Ruins
And this was a civilization
That came to nothing--he spurned with his toe
The slave-coloured dust. We breathed it in
Thankfully, oxygen to our culture.
Somebody found a curved bone
In the ruins. A kings probably,
He said. Imperfect courtiers
We eyed it, the dropped kerchief of time.
poem by Ronald Stuart Thomas
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Related quotes
We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge, just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization.
quote by Herbert Read
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Confessions Of An Incorrigible Person
I am a religious fanatic, because I do not respect any religion other than my own – Humanism.
I am not cosmopolitan, because I do not respect any community other than my own – Humanity.
I do not like any language other than my own – the language of unity, understanding and friendship.
I give a damn to any culture other than my own – Human Culture.
There is only one civilization I respect, the ancient civilization I am a part of – World Civilization.
I do not have time for anybody other than my own family – The World Fraternity.
Agreed, all these characteristics that I have are extremely condemnable. But sorry, I will not change. I am incorrigible.
The Muslims refuse our culture and try to impose their culture on us. I reject them, and this is not only my duty toward my culture-it is toward my values, my principles, my civilization.
quote by Oriana Fallaci
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Imperfectly
Can I help it if Im not neat
If there were creeps before you
How can I help you if I am weak?
If I dont know how to help me
But I love you, I love you
Imperfect, imperfect, imperfectly
I love you imperfect, imperfect, imperfectly
Can I help it if Im high strung
If I was born with a sharp tongue
Will you marry me if I stay sweet?
If I am the one with the cold feet
I love you, I love you
Imperfect, imperfect, imperfectly
I love you imperfect, imperfect imperfectly
I love you imperfect, imperfect, imperfectly
Imperfectly, imperfectly, imperfectly, imperfectly
Imperfectly, imperfectly, imperfectly
song performed by by Veruca Salt
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A River Dies
a river dies choked to gills
expiring upon industrial waste
sadly as the river dies the fish die also
oxygen starved extinguished
life was a web of light upon the water
life web torn broken discarded
water breathed life into river flowing
man breathed in death river choking
oxygen rich river was flush with fish
smell taste drink putrid pollution
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Discover
I used to stand alone
A civilization of just me
The only inhabitant
My mind
A culture of solitude
A lone figure
Crowded by the population
A culture of pretenders
A civilization of imitators
But the sky is never faithful
To the Sun
Mingling and twirling with clouds
So it came to pass
Under that blue sky
With white puffs of hope
That I met you
In halls
That no longer stand
A testament to time
A time of change
But if they stood today
Would we still discover
That some magic still does exist
In the dank corners
Where you hid
A lone figure
Much like myself
Would we come to find
That people much like us
Still come together
In those halls
That no longer stand
Where we discovered
Each other
Seemingly a millennia
Of love
Ago
poem by Alejandro Torres
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On a group of theories one can found a school; but on a group of values one can found a culture, a civilization, a new way of living together among men.
quote by Ignazio Silone
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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4. Ruined
The old roman ruins
Turned pillars to dust
The weather being fierce
Where the irons now rust
Huge hand carved blocks
Lying roughly askew
With masons initials
Still showing from new
Like a giants been shopping
With a huge stack of tins
He took from the bottom
Where the tumble begins
The old roman ruins
What a sight to be seen
They will all turn to dust
Where the ruins have been
poem by David Threadgold (2008)
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All these older kids here, and I'm the only one from a town that's so small, if everyone breathed at the same time, you'd run out of oxygen. Man, there is nothing there.
quote by Herschel Walker
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Journey
Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down
A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out
To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling.
But far up the mountain, behind the town,
We too were swept out, out by the wind,
Alone with the Tuscan grass.
Wind had been blowing across the hills
For days, and everything now was graying gold
With dust, everything we saw, even
Some small children scampering along a road,
Twittering Italian to a small caged bird.
We sat beside them to rest in some brushwood,
And I leaned down to rinse the dust from my face.
I found the spider web there, whose hinges
Reeled heavily and crazily with the dust,
Whole mounds and cemeteries of it, sagging
And scattering shadows among shells and wings.
And then she stepped into the center of air
Slender and fastidious, the golden hair
Of daylight along her shoulders, she poised there,
While ruins crumbled on every side of her.
Free of the dust, as though a moment before
She had stepped inside the earth, to bathe herself.
I gazed, close to her, till at last she stepped
Away in her own good time.
Many men
Have searched all over Tuscany and never found
What I found there, the heart of the light
Itself shelled and leaved, balancing
On filaments themselves falling. The secret
Of this journey is to let the wind
Blow its dust all over your body,
To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly
All the way through your ruins, and not to lose
Any sleep over the dead, who surely
Will bury their own, don't worry.
poem by James Arlington Wright
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Dust 2...
If dust could only talk
What would we hear it say?
Before it's brushed aside
Just as it's swept away
It's just the evidence
It's of no consequence
It's only flesh and bone
Why don't you leave it alone?
If dust could only speak
Caught in a falling beam
If dust could only cry
If dust could only scream
For it's the single witness that might testify
Could I spit out the truth?
Or would you rather just swallow a lie?
But dust is always caught behind a coat of pain
Beneath the marble fingernails of kings and saints
And in the theatre curtain where they hang a drape
Or in the ticket pocket where your hands escape
Before they start to wander
Or they start to shrink
You rub your eye a little and appear to blink
And then she caught you staring
She knows what you're thinking
What got into you is not a ghost as such
It was just dust
Here comes the juggernaut
Here come The Poisoners
They choke the life and land
And rob the joy from us
Why do they taste of sugar?
Oh, when they're made of money
Here come the Lamb of God
And the butcher's boy, Sonny
Well, I believe we just
Become a speck of dust
song performed by by Elvis Costello
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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As Far As My Eye Can See In My Body’s Senses
All the trees all their branches all of their leaves
The grass at the foot of the rocks and the houses en masse
Far off the sea that your eye bathes
These images of day after day
The vices the virtues so imperfect
The transparency of men passing among them by chance
And passing women breathed by your elegant obstinacies
Your obsessions in a heart of lead on virgin lips
The vices the virtues so imperfect
The likeness of looks of permission with eyes you conquer
The confusion of bodies wearinesses ardours
The imitation of words attitudes ideas
The vices the virtues so imperfect
Love is man incomplete
poem by Paul Eluard
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To William Theodore Peters On His Renaissance Cloak
The cherry-coloured velvet of your cloak
Time hath not soiled: its fair embroideries
Gleam as when centuries ago they spoke
To what bright gallant of Her Daintiness,
Whose slender fingers, long since dust and dead,
For love or courtesy embroidered
The cherry-coloured velvet of this cloak.
Ah! cunning flowers of silk and silver thread,
That mock mortality? the broidering dame,
The page they decked, the kings and courts are dead:
Gone the age beautiful; Lorenzo's name,
The Borgia's pride are but an empty sound;
But lustrous still upon their velvet ground,
Time spares these flowers of silk and silver thread.
Gone is that age of pageant and of pride:
Yet don your cloak, and haply it shall seem,
The curtain of old time is set aside;
As through the sadder coloured throng you gleam;
We see once more fair dame and gallant gay,
The glamour and the grace of yesterday:
The elder, brighter age of pomp and pride.
poem by Ernest Christopher Dowson
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I look at Rome; She has nearly three thousand years of civilization, but she flows as if she were new, looking as young and carefree as water when she makes water. A city where art and culture predominate more than anything else.
Overall, Rome is a mysterious city. The ancient ruins on the one hand suggest the glory of the Roman Empire, on the other they strike the opulence and grandeur of the Baroque buildings. And last but not least, be captivated by the speed and crazy rhythms of today's civilization translated into the huge number of tourists in the city, flooded with people, cameras and souvenirs. Everyone chooses his Rome, be it imperial, baroque or modern. But for everyone the city, once the center of the world, is a real historical symbol.
Camelia Oprița in book Wall of thoughts (We look for the past to invent the future) (2000)
Submitted by Livius Ciocarlie
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Coloured Eggs
Coloued eggs for a culture,
And of he story of a rabbit that laid them!
Oh, this culture is yet to know the truth;
For rabbits do not lay eggs!
Why should they teach the children this way?
And of coloured eggs lay by rabbits;
But this culture cannot change,
For history had made them so.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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All The Kings Horses
(unknown)
Mmm, my friends keep telling me to pull myself together
They try to cheer my up but its not gettin better
They say that time will pass and Ill love again some day
But time is standing still ever since you went away
Now, all the kings horses and all the kings men
Youll never get me back together again
cause I just fall apart each time I look at you
No, all the kings and all the kings men
Are never gonna make me smile again
How can I smile just knowin youre with somebody new? , ooh
You had my hopes so high I guess they had to tumble
And when you left my dream my world began to crumble
No woman ever found the only missing part
When you left me behind dont you know you took my heart?
Now, all the kings horses and all the kings men
Youll never get me back together again
cause I just fall apart each time I look at you, yes I do, now
All the kings and all the kings men
Youre never gonna make me smile again
How can I smile just knowin youre with somebody new? , ooh, yeah, ooh, ahh, ha
All the kings horses and all the kings men
Youll never get me back together again
cause I just fall apart each time I look at you, yes I do
I said, all the kings and all the kings men
Are never gonna make me smile again
How can I smile just knowing youre with somebody new? , yeah
All the kings horses and all the kings men
Youll never get me back together again
And I just fall apart each time
song performed by by Dusty Springfield
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Not a single piece of material culture - not a single object - has been found at Giza that can be interpreted to come from a lost civilization.
quote by Zahi Hawass
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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We are the SWARM
This is who we are, nothing quite like it, nothing
This is coming to a culture that everything is cross-eyed
Open your eyes
We'll be the ones that set civilization back
Open your eyes find out that you're what you see
This won't be the last of us this, this passion
Squirming away, stop eating nothing
We are the swarm that rapes and tricks
This is who we are
The swarm that rapes
Mother Earth
Spreading disease
You'll see us
Salvation, won't you let me
What's that? Your gods will say
Open my eyes find nothing that we can
Answer the swarm
This is prophecy played out.
This is just who we are, the swarm
This is who we are, this is what we do
Rape
This is coming to destruction, you see everything is cross-eyed
Rape
poem by Jay W. Allen
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Give The Dog A Bone
give the dog a bone
let him come into your home
watch him beg and whimper
for some food and some clothes
give him a job and pay him
in bones
give the dog a bone
because he will survive alone
give the dog a bone
you can pay him less
come now put your morals to the test
give him seven give him nine
but never more than ten
because the rest is mine
give the dog a bone
let him work and then send him home
he'll come back but his cover was blown
misers prevail running this slave trail
give the dog a bone
poem by Cokbod Lodwogo
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When the French nation gradually came into existence among the ruins of the Roman civilization in Gaul, a new language was at the same time slowly evolved.
quote by Lytton Strachey
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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