Lao Tzu Quotes

Statues lined the stairs and stood, dotted across the roof. But they had been brutalized by time and the weather. Some were missing arms. Many had no faces. Once they had been saints and angels. Two hundred years standing in London had turned them into cripples.

To repair the irreparable ravages of time.

Neglect starts out as an infection then becomes a disease.

The world's decay where the wind's hands have passed, And my head, worn out with love, at rest In my hands, and my hands full of dust.

I don’t think there’s enough of her left.

The path of increase is slow, but the road to ruin is rapid.

Everything degenerates in the hands of man.

The harm done is often difficult to repair.

It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.

The world is sagging, snagging, scaling, spalling, pilling, pinging, pitting, warping, checking, fading, chipping, cracking, yellowing, leaking, stalling, shrinking, and in dynamic unbalance.

It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree.

Rust, corrosion, wind, rain. The nibbling teeth of mice and the acrid droppings of insects and the devouring jaws of years. The was of nature upon machines, of the planet's chaotic forces upon the works of humankind. The energy that man had pulled from the earth was being inexorably pulled back into it, sucked like water down a drain. Before long, if it hadn't happened already, not a single high-tension pole would be left standing on the earth. Mankind had built a world that would take a hundred years to die. A century for the last light to go out.

Never lend money to a friend. It's dangerous. It could damage his memory.

The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.

It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy.

You can’t undo something that’s happened; you can’t take back a word that’s already been said out loud.

We live ruins amid ruins.

What the Chronics are - or most of us - are machines with flaws inside that can't be repaired, flaws born in, or flaws beat in over so many years of the guy running head-on into solid things that by the time the hospital found him he was bleeding rust in some vacant lot.

Looks like a sand pile my kids have been playing in for a long time - it's all beat up - no definition - just a lot of bumps and holes.

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

We must be careful what we say. No bird resumes its egg.