Quotes about break
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“Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

Love

“The significant relationships of early adulthood are thus construed as the means to an end of individual achievement, and these "transitional figures" must be cast off or reconstructed following the realization of success. If in the process, however, they become, like Dido, an impediment to the fulfillment of the Dream, then the relationship must be renounced, "to allow the developmental process" to continue. This process is defined by Levinson explicitly as one of individuation: "throughout the life cycle, but especially in the key transition periods… the developmental process of individuation is going on." The process refers "to the changes in a person's relationships to himself and to the external world," the relationships that constitute his "Life Structure" (p. 195).

If in the course of "Becoming One's Own Man," this structure is discovered to be flawed and threatens the great expectations of the Dream, then in order to avert "serious Failure or Decline," the man must "break out" to salvage his Dream. This act of breaking out is consummated by a "marker event" of separation, such as "leaving his wife, quitting his job, or moving to another region" (p. 206). Thus the road to mid-life salvation runs through either achievement or separation.”

Carol Gilligan (1936) American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist

Source: In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development

Life, World, Dreams, Failure

“The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.”

Vladimir Nabokov book The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Source: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Sea

“The heart will break, but broken live on.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Variant: And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.

Heartbreaking, Sad, Moving On, Heart

“Don’t waste a minute not being happy. If one window closes, run to the next window—or break down a door.”

Brooke Shields (1965) US actress

Inspirational, Happiness

“Let's be in awe
which doesn't mean
anything but the courage
to gape like fish at the surface
breaking around our mouths
as we meet the air.”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

Courage, Fish

“For it is easy to criticize and break down the spirit of others, but to know yourself takes a lifetime.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man’s will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 86, “The Fire Itself” (pp. 672-673)

Love, Men, Tear, Light

“I don't know about your true form, but the weight of your ego sure is pushing the crust of the earth toward the breaking point.”

Jim Butcher book Grave Peril

Source: Grave Peril

“Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.”

Harlan Coben Hold Tight

Source: Hold Tight

“People say I love you all the time - when they say, ‘take an umbrella, it’s raining,’ or ‘hurry back,’ or even ‘watch out, you’ll break your neck.’ There are hundreds of ways of wording it - you just have to listen for it, my dear.”

John Patrick The Curious Savage

Source: The Curious Savage

Love, People, Way, Time

“My little girls can break my heart. They can make me cry just looking at them eating their string beans.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Girl, Heart, Cry

“You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: The Funny Thing Is...

Books, Idea, Time

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Commonly attributed to Twain in computer contexts and post-2000 inspirational books — the first sentence has also been attributed to Agatha Christie and Sally Berger.
Misattributed

Secret

“Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it.”

Terry Pratchett book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

People, Law

“If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful hault, 'won't go,' or, even worse, explodes in some innocent person's face.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Source: Journal of a Solitude

Feeling, Personality

“I don't kick a man when he's down, unless I'm the one who put him down in the first place. I don't put him down unless he deserves it. And I don't break my word if I give it. So I'll give you my word.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Northern Lights

“This time I wouldn't forget him, because I couldn't ever forgive him - for breaking my heart twice.”

James Patterson book Sundays at Tiffany's

Source: Sundays at Tiffany's

Forgiveness, Time, Heart, Forgetting

“You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman… I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion/ Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord,' of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women look at the Hindoo, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage…

Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It teaches us the abominable idea of the sixth century--Augustine's idea--that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the priesthood?”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Women, Age, World, Religion

“dont let the old break you; let the love make you”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Love

“And then the dreams break into a million tiny pieces. The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.”

Nora Ephron book Heartburn

Source: Heartburn

Dreams, Fools, Reality

“Sticks and stones will break your bones, but failure will get you killed.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Narcissus in Chains

Source: Narcissus in Chains

Failure

“Pleasures may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrows cannot break it. Hearts live by being wounded.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Pleasure, Heart

“The Girl With Many Eyes
One day in the park
I had quite a surprise.
I met a girl
who had many eyes.

She was really quite pretty
(and also quite shocking!)
and I noticed she had a mouth,
so we ended up talking.

We talked about flowers,
and her poetry classes,
and the problems she'd have
if she ever wore glasses.

It's great to know a girl
who has so many eyes,
but you really get wet
when she breaks down and cries.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Girl, Flowers, Problem

“Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

Life, Way, History

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Variant: The grief that does not speak whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break.
Source: Macbeth

Heart

“but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?”

Terry Pratchett book Snuff

Source: Snuff

Hunger, Law

“Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed
For a dream's sake.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Life, Lie, World, Dreams

“In the end what will happen will be what has happened whenever a civilization breaks up. The people who have brains and courage come through and the ones who haven't are winnowed out.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

People, Courage

“The breaking of so great a thing should make
A greater crack: the round world
Should have shook lions into civil streets,
And citizens to their dens.”

William Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra

Source: Antony and Cleopatra

World

“Government is good at one thing: It knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, "See, if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk."”

Harry Browne (1933–2006) American politician and writer

" A solution for the Middle East http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27171," WorldNetDaily (April 11, 2002) 2000s

“The first boy I fell in love with didn't know I loved him, but he managed to break my heart anyway.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Love, Boy, Heart

“I know it is a bad thing to break a promise, but I think now that it is a worse thing to let a promise break you.”

Jennifer Donnelly A Northern Light

Source: A Northern Light

Thinking

“My heart is breaking for a little love”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Sad, Heartbreaking, Hurtful, Love

“Sometimes life, will get you down, break your heart, steal your crown.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Life, Heart

“It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Heart

“Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em.”

Terry Pratchett book Thief of Time

Source: Thief of Time

Understanding, Thinking

“That's the way it was. Privilege, which just means 'private law.' Two types of people laugh at the law; those that break it and those that make it.”

Terry Pratchett book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

People, Law, Way

“YOU FEAR TO DIE?
"It's not that I don't want… I mean, I've always… it's just that life is a habit that's hard to break…”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Life, Fear

“Sometimes you break your heart in the right way, if you know what I mean.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Heartbreaking, Depressing, Way, Heart

“There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream -- whatever that dream might be.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Heartbreaking, Sad, Love, Dreams

“He's sensitive and I don't want him to break his heart over somebody who doesn't care about him.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

Heart

“Life will not break your heart. It'll crush it.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Life, Heart

“I fear feeling my heart break a second time, because I'm not sure I could survive it. I'd rather live alone than risk the pain.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Face the Fire

Pain, Fear, Feeling, Time

“I try to be good but sometimes
a person just has to break out and
act like the wild and springy thing
one used to be. It's impossible not
to remember wild an want it back.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Personality

“Strength enough to build a home,
Time enough to hold a child,
Love enough to break a heart”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Love, Home, Time, Heart

“No it is not easy to write. It is as hard as breaking rocks. Sparks and splinters fly like shattered steel.”

Clarice Lispector book The Hour of the Star

Source: The Hour of the Star

Flying

“The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

Bird, Sleep, Sea, Night

“break the rules pay the price”

Brandon Mull Fablehaven

Source: Fablehaven

“I don't break; I bounce.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

“Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

Life, Way

“As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I can not properly offer an answer. In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up, and seeking to sustain, the new State government of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much as, and no more than, the public knows. In the Annual Message of Dec. 1863 and accompanying Proclamation, I presented a plan of re-construction (as the phrase goes) which, I promised, if adopted by any State, should be acceptable to, and sustained by, the Executive government of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which might possibly be acceptable; and I also distinctly protested that the Executive claimed no right to say when, or whether members should be admitted to seats in Congress from such States. This plan was, in advance, submitted to the then Cabinet, and distinctly approved by every member of it. One of them suggested that I should then, and in that connection, apply the Emancipation Proclamation to the theretofore excepted parts of Virginia and Louisiana; that I should drop the suggestion about apprenticeship for freed-people, and that I should omit the protest against my own power, in regard to the admission of members to Congress; but even he approved every part and parcel of the plan which has since been employed or touched by the action of Louisiana. The new constitution of Louisiana, declaring emancipation for the whole State, practically applies the Proclamation to the part previously excepted. It does not adopt apprenticeship for freed-people; and it is silent, as it could not well be otherwise, about the admission of members to Congress. So that, as it applies to Louisiana, every member of the Cabinet fully approved the plan. The message went to Congress, and I received many commendations of the plan, written and verbal; and not a single objection to it, from any professed emancipationist, came to my knowledge, until after the news reached Washington that the people of Louisiana had begun to move in accordance with it. From about July 1862, I had corresponded with different persons, supposed to be interested, seeking a reconstruction of a State government for Louisiana. When the message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned, reached New-Orleans, General Banks wrote me that he was confident the people, with his military co-operation, would reconstruct, substantially on that plan. I wrote him, and some of them to try it; they tried it, and the result is known. Such only has been my agency in getting up the Louisiana government. As to sustaining it, my promise is out, as before stated. But, as bad promises are better broken than kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise, and break it, whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public interest. But I have not yet been so convinced.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Last public address (1865)

People, Confidence, Knowledge, Reading

“The very fact that religions are not content to stand on their own feet, but insist on crippling or warping the flexible minds of children in their favour, forms a sufficient proof that there is no truth in them. If there were any truth in religion, it would be even more acceptable to a mature mind than to an infant mind—yet no mature mind ever accepts religion unless it has been crippled in infancy. … The whole basis of religion is a symbolic emotionalism which modern knowledge has rendered meaningless & even unhealthy. Today we know that the cosmos is simply a flux of purposeless rearrangement amidst which man is a wholly negligible incident or accident. There is no reason why it should be otherwise, or why we should wish it otherwise. All the florid romancing about man's "dignity", "immortality", &c. &c. is simply egotistical delusions plus primitive ignorance. So, too, are the infantile concepts of "sin" or cosmic "right" & "wrong". Actually, organic life on our planet is simply a momentary spark of no importance or meaning whatsoever. Man matters to nobody except himself. Nor are his "noble" imaginative concepts any proof of the objective reality of the things they visualise. Psychologists understand how these concepts are built up out of fragments of experience, instinct, & misapprehension. Man is essentially a machine of a very complex sort, as La Mettrie recognised nearly 2 centuries ago. He arises through certain typical chemical & physical reactions, & his members gradually break down into their constituent parts & vanish from existence. The idea of personal "immortality" is merely the dream of a child or savage. However, there is nothing anti-ethical or anti-social in such a realistic view of things. Although meaning nothing in the cosmos as a whole, mankind obviously means a good deal to itself. Therefore it must be regulated by customs which shall ensure, for its own benefit, the full development of its various accidental potentialities. It has a fortuitous jumble of reactions, some of which it instinctively seeks to heighten & prolong, & some of which it instinctively seeks to shorten or lessen. Also, we see that certain courses of action tend to increase its radius of comprehension & degree of specialised organisation (things usually promoting the wished-for reactions, & in general removing the species from a clod-like, unorganised state), while other courses of action tend to exert an opposite effect. Now since man means nothing to the cosmos, it is plan that his only logical goal (a goal whose sole reference is to himself) is simply the achievement of a reasonable equilibrium which shall enhance his likelihood of experiencing the sort of reactions he wishes, & which shall help along his natural impulse to increase his differentiation from unorganised force & matter. This goal can be reached only through teaching individual men how best to keep out of each other's way, & how best to reconcile the various conflicting instincts which a haphazard cosmic drift has placed within the breast of the same person. Here, then, is a practical & imperative system of ethics, resting on the firmest possible foundation & being essentially that taught by Epicurus & Lucretius. It has no need of supernatualism, & indeed has nothing to do with it.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Natalie H. Wooley (2 May 1936), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 240-241
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Men, Children, Truth

“Insurrection is the exclusive right of the people and of the citizen. Every foreigner, every man clothed with public authority, is outlawed if he proposes it and must be put to death as a usurper of sovereignty and as interested in fomenting troubles for the purpose of doing evil or of adorning himself. Insurrections taking place under a despotism are always salutary. Those which break out in a free state are sometimes dangerous for liberty itself, because the revolt usurps its sublime pretexts and its sacred name. Revolts in free states leave long and painful wounds which bleed a whole century.”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

(1794) [Source: Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutions républicaines]

Death, Pain, People, Evil

“Now, through my own infirmity I recover what he was to me: my opposite. Being naturally truthful, he did not see the point of these exaggerations, and was borne on by a natural sense of the fitting, was indeed a great master of the art of living so that he seems to have lived long, and to have spread calm round him, indifference one might almost say, certainly to his own advancement, save that he had also great compassion. […] We have no ceremonies, only private dirges and no conclusions, only violent sensations, each separate. Nothing that has been said meets our case. […] After a long lifetime, loosely, in a moment of revelation, I may lay hands on it, but now the idea breaks in my hand. Ideas break a thousand times for once that they globe themselves entire. […] I am yawning. I am glutted with sensations. I am exhausted with the strain and the long, long time — twenty-five minutes, half an hour — that I have held myself alone outside the machine.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Bernard on Percival, section V
The Waves (1931)

Truth, Art, Idea, Nature

“If philosophy is still necessary, it is so only in the way it has been from time immemorial: as critique, as resistance to the expanding heteronomy, even if only as thought’s powerless attempt to remain its own master and to convict of untruth, by their own criteria, both a fabricated mythology and a conniving, resigned acquiescence. … It is incumbent upon philosophy … to provide a refuge for freedom. Not that there is any hope that it could break the political tendencies that are throttling freedom throughout the world both from within and without and whose violence permeates the very fabric of philosophical argumentation.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy?] (1963), p. 10

World, Hope, Way, Freedom

“In my servant the ant, my tiny servant, who hoards greedily like a miser.
Who works like one unhappy and who has no break and who has no rest.”

Charles Péguy (1873–1914) French poet, essayist, and editor

The Portal of the Mystery of Hope (1912)

“I have this theory about why men kill each other and break things. … Never mind. It's a dumb theory. I was going to say it was all sexual … but everything is sexual … but alcohol.”

Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June

"Mildred"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)

Men, Alcohol

“The time has come and fall has come so pretty…
The yellow leaves are flying over the city…
I am in love with you.
Your golden hair is flying so clear in the air.
I am in love with fall, which came with rain…
It brought the morning mists…
The days are waned…
I know the wintry wind will break her gown.
I say to fall: come back, don’t let me down.
The yellow leaves are whirling in the city.
I’ve met my love too late, it is a pity.
At last we are together and forever.
I know well that better late than never.
The time has come and fall has come so pretty…
The yellow leaves as dreams adorned the city…
I am in love with you.
Your golden hair is flying as a cobweb in the air…”

Volodymyr Melnykov (1951) Ukrainian writer, poet, composer

Kiev’s fall http://imirelnik.io.ua/s1954083/to_my_friends

Love, Dreams, Time, Flying

“I feel keeping a promise to yourself is a direct reflection of the love you have for yourself. I used to make promises to myself and find them easy to break. Today, I love myself enough to not only make a promise to myself, but I love myself enough to keep that promise”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 46

Love, Feeling

“A sledgehammer breaks glass but forges steel.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

"We do not change our course" (1938)

“Every day, I'm standing outside trying to sing my way in: We are hungry, please let us in. We are hungry, please let us in. After about a week that song is gonna change to: We hungry, we need some food. After two, three weeks, it's like: Give me the food Or I'm breaking down the door. After a year you're just like: I'm picking the lock. Coming through the door blasting.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Posthumous attributions, Tupac: Resurrection (2003)

Food, Way, Change, Singing

“A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

St. 1 In The Seven Woods (1904), Adam's Curse http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1431/

World, Weather

“The corporate manager who achieves success by honest efficiency in giving the best service to the public should be favored because we all beneﬁt by his efficiency. […] he should be helped by the Government because his success is good for the National welfare. But a man who, grasps and holds business power by breaking the industrial efficiency of others, who wins success by methods which are against‘ the public interest and degrading to the public morals, should not be permitted to ‘ exercise such power. Instead of punishing him by a long and doubtful process of the law after the wrong has been com- mitted, there should be such effective Government regulation as to check the evil tendencies at the moment that they start do develop.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Law, Exercises, Business, Evil

“As I conclude I reflect on my childhood experience when I would visit a stream next to our home to fetch water for my mother. I would drink water straight from the stream. Playing among the arrowroot leaves I tried in vain to pick up the strands of frogs’ eggs, believing they were beads. But every time I put my little fingers under them they would break. Later, I saw thousands of tadpoles: black, energetic and wriggling through the clear water against the background of the brown earth. This is the world I inherited from my parents. Today, over 50 years later, the stream has dried up, women walk long distances for water, which is not always clean, and children will never know what they have lost. The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder.”

Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) Kenyan environmental and political activist

Nobel lecture http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/2004/maathai-lecture.html (10 December 2004)

Women, Children, World, Beauty

“Again and again the imaginary plan on which one attempts to build up that order breaks down and then we must try another. This imaginative vision and faith in the ultimate success are indispensable. The pure rationalist has no place here.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Where Is Science Going? (1932)

Faith, Imagination, Success

“If the task of philosophy is to break the domination of words over the human mind […], then my concept notation, being developed for these purposes, can be a useful instrument for philosophers […] I believe the cause of logic has been advanced already by the invention of this concept notation.”

Gottlob Frege book Begriffsschrift

Begriffsschrift (1879) Preface to the Begriffsschrift

“I shall never forget the impression which our first landing on the beach of California make upon me. The sun had just gone down; it was getting dusky; the damp night wind was beginning to blow, and the heavy swell of the Pacific was setting in, and breaking in loud and high "combers" on the beach… we put our oars in the boat, and, leaving one to watch it, walked about the beach to see what we could of the place. The beach is nearly a mile in length between the two points, and of smooth sand… It was growing dark, so that we could just distinguish the dim outlines of the two vessels in the offing; and the great seas were rolling in in regular lines, growing larger and larger as they approached the shore, and hanging over the beach upon which they were to break, when their tops would curl over and turn white with foam, and, being at one extreme of the line, break rapidly to the other, as a child's long card house falls when a card is knocked down at one end.”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. book Two Years Before the Mast

Two Years Before the Mast (1840)

Sun, Housing, Sea, Night

“Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory—of a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends till it breaks; or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. II; XXXVIII
Lacon (1820)

Pain, Pleasure, Memory, Forgetting

“There were rules in the monastery, but the Master always warned against the tyranny of the law.
"Obedience keeps the rules," he would say. "Love knows when to break them."”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Revolution
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

Love, Law

“Why, it was like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood -- one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror -- that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Ch. 13 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-13.html A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

Death, Hunger, People, Hell

“If she's cool and unwilling to be wooed,
Just take it, don't weaken; in time she'll soften her mood.
Bending a bough the right way, gently, makes
It easy; use brute force, and it breaks.
With swimming rivers it's the same—
Go with, not against, the current.”
Si nec blanda satis, nec erit tibi comis amanti, Perfer et obdura: postmodo mitis erit. Flectitur obsequio curvatus ab arbore ramus: Frangis, si vires experiere tuas. Obsequio tranantur aquae: nec vincere possis Flumina, si contra, quam rapit unda, nates.

Ovid book Ars amatoria

Book II, lines 177–182 (tr. James Michie)
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)

Way, Mood, Time

“But there is one very odd thing - to notice that basically a picture doesn't change, that the first 'vision' remains almost intact, in spite of appearances. I often ponder on a light and a dark when I have put them into a painting; I try hard to break them up by interpolating a color that will create a different effect. When the work is photographed, I note that what I put in to correct my first vision has disappeared, and that, after all, the photographic image corresponds with my first vision before the transformation I insisted on.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Boisgeloup, winter 1934
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 313
Quotes, 1930's

Color, Light, Appearance, Winter

“One of the things you want to do with a conception like compassion is that you want to start thinking about it like a psychologist, or like a scientist, because compassion is actually definable. The easiest way to approach it is to think about it in Big-5 terms, because it maps onto Agreeableness, which you can break down into Compassion and Politeness. The liberal types, especially the Social Justice types, are way higher in Compassion. It's actually their fundamental characteristic. You might think, 'well, compassion is a virtue.' Yes, it's a virtue, but any uni-dimensional virtue immediately becomes a vice, because real virtue is the intermingling of a number of virtues and their integration into a functional identity that can be expressed socially. Compassion can be great if you happen to be the entity towards which it is directed. But compassion tends to divide the world into crying children and predatory snakes. So if you're a crying child, hey great. But if you happen to be identified as one of the predatory snakes, you better look the hell out. Compassion is what the mother grizzly bear feels for her cubs while she eats you because you got in the way. We don't want to be thinking for a second that compassion isn't a virtue that can lead to violence, because it certainly can. The other problem with compassion - this is why we have conscientiousness - there's five canonical personality dimensions. Agreeableness is good if you are functioning in a kin system. You want to distribute resources equally for example among your children, because you want all of them to have the same chance, and even roughly the same outcome. That is, a good one. But the problem is that you can't extend that moral network to larger groups. As far as I can tell, you need conscientiousness, which is a much colder virtue. It's also a virtue that is much more concerned with larger structures over the longer period of time. And you can think about conscientiousness as a form of compassion too. It's like: 'straighten the hell out, and work hard and your life will go well. I don't care how you feel about that right now.' Someone who's cold, that is, low in agreeableness and high in conscientiousness, will tell you every time. 'Don't come whining to me. I don't care about your hurt feelings. Do your goddamn job or you're going to be out on the street.' One might think, 'Oh that person is being really hard on me.' Not necessarily. They might have your long term best interest in mind. You're fortunate if you come across someone who is disagreeable. Not tyrannically disagreeable, but moderately disagreeable and high in conscientiousness because they will whip you into shape. And that's really helpful. You'll admire people like that. You won't be able to help it. You'll feel like, 'Oh wow, this person has actually given me good information, even though you will feel like a slug after they have taken you apart.' That's the compassion issue. You can't just transform that into a political stance. I think part of what we're seeing is actually the rise of a form of female totalitarianism, because we have no idea what totalitarianism would be like if women ran it, because that's never happened before in the history of the planet. And so, we've introduced women into the political sphere radically over the past fifty years. We have no idea what the consequence of that is going to be. But we do know from our research, which is preliminary, that agreeableness really predicts political correctness, but female gender predicts over and above the personality trait, and that's something we found very rarely in our research. Usually the sex differences are wiped out by the personality differences, but not in this particular case. On top of that, women are getting married later, and they're having children much later, and they're having fewer of them, and so you also have to wonder what their feminine orientation is doing with itself in the interim, roughly speaking. A lot of it is being expressed as political opinion. Fair enough. That's fine. But it's not fine when it starts to shut down discussion.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Life, Women, Children, People

“Part of me felt like something momentous was about to happen. The other part of me expected to wake up at any moment, to come out of this fever dream or stress episode or whatever it was and wake up with my face in a puddle of drool on the Smart Aid break room table and think, Well, that was strange, and then return to the boring old business of being me. But I didn't wake up.”

Ransom Riggs book Miss Peregrine's Home of Peculiar Children

Source: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Chapter 6, Page 139

Dreams, Business, Thinking, Parting

“I am weary, having worked without a break all day; how beautiful it is here, to be sure, but how difficult to paint! I can see what I want to do quite clearly but I'm not there yet. It's so clear and pure in its pink and blues that the slightest misjudged stroke looks like a smudge of dirt... I have fourteen canvases underway.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Monet's quote in a letter from Cote d'Azure to his second wife Alice Hoschedé, (ca. 1886): K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 55
1870 - 1890

Beauty, Painting

“If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.”

Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) English author

"A Second Paper on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" (1839). Source: Thomas de Quincy. On Murder (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006), 84

Time, Drink, Thinking

“Gay brothers and sisters,…You must come out. Come out… to your parents… I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives… come out to your friends… if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors… to your fellow workers… to the people who work where you eat and shop… come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene.”

Harvey Milk (1930–1978) American politician who became a martyr in the gay community

"That's What America Is," speech given on Gay Freedom Day (1978-06-25) in San Francisco

People, Thinking, Parent, Sister

“I think it's important to take a break, you know, from the public eye for a while, and give people a chance to miss you. I want longevity. I don't want to get out there and run myself ragged and spread myself thin.”

Aaliyah (1979–2001) American singer, actress and model

Attributed

People, Thinking, Chance

“For they truly know their Lord in the breaking of bread, whose heart within them so vehemently burneth, whilst Thou, O blessed Jesus, dost walk and converse with them.”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 372.

Heart

“Well some say life
Will beat you down,
And break your heart,
Steal your crown.So it started out
For God-knows-where.
I guess I'll know
When I get there.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Learning to Fly
Lyrics, Into The Great Wide Open (1991)

Life, God, Heart

“Of course fear does not automatically lead to courage. Injury does not necessarily lead to insight. Hardship will not automatically make us better. Pain can break us or make us wiser. Suffering can destroy us or make us stronger. Fear can cripple us, or it can make us more courageous. It is resilience that makes the difference.”

Eric Greitens (1974) American politician, author, and former Navy SEAL

Eric Greitens: How To Became A Resilient Leader https://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2015/03/10/eric-greitens-how-to-became-a-resilient-leader/#1ee8d8762e54 (March 10, 2015)

Pain, Fear, Courage, Suffering

“When the commander in chief of a nation finds it necessary to order employees of the government or agencies of the government to do things that would technically break the law, he has to be able to declare it legal in order for them to do that.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Response to the Frost-Nixon interviews on the Watergate scandal, UPI (21 May 1977)
1970s

Law

“A desire for children, I suppose; for Nessa's life; for the sense of flowers breaking all round me involuntarily. […] Years and years ago, after the Lytton affair, I said to myself, walking up the hill at Bayreuth, never pretend that the things you haven't got are not worth having; good advice I think. And then I went on to say to myself that one must like things for themselves; or rather, rid them of their bearing upon one's personal life. One must venture on to the things that exist independently of oneself. Now this is very hard for young women to do. Yet I got satisfaction from it. And now, married to L., I never have to make the effort. Perhaps I have been to happy for my soul's good? And does some of my discontent come from feeling that?”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

2 January 1923
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Life, Women, Children, Feeling

“Ultimately, peace is just not about politics. It’s about attitudes; about a sense of empathy; about breaking down the divisions that we create for ourselves in our own minds and our own hearts that don’t exist in any objective reality, but that we carry with us generation after generation.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama and Mrs. Obama in Town Hall with Youth of Northern Ireland, Belfast Waterfront, Belfast, Northern Ireland (17 June 2013) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/17/remarks-president-obama-and-mrs-obama-town-hall-youth-northern-ireland 2013

Peace, Reality, Sense, Heart

“Was there nought better than to enjoy?
No feat which, done, would make time break,
And let us pent-up creatures through
Into eternity, our due?
No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Dis aliter visum; or, Le Byron de nos Jours.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Time

“But only love can break your heart
Try to be sure right from the start
Yes only love can break your heart
What if your world should fall apart?”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Song lyrics, After the Gold Rush (1970)

Love, World, Heart

“True love, true love.
It must be true love.
Nothing else can break my heart like
True love, true love.
It must be true love.
No one else can break my heart like you.”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

True Love, featuring Lily Allen, written by Pink, Greg Kurstin and Lily Allen
Song lyrics, The Truth About Love (2012)

Love, Heart

“And I know it aches
And your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Lyrics, All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000), Walk On

Heart

“The lion who breaks the enemy's ranks
is a minor hero
compared to the lion who overcomes himself.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Rumi Daylight (1990)

“But I keep cruising, can't stop, won't stop moving.
It's like I got this music in my body and it's gonna be alright.'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake,
I shake it off, I shake it off.
Heartbreakers gonna break, break, break, break, break
And the fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake.
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake,
I shake it off, I shake it off.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Shake It Off, written by Taylor Swift, Max Martin, and Shellback
Song lyrics, 1989 (2014)

Hate, Music, Baby

“You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

1929, p. 1
Culture and Value (1980)

Tree

“Thanks for the information
Never give a sucker an even break
When he's breaking through
To a new level of consciousness
There always seems to be more
Obstacles in the way
Thanks for the information I know
It's only a combat zone
Thanks for the memory,
I'll just have
To carry on on my own.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Thanks For the Information
Song lyrics, No Guru (1986)

Way, Memory

“How I suffered when I had to preach to you those pious lies that I detest in my heart. What remorse your credulity caused me! A thousand times I was on the point of breaking out publicly and opening your eyes, but a fear stronger than myself held me back, and forced me to keep silence until my death.”

Jean Meslier (1664–1729) French priest

Quoted in Thinker: Jean Meslier by Colin Brewer, in rationalist.org (3 July 2007) http://rationalist.org.uk/articles/1425/thinker-jean-meslier Testament: Memoir of the Thoughts and Sentiments of Jean Meslier

Death, Fear, Silence, Suffering

“We knew nothing but despotism. That is why the very rich Mughal empire could break up into nothing. Turn to dust at the merest touch of a foreign power. There was no institution, there was no creative nation, no university, no printing press, there was nothing but personal power. …. How do you ignore history? But the nationalist movement, independence movement ignored it. You read the Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru, it talks about the mythical past and then it jumps the difficult period of the invasions and conquests. So you have Chinese pilgrims coming to Bihar, Nalanda and places like that. Then somehow they don't tell you what happens, why these places are in ruin. They never tell you why Elephanta island is in ruins or why Bhubaneswar was desecrated. So history has to be studied, it is very painful history. But it is not more painful than most countries have had. …It isn't India alone that has had a rough time, that has to be understood. But the rough time has to be faced and it cannot be glossed over. There are tools for us to understand the rough time. We can read a man like Ibn Battuta who will tell you what it was like to be there in the midst of the fourteenth century, terrible times. An apologist of the invaders would like to gloss that over. But it would be wrong to gloss that over, that has to be understood. …But I would like to see this past recovered and not dodged.”

V.S. Naipaul (1932–2018) Trinidadian-British writer of Indo-Nepalese ancestry

V.S. Naipaul, Interview, with URMI GOSWAMI, JANUARY 14, 2003 0 'How do you ignore history?' https://web.archive.org/web/20070106194746/http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/comp/articleshow?artid=34295982

Pain, World, History, Understanding

“I can tell you that — and this is something I have told him — that this is a job of such magnitude that you can’t do it by yourself. You are enormously reliant on a team. Your Cabinet, your senior White House staff, all the way to fairly junior folks in their 20s and 30s but who are executing on significant responsibilities. And so, how you put a team together to make sure that they’re getting you the best information and they are teeing up the options from which you will ultimately make decisions. That’s probably the most useful constructive advice and the most constructive advice that I’ve been able to give him, that if you find yourself isolated because the process breaks down or if you’re only hearing from people who agree with you on everything or if you haven’t created a process that is fact-checking and probing and asking hard questions about policies or promises that you’ve made, that’s when you start making mistakes. And as I indicated in some of my previous remarks, reality has a way of biting back if you’re not paying attention to it.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

On the job of the U.S. President and the need of good advisers and staff
2017, Final News Conference as President (January 2017)

People, Way, Question, Reality

“I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government — that nation — of which that constitution was the organic law.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, "If Slavery Is Not Wrong, Nothing Is Wrong" (1864)

Law, Way, Feeling, Understanding