If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.

-Angelou, Maya originally MayaJohnson
  I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, opening section.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew 6:19^21.

(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall pass to ashes.) I ask a man in the smoker where he isgoing and he answers: 'Omaha'.

-Sandburg, Carl
  Chicago Poems,'Limited'.

His iron coat all overgrown with rust, Was underneath envelope'  d with gold, Whose glistering gloss darkened with filthy dust, Well yet appeare'  d, to have been of old A work of rich entail, and curious mold, Woven with antics and wild imagery.

-Spenser, Edmund
  Of Mammon.The Faerie Queen, bk.2, canto 7, stanza 4.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, council, governments, Myself not least, but honoured of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windyTroy. I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'Ulysses' (published1842), l.6^24.