Arthur Golden Quotes

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

When the juices of trees have no means of escape, they clot and rot in them, making the trees hollow and good for nothing.

Everything degenerates in the hands of man.

But time has set its maggot on their track.

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.

… a crippled, broken world

Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.

Our tree was so puny we used orthopedic bulbs.

The plague of gold strikes far and near.

So much perfection argues rottenness somewhere.

They assume she was once gorgeously beautiful. Because now she looks so—bad.

The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.B. Once you were beautiful.

Seldom is a Gothic head more beautiful than when broken.

Anybody can dig a hole and plant a tree. But make sure it survives. You have to nurture it, you have to water it, you have to keep at it until it becomes rooted so it can take care or itself. There are so many enemies of trees.

A rotten case abides no handling.

Increasingly, the world around us looks as if we hated it.

Just like New Yorkers themselves, the trees in New York [city] work harder than any others in the world.

Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in

Neglect starts out as an infection then becomes a disease.

Brass shines with constant usage, a beautiful dress needs wearing,Leave a house empty, it rots.

When I reached Fort Binjemma, for example, where my grandfather was stationed for a while, the whole Victorian fort was decaying. Barbed wire surrounded it, spray paint on the ancient walls claimed it as private property, and the moat where my grandfather and his men had grown crops - in desperation as the siege's hunger bit - was completely overgrown with bushes and trees.

This is what hatred is. It will feed you and at the same time turn you to rot.

You can still function as a living ruin.