Self Destruction Quotes

“Be the flame, not the moth.”
― Giacomo Casanova

“In order to understand, I destroyed myself.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Having a low opinion of yourself is not 'modesty.' It's self-destruction. Holding your uniqueness in high regard is not 'egotism.' It's a necessary precondition to happiness and success.”
― Bobbe Sommer

“Those who pray for your downfall are concentrating negative thoughts towards you, without taking cognisance of the slippery ground in which they are standing, which could lead to their downfall.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us!”
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

“Be led by your talent, not by your self-loathing; those other things you just have to manage.”
― Russell Brand, My Booky Wook

“The quickest path to self-destruction is to push away the people you love.”
― Cassia Leo, Pieces of You

“I have never seen battles quite as terrifyingly beautiful as the ones I fight when my mind splinters and races, to swallow me into my own madness, again.”
― Nicole Lyons, Hush

“Sometimes you hit a point where you either change or self destruct.”
― Sam Stevens

“Falling for someone is like pulling a loose thread. It happens stitch by stitch. You feel whole most of the time even while the seams pop, the knots loosen, everything that holds you together coming undone. It feels incredible, this opening of yourself to the world. Not like the unraveling it is. Only afterward do you glance down at the tangle of string around your feet that used to be a person who was whole and self-contained and realize that love is not a thing that we create. It's an undoing.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris

“I understood myself only after I destroyed myself. And only in the process of fixing myself, did I know who I really was.”
― Sade Andria Zabala

“One of the greatest evils is the foolishness of a good man. For the giving man to withhold helping someone in order to first assure personal fortification is not selfish, but to elude needless self-destruction; martyrdom is only practical when the thought is to die, else a good man faces the consequence of digging a hole from which he cannot escape, and truly helps no one in the long run.”
― Mike Norton, Just Another War Story

“darkness falls upon Humanity
and faces become terrible
things
that wanted more than there
was.

all our days are marked with
unexpected
affronts - some
disastrous, others
less so
but the process is
wearing and
continuous.
attrition rules.
most give
way
leaving
empty spaces
where people should
be.

and now
as we ready to self-destruct
there is very little left to
kill

which makes the tragedy
less and more
much much
more.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“I can’t listen to you. I can’t listen to your voice. It’s as though I’d drunk a bottle of anise and fallen asleep wrapped in a quilt of roses. It pulls me along – and I know I’m drowning – but I go on down.”
― Federico García Lorca, Bodas de sangre

“The sky was so blue I couldn’t look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories,
but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desk
tick tick tick
me not making a sound
and some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind,
but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“One could only damage oneself through the harm one did to others. One could never get directly at oneself.”
― SARTRE JEAN-PAUL

“Sometimes the best offense was avoiding self-destruction.”
― Brandon Mull, Seeds of Rebellion

“Unless we learn to know ourselves, we run the danger of destroying ourselves.”
― Ja A. Jahannes, WordSong Poets

“It's 4am again and I'm just getting started. People are boring and I want to burn with excitement or anger and bleed, bleed through my words. I want to get all fucked up and write real and raw and ugly and beautifully. I bet you're sleeping safe and calm, and you can stay there, it's safer there, and you wouldn't stand one night on this journey my mind wanders off to every night you close your eyes. I'll stay here one day and I will never come down.
I promise I can fly before I hit the ground.
It doesn't even hurt anymore.
I swear, it doesn't hurt.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

“Luckily, even as a young man not yet become himself, John Bridgens had two things besides indecision that kept him from self-destruction - books and a sense of irony.”
― Dan Simmons, The Terror

“There is stability in self-destruction, in prolonging sadness as a means of escaping abstractions like happiness. Rock bottom is a surprisingly comfortable place to lay your head. Looking up from the depths of another low often seems a lot safer than wondering when you'll fall again. Falling feels awful.

I'd rather fucking fly.”
― Kris Kidd

“Abstaining from sex, hitting the books, and wearing loose-fitting clothes are common ways that girls try to molt their "slutty" image. But more often their shame leads them to self-destructive behavior. They become willing to do things that they wouldn't have dreamed of doing before they were scandalized because they now feel they have so little to offer. Some girls do drugs or drink to excess in an attempt to blot away their stigma. Others become depressed and anorexic. And others think so little of themselves that they date boys who insult or beat them.”
― Leora Tanenbaum, Slut!: Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation

“Never loan your heart to hatred; it pays you back with self-destruction. Majority of people living are not aware that anger is an acid that destroys its own container.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Daily Drive 365

“I felt a strange delight in causing my decay.”
― Robert Browning, Pauline: A Fragment of a confession

“I knew that I had turned my world back to cinders, sunk my lovely ship with my own stupid, wicked hands.”
― Mary Stewart, Nine Coaches Waiting

“Why is it that we don’t worry about a compass until we’re lost in a wilderness of our own making?”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“You know, we worry about the Bomb, a thought interceded, and yet just look around: there are millions of people out there, just like you and me, with their thumb on the self-destruct button.”
― Etienne de L'Amour, Thank You, I Understand

“We would survive even ourselves, as long as we were together.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora