune to the hammer's little knocks, and smile at it. — Christina Engela

...in the strange dizziness of that moment, the statue every man eventually erects and that hardens in the fire of the years, into which he then creeps and there awaits its final crumbling - that statue was rapidly cracking, it was already collapsing. All that was left was this anguished heart, eager to live, rebelling against the deadly order of the world that had been with him for forty years, and still struggling against the wall that separated him from the secret of all life, wanting to go farther, to go beyond, and to discover, discover before dying, discover at least in order to be, just once to be, for a single second, but forever. — Albert Camus

And they say
She's in the class A Team
Stuck in her daydream
Been that way since eighteen, but lately,
Her face seems
Slowly sinking, wasting
Crumbling like pastries
And they scream
The worst things in life come free to us
Cos we're just under the upperhand
Go mad for a couple grams
And she don't want to go outside tonight
And in a pipe she flies to the Motherland
Or sells love to another man
It's too cold outside
For angels to fly
Angels to fly — Ed Sheeran

First rule of life: the woman always goes first. Through doors, into orgasm, and in this case, crumbling to the pressure in a battle of wills. "Fuck — Max Monroe

Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon. — Henry David Thoreau

2006 Games -by then, my identity had started to shift. Before that, my identity was in snowboarding. That's how people knew me and that's how I knew myself. That's where I got a lot of my self worth. That began to shift and I started to understand that I didn't get my worth from people or from the things that I did. It was from Christ. If I hadn't had that shift in my life, I think my world would have come crumbling down. — Kelly Clark

Jack, who apparently always had to be moving in some way, had made up for the missing knife by grabbing a half loaf of French bread and methodically ripping it into tiny pieces.
"What," I said, narrowing my eyes. "Why don't faeries like bread?"
"Hmm?" Jack looked up, then shrugged. "I dunno."
Lend picked up a piece, crumbling it. "My dad said he thought it was because it was the staff of life for people."
"Nasty stuff tastes like mold," Jack said. "I tried a piece once a while ago when I was still trying to force myself to eat normal food so I could stay here. It was like a shock to my whole system." He shuddered at the memory. — Kiersten White

But as for the old structure of our story, its white-oak frame, and its boards, shingles, and crumbling plaster, and even the huge, clustered chimney in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and meanest part of its reality. So much of mankind's varied experience had passed there, - so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed, - that the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart. It was itself like a great human heart, with a life of its own, and full of rich and sombre reminiscences. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I took the sleeper out of Glasgow, and as the smelly old train bumped out of Central Station and across the Jamaica Street Bridge, I stared out at the orange halogen streetlamps reflected in the black water of the river Clyde. I gazed at the crumbling Victorian buildings that would soon be sandblasted and renovated into yuppie hutches. I watched the revelers and rascals traverse the shiny wet streets. I thought of the thrill and danger of my youth and the fear and frustration of my adult life thus far. I thought of the failure of my marriage and my failures as a man. I saw all this through my reflection in the nighttime window.
Down the tracks I went, hardly aware that I was going further south with every passing second. — Craig Ferguson

Without consistency and without a future, it has all the transitory characteristics of crowds. Its civilisation is now without stability, and at the mercy of every chance. The populace is sovereign, and the tide of barbarism mounts. The civilisation may still seem brilliant because it possesses an outward front, the work of a long past, but it is in reality an edifice crumbling to ruin, which nothing supports, and destined to fall in at the first storm. To pass in pursuit of an ideal from the barbarous to the civilised state, and then, when this ideal has lost its virtue, to decline and die, such is the cycle of the life of a people. — Gustave Le Bon

In North Carolina, I stopped to gas up at a Humble Oil station, then walked around the corner to use the toilet. There were two doors and three signs. MEN was neatly stenciled over one door, LADIES over the other. The third sign was an arrow on a stick. It pointed toward the brush-covered slope behind the station. It said COLORED. Curious, I walked down the path, being careful to sidle at a couple of points where the oily, green-shading-to-maroon leaves of poison ivy were unmistakable ... There was no facility. What I found at the end of the path was a narrow stream with a board laid across it on a couple of crumbling concrete posts ... If I ever give you the idea that 1958's all Andy-n-Opie, remember the path, okay? The one lined with poison ivy. And the board over the stream. — Stephen King

I AM a little worn out, raddled, squashed, downtrodden, shot full of holes. Mortars have mortared me to bits. I am a little crumbly, decaying, yes, yes. I am sinking and drying up a little. I am a bit scalded and scorched, yes, yes. That's what it does to you. That's life. I am not old, not in the least, certainly I am not eighty, by no means, but I am not sixteen any more either. Quite definitely I am a bit old and used up. That's what it does to you. I am decaying a little, and I am crumbling, peeling a little. That's life. Am I a little bit over the hill? Hmm! Maybe. But that doesn't make me eighty, not by a long way. I am very tough, I can vouch for that. I am no longer young, but I am not old yet, definitely not. I am aging, fading a little, but that doesn't matter; I am not yet altogether old, though I am probably a little nervous and over the hill. It's natural that one should crumble a bit with the passage of time, but that doesn't matter. — Robert Walser

Waves of despair rolled over him. He hadn't expected any of this: not the caved-in barns or crumbling fences, not the rotting wheat in the unplowed fields. It was as if the life had been punched right out of this place. — Christine Brodien-Jones

To hear, in the short space of one week, a Scottish terrier booed by an audience and President Roosevelt criticized by Charles Lindbergh was a great strain on our nerves. The props of life seem to be crumbling fast. — E.B. White

I feel the place is falling apart on me, but Mrs. Scarlatti says not to worry. It always looks like that, she says. Life is a continual shoring up, she says, against one thing and another just eroding and crumbling away. I'm beginning to think she's right. — Anne Tyler

It struck me that we-that moth and I-were two opposite extremes. My existence was as unstable as a stream, changing in every
way; but the moth was like a piece of stone, changing not at all. While thinking this thought, I reached out a finger to feel the moth's velvety surface; but when I brushed it with my fingertip, it turned all at once into a pile of ash without even a sound, without even a moment in which I could see it crumbling. I was so astonished I let out a cry. The swirling in my mind stopped; I felt as if I had stepped into the eye of a storm. I let the tiny shroud and its pile of ashes flutter to the ground; and now I understood the thing that had puzzled me all morning. The stale air had washed away. The past was gone. — Arthur Golden

Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become a study for archaeologists ... but it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio. — Lafcadio Hearn

Hypatia's case then was this. She lived in a time when her intellectual heritage, a seven-hundred-year-old tradition, was crumbling. The supports that had once seemed so secure - the Museum and the libraries - had all been swept away by the swell of ignorant dogmatism. Almost alone, virtually the last academic, she stood for the intellectual values, for rigorous mathematics, ascetic Neoplatonism, the crucial role of the mind, and the voice of temperance and moderation in civic life. — Michael A.B. Deakin

In the heart of every writer there lies a murderer.
Writers spend their lives struggling to conceal this murderous desire from other mortals.
Like God, they ruthlessly destroy the people of their own creation, drag them from one cruelty to another, meting out punishment, and with the callous indifference of a serial killer. And no one knows when he has taken a life from the solitude of his room. But when a writer is enraged the walls of his refuge come crumbling down, revealing his true identity. — Ahmet Altan

A city finds its life through the humans who inhabit it. When they go, what is truly left? Just silent stones, witnesses to the history but mute in its telling, remaining thus while slowly turning to rubble. It saddens me that life's moments are thus lost, that one cannot experience the past in the same rich vibrancy as the present. You live the moments and then relegate them to memory, now just two-dimensional shadows, pictures without depth, stripped of their purest emotion, their tactile connections no longer accessible. You try to recall, but can bring back only a fraction of the event lived. The rest is gone, never to be as full and complete as it was in that one place at that one time. That was what I thought as I studied these stone remains; that all the tangible things experienced here abide somewhere in time, but can never again be wholly re-animated, now just ghosts imbedded in the crumbling walls and in the fading memories of those who once lived here. — Michael Puttonen

How I Handle Chaos when you awake to find your life in disarray, crumbling apart tumbling like rocks rolling downhill into a rapid avalanche pick up your broken scattered life and put it together again The Nakedness of Arrogance — Jerry T. Johnson

The message of Christ's love is found in Isaiah, chapter sixty-one," the man was saying. "God himself will restore the crumbling foundations of your life. He will give you beauty for ashes. He'll provide redemption, no matter who you are, where you are. . . . — Karen Kingsbury

Fall leaves are brilliant with gold and red. You can cup them in your hand and wonder at them, be amazed at their uniqueness and glory. But eventually they are gone, brown, crumbling, scattered on the wind. But the tree remains. The tree is what is important. The tree lives on. That was a difficult knowledge to bear, and an even more difficult life to live. Of course, being the leaf wasn't exactly desirable either. — Rob Thurman

Glokta felt his hand bunching into a fist on the parapet. 'We must make the Gurkish pay for every stride of ground.' We must make them pay for my ruined leg. 'For every inch of dirt.' For my missing teeth. 'For every meagre shack, and crumbling hut, and worthless stretch of dust.' For my weeping eye, and my twisted back, and my repulsive shadow of a life. He licked at his empty gums. 'Make them pay. — Joe Abercrombie