What's not destroyed byTime's devouring hand? Where'sTroy, and where's the Maypole in the Strand?

-Bramston,James
  The Art of Politics.

And I'm afraid, reading this passage now, That everything I knew has been destroyed By those whom I admired but never knew; The laughing soldiers fought to their defeat And I'm afraid most of my friends are dead.

-Fenton,James
  'In a Notebook'.

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey Where wealth accumulates and men decay: Princes and lords may flourish or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

-Goldsmith, Oliver
  The Deserted Village, l.51^6.

A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

-Hemingway, Ernest Millar
  The Old Man and the Sea.

The more contracted that power is, the more easily it is destroyed. A country governed bya despot is an inverted cone.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Remark,14  Apr. Quoted in  James Boswell  The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.3.

   More dreams are destroyed in bed than are ever found there.

-Skelton, Robin
A Devious Dictionary.

Well, if the worst comes in the end of all, it'll be great game to see if there's none to pity him but a widow woman, the like of me, has buried her children and destroyed her man.

-Synge,John Millington
  Widow Quin.The Playboy of theWesternWorld, act 2.