Quotes & Sayings About Obliteration

Commanded love of all men indiscriminately is an obliteration of distinction between love and hate, and therefore is not love at all. — Benjamin Tucker

The clarity was startling and Samson wondered whether he was imagining these moments. Not that they hadn't happened at all, but that they had been embellished by details from elsewhere, fragments that survived the obliteration of other memories, vagrant data that gravitated and stuck to what was left to remember. But in the end he rejected this idea. The memories were too perfect: take one detail away and they collapsed into disorder. — Nicole Krauss

So, uh," I said, shuffling from one foot to the other, "want to go with me to check up on Obliteration? If you're not doing anything else important, I mean."
She cocked her head. "Did you just invite me on a date ... to spy on a deadly Epic planning to destroy the city?"
"Well, I don't have a lot of experience with dating, but I've always heard you're supposed to pick something you know the girl will enjoy ... "
She smiled. "Well, let's get to it then. — Brandon Sanderson

I have sat in the dark and looked at them both, the child and the woman. And the feeling has become too much. It is not sorrow or joy; it is the weight and the pressure of having been brought into their lives, and of knowing that if one were ever to be separated from them, it would mean your obliteration. — Peter Hoeg

The avalanche of time sweeps everything before it. Every individual instant hurtles into oblivion, drowning out the obliteration of the instant immediately preceding it, and then it too disappears under the onslaught of the next and the next and the next. When the avalanche has shuddered past for a long enough time, the perception of the past evolves. Distant events grow beyond mere history and take on the weight of legend. — David Gerrold

The whole of progress tends in the direction of solution. Some day we shall be amazed. As the human race mounts upward, the deep layers emerge naturally from the zone of distress. The obliteration of misery will be accomplished by a simple elevation of level. — Victor Hugo

For me, sleep equaled death. How was closing your eyes and losing consciousness any different from death? What separated temporary loss of consciousness from permanent obliteration? — Lena Dunham

Doubt was a giant-sized beast with heavy boots that pounded through the cities of the mind, sparking an occasional life only so Hope could rise again for a splendid recrushing. Doubt reveled in nothing more than destroying Hope. And Hope, being immortal, lived out its days with blithe indifference to its regular obliteration. Neither cared at all about the suffering they caused: Doubt because it enjoyed suffering; Hope because it was too stupid to recognize it. — Sean DeLauder

But the artist began to have misgivings as the wall underwent its transformation. Bigger than any pavement project he had yet undertaken, it made him restless. Over the years, a precise cycle had entered the rhythm of his life, the cycle of arrival, creation, and obliteration. Like sleeping, waking and stretching, or eating, digesting and excreting, the cycle sang in harmony with the blood in his veins and the breath in his lungs. He learned to disdain the overlong sojourn and the procrastinated departure, for they were the progenitors of complacent routine, to be shunned at all costs. The journey
chanced, unplanned, solitary
was the thing to relish.
Now, however, his old way of life was being threatened. The agreeable neighborhood and the solidity of the long, black wall were reawakening in him the usual sources of human sorrow: a yearning for permanence, for roots, for something he could call his own ... — Rohinton Mistry

Oh," Obliteration continued, "I think that you'll find a man can do many things thought impossible, if he tries hard enough. — Brandon Sanderson

The "How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others" essay was so hard to write because of the memories, the sensory stuff, but also because it didn't follow the form of any essay that I've ever read. And the truth that I was exploring necessitated that obliteration of traditional form, I think. — Kiese Laymon

Mr. Darwin contributes some striking and ingenious instances of the way in which the principle partially affects the chain, or rather network of life, even to the total obliteration of certain meshes. — Richard Owen

The Grace represents the interconnection of everything, the world of life and the world of the dead, Additive and Subtractive, as well as the spark of the gift that runs though it all. The Grace does more though, than simply represent Additive and Subtractive magic, Creation and obliteration, life and death, it connects them into a cohesive whole. The power of Orden deals with life, death and the whole nature of existence so the key also needs to have both sides. It needs both Additive and Subtractive, life and death to be complete. — Terry Goodkind

It becomes more and more difficult to avoid the idea of black men as subjects of not just racial profiling but of an insidious form of racial obliteration sanctioned by silence. — Aberjhani

United have spent all season commemorating the 50th anniversary of Busby's decision to defy the Football League and take the club on a tragic and triumphant journey into Europe, but no orchestrated event could conjure the celebrations ignited by last night's outstanding obliteration of Roma or deliver a more fitting tribute. — Andy Hunter

Certainly, I devote my energy to both telling my personal life story and seeking self- obliteration. However, I will not destroy myself through art. — Yayoi Kusama

One look at each other and it was immediately understood that they both needed a clean slate,,, The obliteration of memory. — Colum McCann

I find in working always the disturbing intrusion of elements not a part of my most interested vision, and the inevitable obliteration and replacement of this vision by the work itself as it proceeds. — Edward Hopper

When the bombs fell, it wasn't a war; it was an obliteration. No one had any idea who shot first or why. — Joe Reyes

To almost no one's surprise, Astrid said, "Dune, by Frank Herbert. 'I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the Fear has gone there will be nothing.'"
She and Lana together spoke the last phrase of the incantation. "'Only I will remain. — Michael Grant

You can't deny Eros. Eros wills trike, like lightning. Our human defenses are frail, ludicrous. Like plasterboard houses in a hurricane. Your triumph is in perfect submission. And the god of Eros will flow through you, as Lawrence says, in the 'perfect obliteration of blood consciousness. — Joyce Carol Oates

In that smooth fortress of glass, I caught a glimpse of my corruption gripping steel, which before I had thought of as my salvation, but now represented my obliteration. — J.D. Stroube

The few surviving Armenians no longer ask to go home. They do not ask for restitution. They ask simply to have the memory of their obliteration acknowledged. It is a moral obsession, the lonely legacy passed onto the third and fourth generation who no longer speak Armenian but who carry within them the seeds of resentment that will not be quashed. — Chris Hedges

He's already writing the catalog copy in his mind. Dehumanizing distortions, the obliteration of self, with a nod to Francis Bacon or Steven Cohen. Heck, David Bowie. There — Lauren Beukes

There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness especially, perhaps. Dolores describes these persons as afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf them. I am saying that such persons usually have a very fragile sense of themselves as persons. As existing at all, — David Foster Wallace

Destroying your enemies - even destroying a planet - was understandable. But this wasn't simple destruction. It was annihilation; obliteration. The very fabric of the Force had been shredded. Anyone capable of turning an entire planet into a nihilistic abomination had to be completely mad. — Drew Karpyshyn

obliteration of the Negro home. A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems. — W.E.B. Du Bois

No mortal thing has a beginning, nor does it end in death and obliteration; there is only a mixing and then separating of what was mixed, but by mortal men these processes are named "beginnings. — Empedocles

it was too late, the buildings were falling to dust, eaten by the invisible jaws of quantum desintegrators, and hostiles had ringed the city in deadly mechas. that void of obliteration plucked me away from any kind of hope. no warning was made, only the halo of plasma guns juicing up behind walls of lifeless wreck. and then i was buried in the dirt left only for the gods to remember — Unknown

In fact, every place I've been to in Africa has a nice part, but you see the downside. Calcutta , parts of Central and South America , I've seen a lot of dead bodies and a lot of sad poverty and just obliteration. — Henry Rollins

Politically, the goal of today's dominant trend
is statism.
Philosophically, the goal is the
obliteration of reason;
psychologically, it is the
erosion of ambition. — Ayn Rand

The light came into the darkness, and the darkness did not understand it, but that no longer mattered because the light was now obliteration the darkness. — Ted Dekker

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. — Frank Herbert

By means of supernatural horror we may evade, if momentarily, the horrific reprisals of affirmation. Every one of us, having been stolen from nonexistence, opens his eyes on the world and looks down the road at a few convulsions and a final obliteration. What a weird scenario. So why affirm anything, why make a pathetic virtue of a terrible necessity? We are destined to a fool's fate that deserves to be mocked. And since there is no one else around to do the mocking, we will take on the job. So let us delight in the Cosmic Macabre. At least we may send up a few bitter laughs into the cobwebbed corners of this crusty old universe. — Thomas Ligotti

So, like I said, these are a bunch of really sweet guys, but you wouldn't want to share a Galaxy with them, not if they're just gonna keep at it, not if they're not gonna learn to relax a little. I mean it's just gonna be continual nervous time, isn't it, right? Pow, pow, pow, when are they next coming at us? Peaceful coexistence is just right out, right? Get me some water somebody, thank you."

He sat back and sipped reflectively.

OK," he said, "hear me, hear me. It's, like, these guys, you know, are entitled to their own view of the Universe. And according to their view, which the Universe forced on them, right, they did right. Sounds crazy, but I think you'll agree. They believe in ..."

He consulted a piece of paper which he found in the back pocket of his Judicial jeans.

They believe in 'peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life, and the obliteration of all other life forms'. — Douglas Adams

Many spiritual seekers who say their wish is to awaken don't actually want what they believe they do. This becomes clear sometimes at the approach to the brink of what feels like a void, where the obliteration of the egoic self seems imminent. With a shocked recognition of what is being asked, the person will recoil. The scale of the loss-the dissolution of the familiar self-is beyond what was bargained for. — Jan Frazier

Woman suffrage is an unjust, unreasonable, unspiritual abnormality. It is a hard, undigested, tasteless, devitalized proposition. It is a half-fledged, unmusical, Promethean abomination. It is a quack bolus to reduce masculinity even by the obliteration of femininity. — John Boyle O'Reilly

Obliteration bombing of civilian populations had come to be seen as a military necessity. A terrible evil had been defended as a way to a greater good. After the bomb, all sorts of moral compromises were easier - nearly two million abortions a year seemed a mere matter of freedom of choice, and the plight of the poor in the world's richest nation was a matter of economic necessity. — William H. Willimon

It is clear, for example, that many Americans did not like the idea of avant-garde art, especially in relation to women's fashion. Many people were particularly indignant about what seemed to them the deliberate obliteration of sexual attractiveness, which they identified with the tightwaisted dress and the hourglass figure. — Valerie Steele

The thought of continually eating something like macaroni, spat out by machinery, fills me with fear and revulsion, so I make macaroni sculptures. I make them and make them and then keep on making them, until I bury myself in the process. I call this 'obliteration.' — Yayoi Kusama

Now I often think of the first time I received artillery fire, and the subsequent obliteration of the enemy observation post. I'll never know how many men manned the OP, but in memory I fix the number at two, and though at the time I was angry that the pompus captain took the handset from me and stole m y kills, I have lately been thankful he insisted on calling the fire mission, ans sometimes when I am feeling hopeful or even religious, I think that buy taking my two kills the pompous captain handed me life, some extra moments of living for myself or that I can offer others, though I have no idea to use or disuse these extra moments, or if I've wasted them already. — Anthony Swofford

And that's what I wanted: obliteration. Decimation. Just an instant smear of me right out of all this rising and falling and nothing changing that feels like living. — Andre Dubus III

It is not difference that dominates the world, but the obliteration of difference by mimetic reciprocity, which itself, being truly universal, shows the relativism of perpetual difference to be an illusion. — Rene Girard

Mistaken
regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human
life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as
are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the
unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race. — Madison Grant

It isn't dying I'm afraid of, it isn't that at all; I know what it is to die, I've died already. It is the endless obliteration, the knowledge that there will never be anything else. That's what I can't stand, to try so hard and to end in nothing. You know what I mean, don't you? ... I really loved to write. — Cornell Woolrich

Some distant day, anthropologists will consider as a landmark in humankind's evolution - comparable to the capacity for destroying ourselves by nuclear obliteration - the adolescent gene's newly emergent power to dictate nightly TV viewing. — Steve Erickson

But in the end one also has to understand that the needs that religion has satisfied and philosophy is now supposed to satisfy are not immutable; they can be weakened and exterminated. Consider, for example, that Christian distress of mind that comes from sighing over ones inner depravity and care for ones salvation - all concepts originating in nothing but errors of reason and deserving, not satisfaction, but obliteration. — Friedrich Nietzsche

FEAR IS THE MIND-KILLER. FEAR IS THE LITTLE-DEATH THAT BRINGS TOTAL OBLITERATION. — Frank Herbert

There is going to be destruction: the obliteration of a person, his intellect, his experience and his agency. I am to watch it. This is my part. — Marion Coutts

He created waterfalls for her out of the morning dew, and from the colored pebbles of a meadow stream he made a necklace more beautiful than emeralds, sadder than pearls. She caught him in her net of silken hair, she carried him down, down, into deep and silent waters, past obliteration. He showed her frozen stars and molten sun; she gave him long, entwined shadows and the sound of black velvet. He reached out to her and touched moss, grass, ancient trees, iridescent rocks; her fingertips, striving upwards, brushed old planets and silver moonlight, the flash of comets and the cry of dissolving suns. — Robert Sheckley

This swallowing up of life in nothingness, this obliteration of life by nothingness is what the emotion of malice ultimately desires. The eternal conflict between love and malice is the eternal contest between life and death. And this contest is what the complex vision reveals, as it moves from darkness to darkness. — John Cowper Powys

Mental illness didn't really change people. It just made them more of who they were going to be anyway. Mental illness was less like obliteration, more like italics. — Heather Sellers