Life Ruined Quotes & Sayings

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day. — Anton Chekhov

I thought about how my life had drastically changed after the last few days. I had been on a downward spiral, but after meeting Mr. Honor I felt like I had a reason to get up in the morning, a reason to show up to class. Here he was feeling as if he had ruined my life, but I felt like he had saved it. He had saved me. I was finally living. — Teresa Mummert

Well, at least she doesn't have to be a housewife the rest of her life," she said. "What in the hell do you have against housewives?" I said. "I was raised by one," Savannah said. "And it almost ruined my life." "I got knocked around by a shrimper when I was a kid," said Luke, "but I never blamed the shrimp. — Pat Conroy

And yet, I felt a surge of exhilaration just thinking about that night. Not just because I'd met the prince and fallen in love and started on my course toward happiness ever after, but because I'd made something happen. I'd done something everybody had told me I couldn't. I'd changed my life all by myself. Having a fairy godmother would have ruined everything. — Margaret Peterson Haddix

We're done, this is over. I'm packing your shit and you're leaving." I'm sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "Everything is fucked up, don't you get that? It's ruined, all of it is ruined and you need to fucking leave." I'm so sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "You need to get a life." I'm sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "All those sad, pathetic letters." I'm lying, don't believe me, please don't believe me. I loved your letters, I kept them all and I cherish every one of them. "I prefer women with a little more experience." I don't mean it. I don't mean any of it. Knowing I'm the only man who has ever been inside of you makes me feel like a fucking king and the luckiest man alive. I'm sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "It doesn't get better when I come home to you. I hate this life." I'm lying! Every word is a lie. I love our life and I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. I love you, I love you, I love you. — Tara Sivec

She saved my life ... and I've ruined hers.
They sat in silence for a full minute, the air between them growing heavy, as if they both wanted to speak, and yet had nothing to say. They were strangers, after all, on a brief and bizarre journey that had just reached a fork in the road, each of them now needing to find seperate paths. — Dan Brown

And then . . . we're going to get in my car."
I waited for him to elaborate on a destination. "And?"
He gently kissed the nape of my neck. "What do you think?"
I couldn't help a small gasp of delight. "Oh, wow."
"I know, right? I was racking my brain for the best present ever, and then I realized that nothing was going to rock your world more than you and me in your favorite place in the entire world."
I swallowed. "I'm kind of embarrassed at how excited I am about that." Never had I guessed my love of cars would play a role in my sex life. Eddie was right. Something had happened to me.
"It's okay, Sage. We've all got our turn-ons."
"You kind of ruined the surprise, though."
"Nah. It's part of the gift: you getting to think about it for the next three days. — Richelle Mead

If Barack Obama had come up in a time when the drug war was being waged as intensely as it is now, we probably would never have heard of him. A single arrest could have precluded student loans, resulted in jail time, and completely ruined his life, posing a far greater threat to him than the drugs themselves did, including the risk of addiction to marijuana or cocaine. — Carl Hart

I had a life with people who I would die for! You've ruined everything. I despise you," he spat.
"You're supposed to despise him," Arjuro muttered. "He's your father. — Melina Marchetta

With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he'll never know. — Hunter S. Thompson

Millennials in the workplace have been called "orchids"2 (can't survive outside the greenhouse) and "teacups"3 (chip easily and then are ruined), but to me the most prescient metaphor for young adults sent out into the world after being overparented is "veal" - a term coined by Massachusetts educator Joe Maruszczak - meaning they're raised in controlled environments and led, metaphorically, to slaughter. None of us took a course called "how to hold your kid back," but overparenting appears to be seriously poor preparation for life in the work world. In 2014, interested — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Anyway, I think I made a bit of progress."
"How did you manage that?"
"Well, they liked that you served in the First Army, and that you saved their prince's life."
"After he risked his own life rescuing us?"
"I may have taken some liberties with the details."
"Oh, Nikolai will love that. Is there more?"
"I told them you hate herring."
"Why?"
"And that you love plum cake. And that Ana Kuya took a switch to you when you ruined your spring slippers in puddles."
I winced. "Why would you tell them all that?'
"I wanted to make you human," he said. "All they see when they look at you is the Sun Summoner. They see a threat, another powerful Grisha like the Darkling. I want them to see a daughter or a sister or a friend. I want them to see Alina."
I felt a lump rise in my throat. "Do you practice being wonderful?"
"Daily," he said with a grin. Then he winked. "But I prefer 'useful. — Leigh Bardugo

I didn't want to be educated. It wasn't the right time of my life for concentration, it really wasn't. The spirit of the age among the people I knew manifested itself as general drift and idleness. We didn't want money. What for? We could get by, living off parents, friends or the State And if we were going to be bored, and we were usually bored, rarely being self-motivated, we could at least be bored on our own terms, lying smashed on mattresses in ruined houses rather than working in the machine. I didn't want to work in a place where I couldn't wear my fur coat. — Hanif Kureishi

he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had spoiled him. — Oscar Wilde

You know the worst: your wills are fickle,
Your values blurred, your hearts impure
And your past life a ruined church
But let your poison be your cure. — Louis MacNeice

You want to hear it? Fine. It's a simple story really, about a pretty girl who was pretty stupid. She let a man touch her because she was scared to say no, and then she told her parents because she was scared to say nothing. Then they were scared to do anything that might ruin their pretty little lives, so they told the girl that it was nothing. That just being touched wasn't enough to fight for. Too scared to prove them wrong, she kept going like it was nothing, and she let more people touch her, never knowing that she was handing out pieces of herself. Or, hell, maybe she knew deep down, and she just hated herself so much that she was glad to be rid of them. And life wasn't pretty, but it also wasn't scary until she met a man with two names who touched her without taking and made her miss the pieces she had lost. And now things aren't just scary, they're fucking terrifying, and I can't do it. I can't live like this, knowing all that I've ruined and that it can't be fixed. — Cora Carmack

There were absences in my life which were a comfort, then were was a presence that ruined me. — Robert Pinget

Across the broken apses and shattered naves of a hundred ruined Byzantine churches, the same smooth, cold, neo-classical faces of the saints and apostles stare down like a gallery of deaf mutes; and through this thundering silence the everyday reality of life in the Byzantine provinces remains persistently difficult to visualise. The sacred and aristocratic nature of Byzantine art means that we have very little idea of what the early Byzantine peasant or shopkeeper looked like; we have even less idea of what he thought, what he longed for, what he loved or what he hated.
Yet through the pages of The Spiritual Meadow one can come closer to the ordinary Byzantine than is possible through virtually any other single source.

Dalrymple, William (2012-06-21). From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (Text Only) (Kindle Location 248). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition. — William Dalrymple

A well-meaning townie (W-MT) will sidle up to the desk. 'Any word on Tamerlane?' [Translation: May I turn over your significant personal loss for my own amusement?]
A.J. will reply, 'Nothing yet.' [Translation: Life still ruined.]
W-MT: Oh, I'm sure something will turn up. [Translation: Since I have no investment in the outcome of this situation, it costs me nothing to be optimistic.] — Gabrielle Zevin

Great, you ruined my life and you don't even remember it. — Claire Cook

If a life can be ruined in a single moment, a moment of betrayal, or violence, or ill luck, then why can a life not also be saved, be worth living, be made, by just a few pure moments of perfection? — Marcus Sedgwick

There is an old Yiddish phrase I find apropos - but not by choice: "Man plans, God laughs." I am a prime example. My life was pretty much laid out for me. I was a basketball star my entire childhood, destined to be an NBA player for the Boston Celtics. But in my very first preseason game, Big Burt Wesson slammed into me and ruined my knee. I tried gamely to come back, but there is a big difference between gamely and effectively. My career was over before I hit the parquet floor. I — Harlan Coben

As i sat listening to this old man's tale of murder, rape and disposing of a tortured body, i felt a sense of strength deep in my soul that i could accomplish something similar with the bullies who ruined my life at school".

Christopher — Stuart Francis

Her brows had drawn together over those big eyes, in an expression that no doubt she thought stern, but that was, in reality, rather adorable. Like a small girl chiding a kitten. A streak of anger surged through him. She shouldn't be out by herself in the ruined garden. If he'd been another type of man - a brutal man, like the ones who'd run Bedlam - her dignity, perhaps even her life, might've been in danger. Didn't she have a husband, a brother, a father to keep her safe? Who was letting this slip of a woman wander into danger by herself? — Elizabeth Hoyt

If you see failure as a monster stalking you, or one that has
already ruined your life, take another look. That monster can
become a benevolent teacher, opening your mind to successes
you cannot now imagine. — Martha N. Beck

I'm gonna try to be cured. I've been on heroin eight years and I want to try a different style of life. It made me split up from my wife. It ruined a lot of things for me. — Johnny Thunders

Reality television paints a simple black-and-white world of good characters and bad characters; people we want to root for and people we want to see ruined. There is none of the gray ambiguity that colors real life. I no longer watch a lot of reality television, but sometimes I can't look away from 'Honey Boo Boo.' I just can't. — Molly O'Keefe

I remember when I was younger I used to write in my diary: I want my luck to be spread. "Never give me anything too lucky all at once. I'll take a little luck now and then, but spread it for seventy years. "Now that all of this is happening, I'm sure the rest of my life will be ruined. — Robert Pattinson

Everything established, settled, everything to do with home and order and the common ground, has crumbled into dust and has been swept away in the general upheaval and reorganization of the whole of society. The whole human way of life has been destroyed and ruined. All that's left is the bare, shivering human soul, stripped to the last shred, the naked force of the human psyche for which nothing has changed because it was always cold and shivering and reaching out to its nearest neighbor, as cold and lonely as itself. — Boris Pasternak

But if you were going to change the chain of events that killed your child, where would you begin? How far back would you go? All the way back to their birth? And how many times had you saved your child's life without even realizing how close you'd just come to disaster, to being one link too late in a chain of events that would wrap around your neck and choke you forever? How close had you come to knowing this place - the place where you collapse on your knees with one fist in your belly and the other clutching a blue GAP bag containing your baby's ruined clothes, the place from which there is no going back? — Kelly Kittel

It's not like it ruined my life, I was going to say, but then I didn't. Because it occurred to me that maybe it had ruined my life, in a kind of quiet way
a little lie, probably not so vital, insidiously separating me from everyone I loved. — Dan Chaon

Pops says he loves me just the way I am, but not everyone in the world is like my father. Maman, for example. A difficult and dissatisfied woman. She made me learn flower arranging and how to walk properly
books on my head, the whole bit. These things ruined me for life. Now it sets my teeth on edge when I see flowers carelessly flung into a vase, and I'm forever looking at other women in the street and thinking, [I]Sloppy ... sloppy[/I]. And I know I shouldn't care, and I want to poke myself in the eye for caring, but I care anyway, so thanks for that, Maman. — Helen Oyeyemi

He was there beside her; yet she was far away from him, alone with her outraged love and her ruined life. — Edith Hamilton

Everything that I did, I thought of him. He had consumed me. He has crawled inside of me and become part of me, part of my day-to-day life. Even when he is not in my presence, he is part of everything that I do. He is in my mind. He has infected me.

I paint my nails and I hope. I hope that he praises me. I hope that he smiles. I hope that when he says what he says, whatever it may be, that he ends it with those two words.
Baby girl.
I am ruined. — Scott Hildreth

With this one kiss it was possible Riley Shaughnessy had ruined her for any other man. She'd dated plenty in her life, but no one had ever kissed her like this. And she had a feeling no one else ever would. — Samantha Chase

I was doing bad movies as a day job. And it almost ruined my life for a while. But I have done 130-odd films, and only fourteen have been spooky ones. Im not spooky! I want life! — Karen Black

Independence isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know. What country could be more independent than Russia? And in Russia now there isn't a squeak or a pinpoint of light. I have nowhere to publish. The Contemporary has stuck its head up out of harm's way. So I've stopped quarrelling with the world. I sat in this chair the first morning I woke up in this house ... and for the first time ... for a long time, there was silence. I didn't have to talk or think or move, nothing was expected of me, I knew nobody and nobody knew where i was, everything was behind me, all the moving from place to place, the quarrels and celebrations, the desperate concerns of health and happiness, love, death, printer's errors, picnics ruined by rain, the endless tumult of life ... and I just sat quiet and alone all day, looking at the tops of trees on Primrose Hill through the mist. — Tom Stoppard

My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter warders sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wise to separate. Ah! Moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me. — Oscar Wilde

The absence of you ruined my life. — Rebecca Maizel

It was the blue-tinged taste of a regret so deep you could never plumb its depths. It was the victory at Rajal that never came, it was his brother walking away down the long dark wood corridor, it was a life he might have had in Yhelteth if disgust and fury had not sent him away in disgrace instead. It was the slaves he could not free, the screaming women and children of Ennishmin he could not save, the piled-up, silent dead and the smashed-in, ruined homes. It was every wrong decision he'd ever made, every path he'd failed to walk, fanned out and held up for him to understand, and it hurt. — Richard K. Morgan

It has taken me twenty-eight years to be able to admit that I'm glad I did not know my mother until now. Not because, as my father suspected, she would ruin my life, but because this way, I did not have to bear witness as she ruined hers.
My mother's sorrow is so powerful, it cracks the clay tile beneath her feet; it makes the water in the fountain behind us overflow. "Delia," she says, as her eyes fill with tears. "I'm trying."
"Me, too." I reach for her hand: a compromise, a good-bye. Maybe this is as good as it gets. — Jodi Picoult

Another man whose social life has ruined him. — Dashiell Hammett

It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn't the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn't we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old deathbed? — Graham Greene

What else remains for me? Youth, hope and love; To build a new life on a ruined life. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

When a tree is polled, it will sprout new shoots nearer its roots. A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginnings and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree. — Hermann Hesse

Goethe wrote in 1827, America, you have it better Than our old continent, You have no ruined castles And no ancient basalt. Your inner life remains untroubled By useless memory And futile strife. That was then. Now, almost two hundred years later, we've started to catch up to old Europe. We have plenty of ruined castles now, plenty of wasted strife to call our own. — Colin Dickey

The matter is quite simple. The bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament. — Soren Kierkegaard

I was called fat and ugly in the press almost my entire life. I understand that being judged by others comes with the territory, but it broke my heart and ruined my self-esteem. — Kelly Osbourne

Puddleglum,' they've said, 'You're altogether too full of bobance and bounce and high spirits. You've got to learn that life isn't all fricasseed frogs and ell pie. You want something to sober you down a bit. We're only saying it for your own good, Puddleglum.' That's what they say. Now a job like this
a journey up north just as winter's beginning looking for a prince that probably isn't there, by way of ruined city nobody's ever seen
will be just the thing. If that doesn't steady a chap, I don't know what will. — C.S. Lewis

The war has ruined us for everything. He is right. We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war. The — Erich Maria Remarque

The way I read Billy Carter's testimony, he was a model citizen himself until the voters went and ruined his life by making his brother President. — Calvin Trillin

The Road is not a record of fatherly fidelity; it is a testament to the abyss of a parent's greatest fears. The fear of leaving your child alone, of dying before your child has reached adulthood and learned to work the mechanisms and face the dangers of the world, or found a new partner to face them with. The fear of one day being obliged for your child's own good, for his peace and comfort, to do violence to him or even end his life. And, above all, the fear of knowing - as every parent fears - that you have left your children a world more damaged, more poisoned, more base and violent and cheerless and toxic, more doomed, than the one you inherited. It is in the audacity and single-mindedness with which The Road extends the metaphor of a father's guilt and heartbreak over abandoning his son to shift for himself in a ruined, friendless world that The Road finds its great power to move and horrify the reader. — Michael Chabon

Why must we be so restricted by language, these ruined tongues! These twenty-six letters- how can that explain this agony? How could we ever endeavor to prove what we are here for- through such combinations? Death is just a word someone invented for what happens at the end of a person's life. It's only a word: if there was no word for it we wouldn't be so worried! — Annie Fisher

Once she started awake to a sound like the low roll of drums, and to the south she saw an endless congregation of antelope that moved across the nighted plain, raising a cloud of dust behind them that swallowed the stars and turned the moon rusty brown as a scrape of ruined iron. Near dawn, in that darkest hour, she raised her head again and saw to the north the passage of sails. They hovered across the deep like a parade of phantom cavaliers tilted upon hellish steeds. They passed in waves, ranks upon ranks of ghostly warlords bent toward the coming dawn as if to impale the sun itself and set it atop a spike in the blackened sky. — A.S. Peterson

Dan: You've ruined my life.
Anna: You'll get over it. — Patrick Marber

Men have grown embarrassingly weak, but only through observation. Their resolve can easily be broken by a woman. Their emotions can be easily manipulated by a woman. Their power can be easily taken by a woman. Their pride can be easily stripped by a woman. Their entire life can easily be ruined by a woman. While physically stronger, their manipulative prowess can be wittingly outclassed by a woman. And while their dreams are stronger, the realities of women are stronger. — Lionel Suggs

I have never had a first kiss like this. Is it that he's a stranger? So beautiful? If so, I am ruined for anything but beautiful strangers for the rest of my life. He is so hungry seeming, so explicit with his lips and teeth from every angle he tips my head into. I can feel my heart pounding every place ... — Mary Ann Rivers

Know must look the same. He'd never thought he'd be someone with tired eyes. Never thought, he'd stare across a fire at a girl who had them, a girl who'd lied to him and insulted him and, really, when it came down to it, ruined his life. He never thought he'd want to keep staring at her. (The Frog Prince Story. — Alex London

Are you all right, Sir?"
Yes, I'm fine. My life is totally ruined but I'm fine. I feel free, detached from everything."
"Then you're an outsider to life. — Tionne Rogers

Why did I stay? My self-esteem was ruined for a very long time. I was socially isolated from my family and friends. I kept everything that was going on in my marriage a secret. I feared for my safety if I left him. I was financially dependent on my spouse. I am an educated woman who was working towards a master's degree when I met him. He persuaded me to stop school after the birth of our first son. Eventually, he trapped me in his web of lies. I believe I suffered from Stockholm syndrome for many years. It isn't easy to leave. Unless you have lived in an abusive relationship, a typical person wouldn't understand. It seems perfectly logical to an outsider that it would be easy to leave an abusive relationship. It truly isn't and walking away is terrifying for a victim. No one deserves to live his or her life as a prisoner. Love shouldn't hurt and abuse is not love. - Mary Laumbach-Perez — Bree Bonchay

If Nana thinks you're trying to scam her, she'll tell you, and if she thinks you ruined her life by discontinuing Arnold's Thin bread, she'll let you know that, too. I guess when you spend eighty-seven years swallowing other people's bullshit, there comes a time when you gotta spit some back. — Laurie Notaro

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, There's just something about you that pisses me off. — Stephen King

Spirituality is a mixed-up, topsy-turvy, helter-skelter godliness that turns our lives into an upside-down toboggan ride of unexpected turns, surprise bumps and bone shattering crashes ... a life ruined by a Jesus who loves us right into his arms. — Mike Yaconelli

I love books that create worlds for me that I don't want to leave. I recently lost my entire life to Haruki Murakami - 1Q84. I tell people that book ruined my life in the best possible way. I couldn't think of anything else for weeks after I read it. — Sarah Kay

There is nothing so costly to the state as a ruined life — Catherine Helen Spence

And what is a man? He is someone who rises when life has knocked him down. He is someone who raises his fist to heaven when a storm has ruined his crop
and then plants again. And again. A man remains unbroken by the savage twists of fate.
That man may never win. But when he sees himself reflected, he can be proud of what he sees. For low he may be in the present scheme of things: peasant, serf, or dispossessed. But he is unconquerable — David Gemmell

I would say Pittsburgh softly each time before throwing him up. Whisper Pittsburgh with my mouth against the tiny ear and throw him higher. Pittsburgh and happiness high up. The only way to leave even the smallest trace. So that all his life her son would feel gladness unaccountably when anyone spoke of the ruined city of steel in America. Each time almost remembering something maybe important that got lost. — Jack Gilbert

I think it's an amazing quality to be able to roll with the punches and not be totally ruined as a person because life's been rough for you. That's a really admirable way to go through your life. — Anna Paquin

I'm very thankful for the people that I've had the opportunity to work with. I have a good life. It's been amazing. I'm not complaining. It's not like acting has ruined me so I have to leave. It's not that. I'm just done with it. — Joaquin Phoenix

One evening we were exploring the Baths of Caracalla together, while debating the question of merit or demerit in human behaviour and its rewards in life. As I was propounding some outrageous thesis or another in answer to the strictly orthodox and pious views put forward by him, his foot slipped and the next moment he was lying in a bruised condition at the bottom of a steep ruined staircase.
'Look at that for divine justice,' I said, helping him onto his feet. 'I blaspheme, you fall.'
This irreverence, accompanied by roars of laughter, apparently went to far, and thenceforth all religious arguments were banned. — Hector Berlioz

It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. — Oscar Wilde

Well, truth's like the sun. Look right at it and that's your eyes ruined for life. — Ali Smith

The senseless destruction that war brings," he explains. "The ones who always pay the price of another's greed is the simple man who just wants to go about his life, take joy in his family, and find peace at the end. They didn't ask for it, don't understand why it's happening, but theirs are the lives ruined, turned upside down, families destroyed. — Brian S. Pratt

He fucked my wife!" George wailed. "He ruined my life!"

"Your wife was a goddamn whore! — Barry Lyga

Daniel had ruined that couple's life. Killed their daughter.
All because he'd been some hotshot angel who saw something he wanted and went after it. — Lauren Kate

Why?" He sounded bemused. He'd whispered the word.
She supposed he meant: why are you here? Because her mind answered with: Because I love you, and damn you for it. You have both made my life worth living and utterly ruined it, and I'm grateful that you did.
She smiled faintly. She would never say it. — Julie Anne Long

Gossip and slander are not victimless crimes. Words do not just dissipate into midair ... Words can injure and damage, maim and destroy - forcefully, painfully, lastingly ... Plans have been disrupted, deals have been lost, companies have fallen, because of idle gossip or malicious slander. Reputations have been sullied, careers have been ruined, lives have been devastated, because of cruel lies or vicious rumors ... Your words have such power to do good or evil that they must be chosen carefully, wisely, and well. — Wayne D. Dosick

I just wish life was more like my books," Fern complained [ ... ] "Main characters never die in books. If they did, the story would be ruined, or over."
"Everybody is a main character to someone," Bailey theorized, winding his way through the busy hall and out the nearest exit into the November afternoon. "There are no minor characters. — Amy Harmon

There is no such thing as an acceptable level of unemployment, because hunger is not acceptable, poverty is not acceptable, poor health is not acceptable, and a ruined life is not acceptable. — Hubert H. Humphrey

Who am I to say that these things might not be forever? Who is Peter Van Houten to assert as fact the conjecture that our labor is temporary? All I know of heaven and all I know of death is in this park; an elegant universe in ceaseless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children. — John Green

It's not just that,' she said, trying to explain in a way he would understand. 'My life - any lady's life - is made up of morning calls, and musicales, and balls. I would be thrown out of society. No one would receive me or send invitations. That's what it means to be ruined. — Eloisa James

John had been a footman nearly all of his adult life. He knew decorum and appropriate behavior for his situation. But when he glanced from one twin to another, he nearly ruined his reputation and self-respect forever with...a smile. — Sarah Brazytis

As a teenager I was both prurient and prudish. I was so full of self-loathing that in my mind it was unthinkable that any girl would ever want me. I hated everything about myself.
The way I looked.
How I spoke.
Even how I thought.
In my head I believed myself to be completely and utterly unworthy of love.
My life had only just begun but I felt that I had already ruined it. — David Walliams

So what if my life isn't turning out exactly the way I'd planned? It's not ruined, it'll just be different. — Katherine Allred

Defenders of the prosecution seem to think that anyone charged with a felony must somehow deserve punishment. That idea can only be sustained without actual exposure to the legal system. Yes, most of the time prosecutors do chase actual wrongdoers, but today our criminal laws are so expansive that most people of any vigor and spirit can be found to violate them in some way. Basically, under American law, anyone interesting is a felon. The prosecutors, not the law, decide who deserves punishment.

Today, prosecutors feel they have license to treat leakers of information like crime lords or terrorists. In an age when our frontiers are digital, the criminal system threatens something intangible but incredibly valuable. It threatens youthful vigor, difference in outlook, the freedom to break some rules and not be condemned or ruined for the rest of your life. — Tim Wu

Her mother likes to say that novels have ruined Amelia for real men. This observation insults Amelia because it implies that she only reads books with classically romantic heroes. She does not mind the occasional novel with a romantic hero but her reading taste are far more varied than that. Furthermore, she adores Humbert Humbert as a character while accepting the fact that she wouldn't really want him for a life partner, a boyfriend, or even a casual acquaintance. She feels the same way about Holden Caulfield, and Misters Rochester and Darcy. — Gabrielle Zevin

She looked at him; she did not speak. He was there beside her, yet she was far away from him, alone with her outraged love and her ruined life. His feelings had nothing in them to make him silent. — Edith Hamilton

Since your father has escaped my justice, it is you who must hear my words."
"Words. You keep saying ... "
"Because that was the gift your father gave to me. And the curse that ruined me as well, changed my life to wretched misery. There are hours yet before the guard comes - nay, eons. An eternity, in fact. This is my time, Miranda. Now you will have your words back: before I kill you, you will hear my tale ... and you will know what you have done. — Tad Williams

Throughout my life I have seen, without one exception, narrow-shouldered men performing innumerable idiotic acts, brustalising their fellows, and corrupted souls by every means. They call the motive for their actions: fame. Seeing these exhibitions I've longed to laugh, with the rest, but that strange imitation was impossible. Taking a penknife with a sharp-edged blade, I slit the flesh at the points joining the lips. For an instant I believed my aim was achieved. I saw in a mirror the mouth ruined at my own will! An error! Besides, the blood gushing freely from the two wounds prevented my distinguishing whether this really was the grin of others. But after some moments of comparison I saw quite clearly that my smile did not resemble that of humans: the fact is, I was not laughing. — Comte De Lautreamont

You would be derailing your life voluntarily out of fear that it might become ruined by chance. Or you could pick up and move on. Those were the only choices. — Nicole Bernier

A fortune for one man that was more than he needed should not be built on ten thousand ruined men who were left without the means of life. — Arthur Conan Doyle

At the very outset of the Christian life these two things should be very distinct with you
sin which has ruined you, and Christ who has saved you. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Which I guess is better than her playing her usual role in How I Ruined My Daughter's Life. — Wendelin Van Draanen

We live in a disposable world. There's no point in investing yourself too heavily.
Love doesn't fix anything ... it destroys more than it fixes. and when the dust has settled, it's just an afterthought. Lives still get ruined, people still leave, and life goes on and on and on.
the first forty-eight hours are the worst. the ego's taken a bit of a kicking. what you need is a constant supply of alcohol.
today was a day for taking tranquilizers washed down by vodka. — Kathleen Tessaro

If I had to wish for something, just one thing, it would be that Hannah would never see Tate the way I did. Never see Tate's beautiful, lush hair turn brittle, her skin sallow, her teeth ruined by anything she could get her hands on that would make her forget. That Hannah would never count how many men there were, or how vile humans can be to one another. That she would never see the moments in my life that were full of neglect, and fear, and revulsion, moments I can never go back to because I know they will slow me down for the rest of my life if I let myself remember them for one moment. Tate, who had kept Hannah alive that night, reading her the story of Jem Finch and Mrs. Dubose. And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life. — Melina Marchetta

The true luxury and the real potlatch of our times falls to the poverty-stricken, that is, to the individual who lies down and scoffs. A genuine luxury requires the complete contempt for riches, the somber indifference of the individual who refuses to work and makes his life on the one hand an infinitely ruined splendor, and on the other, a silent insult to the laborious lie of the rich. — Georges Bataille

You fueled my obession, even encouraged it and your selfishness ruined my life — Novala Takemoto

A life had been ruined. What was it for: just some social media drama? I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we've created a stage for constant artificial high drama. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. It's all very sweeping, and not the way we actually are as people. — Jon Ronson

My new favorite title is How Jane Austen Ruined My Life. I don't have the courage to read it, though. I'm afraid to discover she's ruined mine as well. — Katherine Reay

You, your families, your friends and your countries are to be exterminated by the common decision of a few brutal but powerful men. To please these men, all the private affections, all the public hopes, all that has been achieved in art, and knowledge and thought and all that might be achieved hereafter is to be wiped out forever. Our ruined lifeless planet will continue for countless ages to circle aimlessly round the sun unredeemed by the joys and loves, the occasional wisdom and the power to create beauty which have given value to human life. — Bertrand Russell