Quotes about break
page 15

Tom Waits photo

“(When asked for advice for younger musicians) "Break windows, smoke cigars, and stay up late. Tell 'em to do that, they'll find a little pot of gold."”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

<i>Musician</i> magazine, October 1987.

Cass Elliot photo
Alexander Maclaren photo

“The never-ceasing boom of the great ocean as it breaks on the beach, drowns all smaller sounds.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 277.

Bob Dylan photo

“She takes just like a woman, yes she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Just Like A Woman

J. M. Barrie photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Judy Chicago photo
Eric S. Raymond photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo

“I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated, and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In other words, it forbids wholesome doubt. […]
This false certainty comes out in Professor Haldane's article. […] It is breaking Aristotle's canon—to demand in every enquiry that the degree of certainty which the subject matter allows. And not on your life to pretend that you see further than you do.
Being a democrat, I am opposed to all very drastic and sudden changes of society (in whatever direction) because they never in fact take place except by a particular technique. That technique involves the seizure of power by a small, highly disciplined group of people; the terror and the secret police follow, it would seem, automatically. I do not think any group good enough to have such power. They are men of like passions with ourselves. The secrecy and discipline of their organisation will have already inflamed in them that passion for the inner ring which I think at least as corrupting as avarice; and their high ideological pretensions will have lent all their passions the dangerous prestige of the Cause. Hence, in whatever direction the change is made, it is for me damned by its modus operandi.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

The worst of all public dangers is the committee of public safety.
"A Reply to Professor Haldane" (1946), published posthumously in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1966)
Some of these ideas were included in the essay "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" (1949) (see below).

Babe Ruth photo
David Bohm photo
Wassily Kandinsky photo

“If until now colour and form were used as inner agents, it was mainly done subconsciously. The subordination of composition to geometrical form is no new idea (cf. the art of the Persians). Construction on a purely spiritual basis is a slow business, and at first seemingly blind and unmethodical. The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that it can weigh colours in its own scale and thus become a determinant in artistic creation. If we begin at once to break the bonds that bind us to nature and to devote ourselves purely to combination of pure colour and independent form, we shall produce works that are mere geometric decoration, resembling something like a necktie or a carpet. Beauty of form and colour is no sufficient aim by itself, despite the assertions of pure aesthetes or even of naturalists obsessed with the idea of "beauty". It is because our painting is still at an elementary stage that we are so little able to be moved by wholly autonomous colour and form composition. The nerve vibrations are there (as we feel when confronted by applied art), but they get no farther than the nerves because the corresponding vibrations of the spirit which they call forth are weak. When we remember however, that spiritual experience is quickening, that positive science, the firmest basis of human thought is tottering, that dissolution of matter is imminent, we have reason to hope that the hour of pure composition is not far away. The first stage has arrived.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky, Munich, 1912; as cited in Kandinsky, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 15
1910 - 1915

Lee De Forest photo

“The actual poetry of this engineering triumph was first brought stunningly upon me in 1915 when I sat in an audience in San Francisco and heard the breaking of the surf upon the far Atlantic shore.”

Lee De Forest (1873–1961) American inventor

"Dawn of the Electronic Age" http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/03/20/dawn-of-the-electronic-age/, Popular Mechanics, January 1952

Billy Connolly photo
Allen Ginsberg photo

“1. You can't win. 2. You can't break even. 3. You can't even get out of the game.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Several publications attribute the quote to Ginsberg, probably the first one is The Coevolution Quarterly in 1975 [Google books https://books.google.it/books?id=MylJAQAAIAAJ&q=%22ginsberg%27s+theorem%22&dq=%22ginsberg%27s+theorem%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y], but there's is no evidence whatsoever that he ever pronounced it. A more detailed analysis can be found in this post https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/you_cant_win_you_cant_break_even/
Misattributed, Ginsberg's theorem

Jack Johnson (musician) photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
Georges Bernanos photo
Seal (musician) photo
Enrique Peña Nieto photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo

“Speak straight and clear! I only hear that manly prayer
which like a huge fist breaks my head against the stones.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Odysseus, Book VIII, line 530
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

Marsden Hartley photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“In our movement the two extremes come together: the Communists from the Left and the officers and students from the Right. These two have always been the most active elements, and it was the greatest crime that they used to oppose each other in street fights… Our party has already succeeded in uniting these two utter extremes within the ranks of our storm troops. They will form the core of the great German liberation movement, in which all without distinction will stand together when the day comes to say: ‘The Nation arises, the storm is breaking!”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

As quoted in Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power, Konrad Heiden, Boston, MA, Beacon Press, 1969, p. 147, first published 1944. Part of Hitler’s quote also cited in Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, A Harvest Book, 1985, footnote, p. 7
1920s

Franz Kafka photo
Phil Brooks photo

“Maybe the ghosts have a glass ceiling? Break through that glass ceiling ghosts! I plan to.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Ghost Hunters. October 31, 2006.
In reference to moving up the World Wrestling Entertainment roster, despite a lack of a conventional wrestling physique.
Ghost Hunters

Allen West (politician) photo
Colette Dowling photo
Warren Farrell photo
Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo

“About 1883 a kind of break occurred in my work. I had wrung Impressionism dry, and had come to the conclusion that I knew neither how to paint nor how to draw. In a word, I was at an impasse”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Benicka (1980) commented:
The frescoes of Raphael and the Pompeian murals that he saw there definitely confirmed what Renoir had begun to feel about his own art; that it was becoming too amorphous in character and was weak in design.
undated quotes
Source: ‎'‎'Renoir‎'‎', by A. Vollard, Paris, 1920, p. 135; as quoted in: Corinne Benicka (1980) Great modern masters. p. 130;

David Dixon Porter photo
Rahul Gandhi photo
Enoch Powell photo
Frank Wilczek photo
Joseph Addison photo
Adam Roberts photo
John Quinlan photo

“As you get old you have to train smarter. Every young guy goes through it; every young guy says I'm invincible, it will never happen to me. The body is like a car or machine, you work it so often that eventually it's going to break down.”

John Quinlan (1974) American professional wrestler and bodybuilder

John Quinlan Muscle & Strength Audio Podcast Interview by Steve Shaw, Bodybuilder And Wrestler John Quinlan Talks About His Passion For Lifting (2010)

Silvio Berlusconi photo

“There is a natural right that says that when the state asks you for a third of what you earned through back-breaking work, this seems to you a reasonable demand and you give in. If the state asks you for more, or much more, then it is a clear abuse against you and then you try to find evasive ways to make you feel coherent to your intimate sense of morality and it doesn't make you feel ethically guilty.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

Addressing the commander of the special italian police corp, Guardia di Finanza, whose job is to fight financial fraud and tax evasion in November of 2003, quoted in la Repubblica (17 febbraio 2004) http://www.repubblica.it/2004/b/sezioni/politica/cdlverifica2/candida/candida.html
2003

William Ellery Channing photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Max Boot photo
Edward Thomas photo

“I built myself a house of glass:
It took me years to make it:
And I was proud. But now, alas!
Would God someone would break it.”

Edward Thomas (1878–1917) Poet and journalist

"I Built Myself a House of Glass", line 1, cited from Collected Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) p. 215.

Jim Risch photo
Koila Nailatikau photo

“To put it in simple English, you break the law, you commit a crime, you do the time.”

Koila Nailatikau (1953) Fijian politician

On the government's proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission, 26 July, 2005

Maurice Duplessis photo
Pierre Trudeau photo

“Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent.”

Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000) 15th Prime Minister of Canada

Approaches to Politics (1970)

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“And so I say to you today, my friends, that you may be able to speak with the tongues of men and angels; you may have the eloquence of articulate speech; but if you have not love, it means nothing. Yes, you may have the gift of prophecy; you may have the gift of scientific prediction and understand the behavior of molecules; you may break into the storehouse of nature and bring forth many new insights; yes, you may ascend to the heights of academic achievement so that you have all knowledge; and you may boast of your great institutions of learning and the boundless extent of your degrees; but if you have not love, all of these mean absolutely nothing. You may even give your goods to feed the poor; you may bestow great gifts to charity; and you may tower high in philanthropy; but if you have not love, your charity means nothing. You may even give your body to be burned and die the death of a martyr, and your spilt blood may be a symbol of honor for generations yet unborn, and thousands may praise you as one of history's greatest heroes; but if you have not love, your blood was spilt in vain. What I'm trying to get you to see this morning is that a man may be self-centered in his self-denial and self-righteous in his self-sacrifice. His generosity may feed his ego, and his piety may feed his pride. So without love, benevolence becomes egotism, and martyrdom becomes spiritual pride.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“And this is woman's fate:
All her affections are called into life
By winning flatteries, and then thrown back
Upon themselves to perish; and her heart,
Her trusting heart, filled with weak tenderness,
Is left to bleed or break!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Castilian Nuptuals from The London Literary Gazette (28th September 1822) Poetical Sketches. 3rd series - Sketch the Fourth
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Hayley Williams photo

“I have the ability to build myself up or break myself down. I stay positive. Strength comes from within.”

Hayley Williams (1988) American singer-songwriter and musician

From Hayley's Twitter. September 10, 2010. http://twitter.com/#!/yelyahwilliams/status/24055172040

Learned Hand photo

“I shall ask no more than that you agree with Dean Inge that even though counting heads is not an ideal way to govern, at least it is better than breaking them.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

"Democracy: Its Presumptions and Realities" (1932); also in The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses (1952), p. 92.
Extra-judicial writings

Peter Greenaway photo
Maddox photo

“Finally when the movie started, I thought the bullshit ads were over, but no. First thing they showed was a "coke break" sponsored and produced by coke. […] I paid $7 for a movie, NOT FOR BULLSHIT ADVERTISEMENTS.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

I paid $7.00 for a movie... http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=moviebs
The Best Page in the Universe

James Anthony Froude photo

“We start with enthusiasm — out we go each of us to our task in all the brightness of sunrise, and hope beats along our pulses; we believe the world has no blanks except to cowards, and we find, at last, that, as far as we ourselves are concerned, it has no prizes; we sicken over the endless unprofitableness of labour most when we have most succeeded, and when the time comes for us to lay down our tools we cast them from us with the bitter aching sense, that it were better for us if it had been all a dream. We seem to know either too much or too little of ourselves — too much, for we feel that we are better than we can accomplish; too little, for, if we have done any good at all, it has heen as we were servants of a system too vast for us to comprehend. We get along through life happily between clouds and sunshine, forgetting ourselves in our employments or our amusements, and so long as we can lose our consciousness in activity we can struggle on to the end. But when the end comes, when the life is lived and done, and stands there face to face with us; or if the heart is weak, and the spell breaks too soon, as if the strange master-worker has no longer any work to offer us, and turns us off to idleness and to ourselves; in the silence then our hearts lift up their voices, and cry out they can find no rest here, no home. Neither pleasure, nor rank, nor money, nor success in life, as it is called, have satisfied, or can satisfy; and either earth has nothing at all which answers to our cravings, or else it is something different from all these, which we have missed finding — this peace which passes understanding — and from which in the heyday of hope we had turned away, as lacking the meretricious charm which then seemed most alluring.
I am not sermonizing of Religion, or of God, or of Heaven, at least not directly.”

Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Alija Izetbegović photo
Joseph Campbell photo
André Maurois photo
Friedrich Engels photo

“The Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Referring to the Serb uprising of 1848–49, in which Serbs from Vojvodina fought against the previously victorious Hungarian revolution.
Source: The Magyar Struggle http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/marx/works/1849/01/13.htm in ' (13 January 1849).

Elton John photo
Alex Jones photo

“Bernie wants us to live under the heavenly socialist–communist system like China. We never hear the left criticize that Mao Tse-Tung killed over 80 million people—the Chinese government admits—biggest mass murder in history. That's why there's so many liberal trendy places in Austin, in Denver, in New York, in LA, and San Francisco named after Mao. And people go and love play on their iPhones and the free market and their Chinese slave goods, and they drink beer and expensive wine and giggle about how fun it is to wear red stars. You couldn't put more bad luck on you, you couldn't trash your mojo better. Wearing swastika armbands, you stupid snot-nosed crud! That live off the backs of everybody that fought Nazism and Communism. You need to have your jaws broken! Don't you worry, reality is gonna crash in on you, trash! Who lowered our defenses and brought the Republic down; oh, we're already gone! And you celebrate it like you've joined the globalists mounting America's head on the wall, your great victory! A mass rape of women across Europe. The national draft coming in for women! The families falling apart! Women degraded into nothing but sexual objects! ALL in the name of Gloria Steinem and the Central Intelligence Agency program! And a Bernie Sanders with his fake Einstein hair, and his 'I'm a man of the people!' We go out and talk to Bernie Sanders' supporters, they can hardly talk—they're like him—'Free! Free! I want free stuff!' As if the New World Order is gonna give you anything free! Oh, it's free like a piece of cheese. And a little mouse comes out and it smells it and goes to bite it and, WA BAM! Breaks your neck. But your stupider than the little mouse. You can see all the countries and all the people caught in the mouse traps, caught in the big bear traps. You know what you do? You go into a trendy shop. On some capitalist strip. And you go in and you snuggle in with that credit card that daddy put money in for the trust fund. And you put on that little fur-rimmed coat and you're all sexy with your hammer and sickle on, and your Che Guevara and, you know, shirt from Rage Against the Machine, and the whole capitalist record company system selling it to you, and you go out on the street and you walk into McDonald's and you have yourself a double latte, oh yeah. Pathetic! Scum! Oh, how you'll burn in the camps, later. Wishing you had done something; I mean, you are the ultimate chumps, the ultimate buffoons, the ultimate schmucks!… But the public had so much freedom! They were so wealthy, even our poorest, they had no idea that what they were replacing it with was abject slavery.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

"Sanders Supporters are Pathetic Scum" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooNxJnf_UAI, February 2016

Paul Carus photo

“"Breaking the bank at Monte Carlo" is a euphemism for closing a single gaming table. It was last accomplished at the Casino Ste. des Bains de Mer during the final days of 1957, with a harvest of 180 million francs.”

Richard Arnold Epstein (1927) American physicist

Source: The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (Revised Edition) 1977, Chapter One, Kubeiagenesis, p. 10

Janeane Garofalo photo
Brandon Boyd photo

“I'm not an alarmist, but someone should break the glass, and pull that red T-Lever down!”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Light Grenades (2006)

Peter F. Drucker photo
Louis Althusser photo
George Galloway photo
Marcus Orelias photo

“I'm from the city rich desire to live in. Glass on the floor from breaking out of this prison / prism.”

Marcus Orelias (1993) American actor, rapper, songwriter, author and entrepreneur

Blackouts
20s A Difficult Age (2017)

James Taylor photo
Czeslaw Milosz photo

“I have no wisdom, no skills, and no faith
but I received strength, it tears the world apart.
I shall break, a heavy wave, against its shores
and a young wave will cover my trace.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Hymn" (1935), trans. by Czesŀaw Miŀosz
Three Winters (1936)

Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo
Malala Yousafzai photo

“In a situation where a lifelong school break was being imposed upon us by the terrorists, rising up against that became very important, essential.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Malala in Interview with a Pakistani Television network, 2011-12; Cited in: The girl who wanted to go to school http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/10/the-girl-who-wanted-to-go-to-school.html." The New Yorker by Basharat Peer, posted October 10, 2012
2010 -

Jonathan Stroud photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Jeff Flake photo
Taylor Swift photo

“This is the last time I'm asking you this,
Put my name at the top of your lips.
This is the last time I'm asking you why
You break my heart in the blink of an eye, eye, eye.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

The Last Time, written by Taylor Swift, Gary Lightbody, and Jacknife Lee.
Song lyrics, Red (2012)

Daniel J. Bernstein photo
Paul Simon photo

“Cecilia, you're breaking my heart
You're shaking my confidence daily
Oh, Cecilia, I'm down on my knees
I'm begging you please to come home.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Cecilia
Song lyrics, Bridge over Troubled Water (1970)

Gerhard Richter photo
John Constable photo

“The landscapes of Ruysdael present the greatest possible contrast to those of Claude, showing how powerfully, from the most opposite directions, genius may command our homage. In Claude's pictures, with scarcely an exception, the sun ever shines. Ruysdael, on the contrary, delighted in, and has made delightful to our eyes, those solemn days, peculiar to his country and to ours, when without storm, large rolling clouds scarcely permit a ray of sunlight to break the shades of the forest.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from 'The History of Landscape Painting,' third lecture, Royal Institution (9 June 1836), from notes taken by C.R. Leslie; as quoted in: 'A brief history of weather in European landscape art', John E. Thornes, in Weather Volume 55, Issue 10 Oct. 2000, p. 366-67
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)

John Adams photo

“While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence. But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation, while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world. Because we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Oaths in this country are as yet universally considered as sacred obligations. That which you have taken, and so solemnly repeated on that venerable ground, is an ample pledge of your sincerity and devotion to your country and its government.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October 1798, in Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of General William Hull http://books.google.com/books?id=E2kFAAAAQAAJ&dq=editions%3AVsZcW99fWPgC&pg=PA265#v=onepage&q&f=false (New York, 1848), pp 265-6. There are some differences in the version that appeared in The Works of John Adams (Boston, 1854), vol. 9, pp. 228-9 http://books.google.com/books?id=PZYKAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA228#v=onepage&q&f=false, most notably the words "or gallantry" instead of "and licentiousness".
1790s

Lewis Pugh photo
Samuel Butler (poet) photo

“He that imposes an oath makes it,
Not he that for convenience takes it;
Then how can any man be said
To break an oath he never made?”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto II, line 377.
Source: Hudibras, Part II (1664)

Henry Campbell-Bannerman photo
Michelle Obama photo
Philip Hammond photo

“as my mother told me sticks and stones may break my bones but words don’t hurt me.”

Philip Hammond (1955) British Conservative politician

23 August 2015
2015
Source: http://en.trend.az/iran/politics/2426555.html
Source: http://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/580077--hammond
Source: http://www.tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=248893

Robert F. Kennedy photo
Paul Bettany photo
Curtis Mayfield photo

“He don't love you like I love you
If he did, he wouldn't break your heart
He don't love you like I love you
He's try-in' to tear us apart.”

Curtis Mayfield (1942–1999) American singer, songwriter, and record producer

He Will Break Your Heart, written with Jerry Butler and Calvin Carter, originally performed by Jerry Butler (1960).
Song lyrics