Ruined Things Quotes & Sayings

A majority of women's magazines feature women who do amazing things, but then the article focuses on how she ruined it with her shoes. — Caitlin Moran

A man's character is like his house. If he tears boards off his house and burns them to keep himself warm and comfortable, his house soon becomes a ruin. If he tells lies to be able to do the things he shouldn't do but wants to, his character will soon become a ruin. A man with a ruined character is a shame on the face of the earth. — Ralph Moody

I believe in diversification of income, because you never know what will happen. I'm a slightly paranoid person who thinks things could be ruined at any time. — Eugene Mirman

... and pulled out, of all things, a pack of cigarettes ...
... "Are you serious?" I asked. "You think that's cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing."
"Which whole thing?" he asked, turning to me ...
... "The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER ... — John Green

I've always been aware that the image you patiently construct for an entire career can be ruined in a minute. It scares you a bit, but that's the way things are. — Roger Federer

Reading 'Youth in Revolt' might have ruined my career because suddenly I wanted to abandon all the emotional truth of something and just go out far on a literary limb with completely implausible things that relied completely on voice and humor. And what saved me is realizing that I couldn't do that very well. — Rob Thomas

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

There are two truths," said Katie finally. "As a mother, I say it would have been a terrible thing for a girl to sleep with a stranger
a man she had known less than forty-eight hours. Horrible things might have happened to you. Your whole life might have been ruined. As your mother, I tell you the truth.
"But as a woman ... " she hesitated. "I will tell you the truth as a woman. It would have been a very beautiful thing. Because there is only once that you love that way. — Betty Smith

The story was gradually taking shape. Pilon liked it this way. It ruined a story to have it all come out quickly. The good story lay in half-told things which must be filled in out of the hearer's own experience. — John Steinbeck

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 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

Just by being with me, I feel like I have ruined a lot of things around you. — Mika Yamamori

Come on," Alec said, already stomping down the ramp. "Let's find us a squirrel." He swept the weapon back and forth as he walked, looking for any interlopers. "Or better yet, one of the crazies who might've strayed over here. Too bad these things have to be charged or we could get rid of this virus problem in a jiffy. Sweep these old neighborhoods nice and clean."
Mark joined him on the ground below the Berg, wary that someone might be watching from the ruined homes surrounding them or from the burnt woods beyond those. "Your value of human life brings tears to my eyes," he muttered. — James Dashner

Crackheads destroy things. First, their lives, obviously. And then their families. But they also destroy houses. They light fires and they have poor judgment; both things are required if you're going to be a crackhead. They make houses burn down. They're not as thorough as meth heads, who have the benefit of their exploding labs, but crackheads have left a respectable number of ruined buildings in their wake. A crackhead did it is a reasonable cause of destruction on any forensic report. A history of crackhead infestation is a legitimate explanation for loss of property. — Mat Johnson

It's no surprise to me that intellectuals commit suicide, go mad or die from drink. We feel things more than other people. We know the world is rotten and that chins are ruined by spots. — Sue Townsend

Klonopin ruined my lie. It takes away your drive, and in the morning, you don't want to get out of bed, because you feel so groggy. I don't even know what it's like to feel normal. This is my world. Things don't get me as excited as most people because I'm in a constant state of sedation. It should never have been prescribed for long-term use. — Robert Whitaker

Most days, for the last dozen or so years, I attributed to Charlie, or at least to our breakup, most things that have gone wrong for me. Like: I wouldn't have packed in college; I wouldn't have gone to work in Record and Tape; I wouldn't have had an unsatisfactory personal life. This is the woman who broke my heart, who ruined my life, this woman is single-handedly responsible for my poverty and directionlessness and failure, the woman I dreamed about regularly for a good five years. — Nick Hornby

One had to be so careful ... about remembering things. Thinking and remembering were something like walking along well-known paths and passageways that always used to lead to something lovely ... but now, the same paths and passageways might end in something dead or frightening.
Yes, one had to walk on tiptoe, remembering to look carefully ahead and turn quickly away before one was faced with something ruined or dead. The thing to do was to make little tunnels or thoughtways, from now to once-upon-a-time, each leading to a lovely thing to remember. — Kate Seredy

I used to wish I had an easier life," he mused. "Some families sail through years with nothing touching them. They have no tragedies. They go on about how lucky they are. Yet sometimes it seems to me they're half alive. When something goes wrong for them, and it does for everyone sooner or later, their trauma is much worse. They've had nothing bad happen to them before. In the meantime, they think little problems, like losing a wallet, are big deals. They think it's ruined their day. They have no idea what a hard day's like. It's going to be incredibly tough for them when they find out."
He'd also developed his own version of making the most of every minute. "Through Sam I found out how quickly things can change. Because of him I've learned to appreciate each moment and try not to hold on to things. Life's more exciting and intense that way. It's like the yogurt that goes off after three days. It tastes so much better than the stuff that lasts three weeks. — Helen Brown

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

I cried for all of those things that should have just been for us ... — Kate Chisman

My house got flooded in Los Angeles and completely ruined it. People asked how did your house flood on the hills in LA? It was a plumbing problem that the landlord didn't fix, so everything got ruined there. It's one of those things where you take the opportunity and run with it. My producers are here and we're working on the new album here, and I was here all of the time so it made sense to spend some time here, so we'll just see what happens. It's definitely very different. — DJ Rap

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

All the baby books written by women who had the most perfect birth experience in the world said you should talk to your child in the womb. That was about the only piece of advice I took from those things. Every day I told him if he ruined my vagina I would video tape his birth and show all his future girlfriends what happened to your who-ha when you had sex, ensuring that he will never, ever get laid. — Tara Sivec

I do not want to date you."
He groaned. "Liv. You've got to be kidding me. I picked up my whole life, drove halfway across the country, and you've changed your mind? It's only been fifteen days since you told me you still love me!"
"Shut up, will you? Will you please just shut up and kiss me again, you big idiot?" With both hands on his face, she molded her lips to his as her heart did a happy dance in her chest. Between kisses, she said, "I want to live with you and marry you and have a family with you and share your life
all the things you said you wanted from me before I ruined it. So no, I will not date you. — Marie Force

A sense of calm envelopes me, a feeling close to rapture. Swimming is one of the best things in my life. It has never solved any problems, but it has done no harm, and nothing has ever ruined it for me. Swimming. — Haruki Murakami

Had I not done Shakespeare, Pinter, Moliere and things such as 'Godspell' - I played Judas in a hugely successful production before I did 'Elm Street' - I'd probably be on a psychiatrist's couch saying: 'Freddy ruined me.' But I'd already done 13 movies and years of non-stop theatre. — Robert Englund

He kept making me feel things in ruined places. — Alexis Hall

The rain began to fall harder, and it distracted him, but he tried to pull himself back because he felt on the verge of understanding something large and important. It seemed to him that this moment - the light and wind, the sweep of fields, the falling rain, the lowing cows, Leah's form as it twisted to one side and then another - captured a sort of life that he longed for, a life of order and harsh beauty, and although this was his farm and his vision, it did not seem to be his life. It seemed instead to be the thing for which he must daily give up his life, an act of submission to something he could not name and only rarely, in moments such as these, have a sense of. Life during these moments seemed neither lost nor ruined but a power to be shared, as the grass shares its power with the living things that devour it. — Robert Boswell

You should know how great things were before you. Even so, they're better still today. I can't think of who I was before you ruined everything in the nicest way. — Jonathan Coulton

I miss her some nights,
I still think of her, more than I thought I would.
I hate her, but there will always be a part of me that loves her. A part of me that will remember, the little things. The few times she wasn't completely out of her mind. She cared so much, I know that. She tried her best I know that too. The woman who brought me into this life may have ruined me, all of me, but I will remember the little things. — Anya

I do not recall my own first glance of love, my own first gift of love. Yet it happened. Those divine simplicities are erased from my heart. Good God, then what do I retain that is of value? The little boy that I was is dead forever, before my eyes. I survived him, but forgetfulness tormented me, then overcame me, the sad process of living ruined me, and I scarcely know what he knew. I remember things at random only, but the most beautiful, the sweetest memories are gone. — Henri Barbusse

Hoddan began suddenly to see real possibilities. This was not a direct move toward the realization of his personal ambitions. But on the other hand, it wasn't a movement away from them. Hoddan suddenly remembered an oration he'd heard his grandfather give many, many times in the past.
"Straight thinkin'," the old man had said obstinately, "is a delusion. You think things out clear and simple, and you can see yourself ruined and your family starving any day! But real things ain't simple! They ain't clear! Any time you try to figure things out so they're simple and straightforward, you're goin' against nature and you're going to get 'em mixed up! So when something happens and you're in a straightforward, hopeless fix - why, you go along with nature! Make it as complicated as you can, and the people who want you in trouble will get hopeless confused and you can get out! — Murray Leinster

Hemingway should have stayed in the Midwest. He ruined things for the rest of us, telling all those lies. The lie about courage, the lie about every red-blooded male needing to kill a bull or climb Mount Kilimanjaro. — Francine Prose

People like to say things like 'all work is prostitution'. Most work is exploitation, but most work is not prostitution. Prostitution is prostitution, a very specific sort of exploitation ... And while I am doing literal corrections to flippant turns of phrase, the earth doesn't get raped. It gets mined and poisoned and blown up and depleted, it gets ruined, but it doesn't get raped. — Michelle Tea

Men will not look at things as they really are, but as they wish them to be
and are ruined. — W.K. Marriott

Surely the greatest mercy granted us by Providence is our ignorance of the future. Imagine if we knew the outcome of our hopes and plans, or could see the manner in which we are doomed to die - how ruined our lives would be! Instead we live on dumbly from day to day as happily as animals. But all things must come to dust eventually. No human being, no system, no age is impervious to this law; everything beneath the stars will perish; the hardest rock will be worn away. Nothing endures but words. — Robert Harris

The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things. — Ernest Dimnet

I realized that her life
her feelings for things
had been ruined
along the way
and that I was no more than a
temporary
companion — Charles Bukowski

My outlook has changed, Antonia. Last year this time, I'd bemoaned the ruined hay." He shrugged. "Now I know what real loss is. So I'm seeing things differently. — Debra Holland

Are you all right? With your Guild, I mean?"
Alain considered the question. "They suspect me of being attracted to a Mechanic. They are right, but so far lack proof. They do not suspect that I love you, or who you are, but I have no doubt of what they will do if they discover either of those things."
"Oh, blazes." Mari lowered her head to rest her brow against the cool stone of the fortification. "I have ruined your life."
"You have given me back my life. — Jack Campbell

I stood in the doorway and watched Dennis unbuttoning the blouse, pulling long shirttails out of her skirt and wetting her hair with his hands, letting hairspray clump together in long strands. Ruined like that, in front of me. It was hard to watch because it was so clean, so perfect.

The glow from the television screen crawls over their faces and it's hard to convince yourself they are breathing, living things. — Laurie Perez

Then, slowly, my feet settled to the ground. Before I had taken six steps I sagged like a sail when the wind fades. As I walked back through the town, past sleeping houses and dark inns, my mood swung from elation to doubt in the space of three brief breaths.
I had ruined everything. All the things I had said, things that seemed so clever at the time, were in fact the worst things a fool could say. Even now she was inside, breathing a sigh of relief to finally be rid of me.
But she had smiled. Had laughed.
She hadn't remembered our first meeting on the road from Tarbean. I couldn't have made that much of an impression on her.
'Steal me,' she had said.
I should have been bolder and kissed her at the end. I should have been more cautious. I had talked too much. I had said too little. — Patrick Rothfuss

Things get ruined the moment you say, 'What will become of me? It means that you have no regard for the Soul. The Soul within has infinite energy, why not ask the Soul for strength [power]? — Dada Bhagwan

High definition ruined a lot of things that I used to hold sacrosanct in pornography. — Doug Stanhope

That was horrible. Horrible. That poor little guy."
Pex was unrepentant. "Yeah, well, he asked for it. Calling us ... all those things."
But
buried alive! That's like in that horror movie. Y'know
the one with all the horror."
I think I saw that one. With all the words going up on the screen at the end?"
Yeah, that was it. Tell you the truth, those words kinda ruined it for me. — Eoin Colfer

Don't we all discover, at some stage or another that there are some things we'll never get any better at, even though we have no idea why and hardly ever notice it when it happens, even though we may have enjoyed these things and might not have been lagging behind last time we checked? Learning to draw, for instance, was a familiar catastrophe - all of a sudden, unaware, you just stop getting any better at it, your drawings never progress beyond those of a four-year-old or a six-year-old, you're left behind by those who "can draw," condemned to producing flat, doughy figures on the page, with no sense of perspective to them and (this was what really struck me) no resemblance to the outside world: condemned by your ruined self to a shameful childhood. — Jean-Christophe Valtat

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

There was no back home any more, not in the essential way, and that was part of Paris too. Why we couldn't stop drinking or talking or kissing the wrong people no matter what it ruined. Some of us had looked into the faces of the dead and tried not to remember anything in particular. Ernest was one of these. He often said he'd died in the war, just for a moment; that his soul had left his body like a silk handkerchief, slipping out and levitating over his chest. It had returned without being called back, and I often wondered if writing for him was a way of knowing his soul was there after all, back in its place. Of saying to himself, if not to anyone else, that he had seen what he'd seen and felt those terrible things and lived anyway. That he had died but wasn't dead any more. — Paula McLain

Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of memories. If I am going to have a true memory, there are a thousand things that must first be forgotten. Memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. A memory that is not alive to the present does not remember the here and now, does not remember its true identity, is not memory at all. He who remembers nothing but facts and past events, and is never brought back into the present, is a victim of amnesia. — Thomas Merton

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'm not broken, I'm ruined. Do you understand the difference? With broken maybe you can fix things. Ruined? All you can do is wait to bury me. — J.R. Ward

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

They also learned that not everything broken could be fixed, and that not everything ruined could be thrown away. Sometimes the damaged things were all you had to work with. — Diane Hammond

It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth. — Alain De Botton

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

As English poet W.H. Auden put it in "Apropos of Many Things": "We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the present and let our illusions die. — Richard Rohr

There is no need to overreact. I'm certain there are worse things that could happen to a young lady than to be denied a voucher to Almack's." With a small smile, Amelia Bouchard folded up the letter that had delivered the bad news and tossed it into the fireplace. — Rachel Pierson

Later on, when I tried to imagine how I might have ruined things, that would occur to me - that I'd so rarely resisted, that I hadn't made it hard enough for him. Maybe it was like gathering your strength and hurling your body against a door you believe to be locked, and then the door opens easily - it wasn't locked at all - and you're standing looking into the room, trying to remember what it was you thought you wanted. — Curtis Sittenfeld

The manner in which we live, and that in which we ought to live, are things so wide asunder, that he who quits the one to betake himself to the other is more likely to destroy than to save himself; since any one who would act up to a perfect standard of goodness in everything, must be ruined among so many who are not good. — Niccolo Machiavelli

There are so many things that demand to be said. Where did you go? Do you ever think about me? You've ruined me. Are you okay? But of course, I can't say any of that. — Gayle Forman

Why were men so caught up with their honor, their solemn word, their promises?
Half the time the promises were never asked of them in the first place.
And yet the wars that were fought over such things, the hearts broken and the lands ruined..! — Tad Williams

I really wish she had a different way of viewing things I think the city that we're from just kinda ruined things — Drake

For I am every dead thing In whom love wrought new alchemy For his art did express A quintessence even from nothingness, From dull privations, and lean emptiness He ruined me, and I am re-begot Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not. — John Donne

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

If you should ask me where I've been all this time
I have to say "Things happen."
I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth,
on the river ruined in its own duration:
I know nothing save things the birds have lost,
the sea I left behind, or my sister crying.
Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock
with day? Why the dark night swilling round
in our mouths? And why the dead? — Pablo Neruda

My twin's not broken. He's ruined. Do you understand the difference? With broken, maybe you can fix things. Ruined? All you can do is wait to bury him. — J.R. Ward

People pretend things didn't happen. Or so what, they happened, it's okay. Well, it's never okay. It's always ruined. — Vendela Vida

A time is one's own, Eva, when oneself and one's peers take the same things for granted, without thinking about it. Likewise, a man is ruined when the times change but he does not. Permit me to add, empires fall for the same reason. — David Mitchell

Quite often good things have hurtful consequences. There are instances of men who have been ruined by their money or killed by their courage. — Aristotle.

When I was a teenager, my father went bust. He could have declared himself bankrupt, but he was an honourable man and he insisted on paying back all his debts. That almost ruined the family. I was aware that my mother and father couldn't control things anymore. I guess I was afraid that we would end up on the street. — Jo Nesbo