A Break From Life Quotes & Sayings

I know you like to be in control and you operate a lot from fear but you have to break the bounds of your past Nicole and rewrite the story you've been telling yourself based off of others experiences. You have to create your own experience, write your own story. — Kathryn Perez

I want to take a break from everything,to find out if ... i'm still ALIVE! — Mareez Reyes

Boredom is a symptom of a conditioned and closed mind. If you are bored, you're doing yourself a tremendous disservice. Open your mind, break-free from your conditioned routine, and reignite the flames of excitement and discovery. — Steve Maraboli

Getting all emotionally wrapped up in made-up people's lives gives me a chance to take a break from my own life [ ... ]. — Arlaina Tibensky

If you are bored, you're doing yourself a tremendous disservice. Open your mind, break-free from your conditioned routine, and reignite the flames of excitement and discover. — Steve Maraboli

I begin to cry as my walls of my resolve break down. I don't know how long I can hold on. The pain is horrid and I curl into myself wrestling with a wish to die and a wish to live. Both have their perks. Only one will release me from this agony. — Celia Mcmahon

Life occurs in segments, little bursts of time setting us on a course. Our little boat floats out into vast waters, sailing along until a storm comes to knock us off course - or worse. How many people are floating around, lost? I'm not even sure I am floating anymore. It's more like I'm trying to break my boat free from years of rot after it's been filled with sediment and settled on the ocean floor. — H.M. Ward

A mother can have no secrets in a settler's hut but she cannot so much as break wind and all her children must hear what she has done but now she were far away from Fifteen Mile Creek and no longer could I guess her life. I were told she took laundry and perhaps she did but I am sure she only did what she must do. She had a mother and father and brothers and sisters but in the end she were a poor widow and she had 7 children and all of them was alarmed and unsettled by their lives. — Peter Carey

From books, I winnowed the glue that held together my psyche as it struggled to stay whole. It was from stories and myths that I learned to dream, to imagine a different life, to realize potentials and probabilities other than those of the painful, poverty-mired existence I found myself in as a child. With a book I could hide in a corner, safe from the heavy hand and belt of my stepfather, and for a while not worry about where our next meal would come from, or where we would be sleeping that night, or when my mother would break and have to be sent yet again to the mental institution. Books, for me, we tiny life rafts that I clung to desperately. — J. Don Cook

All boys wish to be manly; but they often try to become so by copying the vices of men rather than their virtues. They see men drinking, smoking, swearing; so these poor little fellows sedulously imitate such bad habits, thinking they are making themselves more like men. They mistake rudeness for strength, disrespect to parents for independence. They read wretched stories about boy brigands and boy detectives, and fancy themselves heroes when they break the laws, and become troublesome and mischievous. Out of such false influences the criminal classes are recruited. Many a little boy who only wishes to be manly, becomes corrupted and debased by the bad examples around him and the bad literature which he reads. The cure for this is to give him good books, show him truly noble examples from life and history, and make him understand how infinitely above this mock-manliness is the true courage which ennobles human nature. — James Clarke

Most people have a blank slate and can start from nothing. But for me, I had to break a bad habit that I've been doing all of my life, which is freestyle hip-hop. — Roshon Fegan

Why were we tortured? We were in love and life was a fast current swarming around our ankles, threatening to topple us into the wet part of the planet. It was intense, that's why we were tortured. It was enormous and exploding like palm tree. Iris was my Yuri-G, my Delilah, my Stella Marie. Strong dark women you had to love with a strong dark heart that throbbed in gorgeous pain because love is terrible. I mean, ultimately. It would go away like a needle lifting from the vinyl at the end of the song, we knew this. The music would cease, one of us would die or else we'd just break up, and this drove us to drink from each other like two twelve-year-olds sneaking vodka from the liquor cabinet, trying to get it all down, trying to get as fucked up as possible before we got caught. — Michelle Tea

Never offer an oath lightly. For you pledge not only your life and sacred honor, but your people's honor as well. To break an oath is to be without honor, to be without a spirit, and to be apart from the people. — Raymond E. Feist

Maybe every once in a while we can take a break from doing everything faster and quicker to reflect on who we are and where we are going. — Joe Plumeri

She hadn't realised how low her self esteem had been, first during her relationship, when she tried to turn herself into someone else, and then when recovering from the break up.
Because however much she was a part of the decision to break up, she still felt bruised and battered, never thought she'd have the energy to go through all this again with someone new.
It has been so much easier, since they separated, to be cocooned with her family, to nest in her cosy home and allow life to carry on for others, outside the safety of her house. — Jane Green

All France, it has often been said, is a garden, and if you love France, as I do, it can be a very beautiful garden. For myself I found it healing and soothing to the spirit; I recovered from the shocks and bruises which I had received in my own country. But there comes a day, when you are well again and strong, when this atmosphere ceases to be nourishing. You long to break out and test your powers. Then the French spirit seems inadequate. You long to make friends, to create enemies, to look beyond walls and cultivated patches of earth. You want to cease thinking in terms of life insurance, sick benefits, old age pensions and so on. — Henry Miller

If we would rise into that region of light and power plainly beckoning us through the Scriptures of truth we must break the evil habit of ignoring the spiritual. We must shift our interest from the seen to the unseen. For the great unseen Reality is God. "He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." This is basic in the life of faith. From there we can rise to unlimited heights. "Ye believe in God," said our Lord Jesus Christ, "believe also in me." Without the first there can be no second. — A.W. Tozer

It may sound dorky, but I love books--the feel of the paper, the old, musty smell, and especially the way the words roll over you and take you somewhere altogether different. They've been my escape as long as I can remember. Whether I need a break from schoolwork or my brother or just life in general, there's always a books that can take me someplace far away. — Cheryl Renee Herbsman

I take the book stopped at a fold, deliver myself to its pace, to the breathing of the other storyteller. If I am someone else, it's also because books move men more than journeys or tears.
After many pages you end up learning a variant, a different move than the one taken and thought inevitable.
I break away from what I am when I learn to treat my own life differently. — Erri De Luca

There's an enormous difference between being a story writer and being a regular person. As a person, it's your duty to stay on a straight and even keel, not to break down blubbering in the streets, not to pull rude drivers from their cars, not to swing from the branches of trees. But as a writer it's your duty to lie and to view everything in life, however outrageous, as an interesting possibility. You may need to be ruthless or amoral in your writing to be original. Telling a story straight from real life is only being a reporter, not a creator. You have to make your story bigger, better, more magical, more meaningful than life is, no matter how special or wonderful in real life the moment may have been. — Rick Bass

Middle Age, a restful, welcome break from real life, brings some unique opportunities. — Marilyn Suzanne Miller

Consistent participation in the act and spirit of Early Morning Prayer will eradicate from your life the things that create the majority of all spiritual inconsistencies. Almost all of the works of the flesh that continually disrupt the flow of God can be eliminated totally by a commitment to diligently seeking God at the break of each new day. When every day is begun with a fresh pursuit of the presence of God, none of the inconsistencies of human endeavor will be able to dominate. — Tony Bailey

Money fascinates me... It has the power to make and break nations... It determines a person's quality of life and limits us as a race what we're capable of accomplishing, yet it has no true value other than what we've placed on it. It's a man-made concept, yet it holds us back, keeps us from achieving well, everything. Peace. Equality. Just think of the scientific discoveries we've had to forgo because of a lack of funding. And it's all made up. none of it's real. — S.L. Madden

Shall the dire day break when life
finds us merely husband and wife
with passion not so much denied
as neatly laundered and put aside
and the old joyous insistence
trimmed to placid coexistence?

Shall we sometime arise from bed
with not a carnal thought in our head
look at each other without surprise
out of wide awake uncandid eyes
touch and know no immediate urge
where all mysteries converge?

Speak for the sake of something to say
and now and then put on a display
of elaborate mimicry of the past to prove
that ritual reigns where once ruled love
and calmly observe those bleak rites
that once made splendour of our nights?

Dear, when we stop being outrageous
and no longer find contagious
the innumerable ecstasies we find
in rise of hand or leap of mind -
not now or then, love, need we fear thus;
those two sad people will not be us. — Christy Brown

All my adult life I have kept a distance from other people, it has been my way of coping, because I become so incredibly close to others in my thoughts and feelings of course, they only have to look away dismissively for a storm to break inside me. — Karl Ove Knausgard

Frankly, I am quite tired of those who tout Christianity as a way to stop smoking or drinking or break wild habits of the world. Is that all Christianity is, to keep us from some bad habit? Of course, regeneration will clean us up, and the new birth will make a man right. If that is what Christianity is all about, what about the person whose life is not that bad? The purpose of God in redemption is to restore us again to the divine imperative of worship. We were created to worship, but sin destroyed that ability. Jesus Christ, on the cross, redeemed us and brought us back to the place where we now can worship and have fellowship with God Almighty. My clean life is a by-product of my conversion. My life may have pointed out to me that I needed a drastic change, but that is not the purpose for which I was converted. The essence of conversion is to bring me into a right relationship with God and have fellowship with Him. — A.W. Tozer

Well, a lot of things surprised me. There were things that I had never thought about, in my life. I never thought about how loud prison was. I've never thought about how your ears never really get a break from all this noise. That was actually replicated on our set pretty well. — Taylor Schilling

She lived a good deal by herself, to herself, working, passing on from day to day, and always thinking, trying to lay hold on life, to grasp it in her own understanding. Her active living was suspended, but underneath, in the darkness, something was coming to pass. If only she could break through the last integuments! — D.H. Lawrence

Fear's a box we grow used to, convince ourselves it's all the space we need, that we like its color, its smell, its protection. Comes a time to stop hiding, stop being afraid. If we don't break free of our boxes, our spirits' shrink, we shrink in every way imaginable. Oh, Grace, my friend, don't let fear, especially someone else's fear, prevent you from living your life. — Joan Medlicott

And if you've ever wondered what happens when a person close to you is taken too soon-and it's always too soon-you may find other truths here, truths that may break the grip of sadness in your life, that may set you free from guilt, that may even bring you back to this world from wherever you are hiding. And then you will never fell alone — Ben Sherwood

Under that light rain, beaming in the night game, can't stop now, keep moving, no brake pads. Came here to prove a point, live my life on the field, make history in between the base paths. And compete against the fear that is in me, that's my only barrier and I swear I'm going to break that. From the mud, the cleats that we dragged through the feet, this is that moment and you cannot take it back ... This is what you make of it, yeah we play to win, live it like we're under the lights of the stadium. Fight, until the day that God decides to wave us in, right, until he waves us in ... — Macklemore

The 5th Marine Division had suffered such severs casualties, they were able to bring our entire Division back to Hawaii in only 5 or 6 ships. We docked in Hilo and boarded a single train normally used to haul sugar cane to mill. These were open flat cars, the weather was beautiful, the scenery fantastic. As our train gets underway the Marines break out their Jap flags captured on Iwo Jima. There were hundreds of Jap flags flying from on end of the train to the other. This was a beautiful sight. The victors had returned home. I've never felt so proud to be a part of anything like this before in my life. There were no spectators, no one watching us, no crowd, no cheering, no band, only the remainder of a proud 5th Marine Division returning home. For some reason I preferred it this way, no one could understand our feelings at this time. — George Nations

Accepting the facts is always tough, so we search for forgiveness to this universe everyday to break the shackles, hurt is a prison and I from a very young young age refused to be held prisoner or even conform. — Aidan McNally

I am far from a perfect dad. And I always will be. But I'm a damn good dad, and my son will always feel bigger than anything life can throw at him. Why? Because I get it. I get the power a dad has in a child's life, and in a child's level of self-belief. I get that everything I ever do and ever say to my son will be absorbed, for good or for bad. — Dan Pearce

Your young, sitting back thinking about your future, you feel heavily in your heart your desire to create your dream; no matter the tasks set before you. You hold that feeling; close to you, and you age. Your told to grow up, get a job and become successful in ways that will make someone else proud, whilst ignoring the ache inside yourself. Truth is, we're all raised to conform; damn it our parents were raised to conform, but does that mean you have to, too? No, than unravel that long lost dream inside yourself and start to create a life from it, you'll walk alone for a while, you will break down every comfort zone you've ever known; slowly transforming into a being without one, and you know what..? even if it's going to be hard, possibly some of the greatest hurdles of your time; one thing will feel certain- you'll never have felt so empowered in all your life. — Nikki Rowe

We can raise our sights high when we're willing to break free from being conformists who live a conventional life simply because we are too afraid to express our uniqueness. — Alexandra Stoddard

This was to say, however, that she did not long, at times, for some even greater variation, that she did not pass through those abnormal hours in which one thirsts for something different from what one has, when those people who, through lack of energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or the postman knocks, in their eagerness for news (even if it be bad news), for some emotion (even that of grief); when the heartstrings, which prosperity has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and sounded again by some hand, even a brutal hand, even if it shall break them; when the will, which has with such difficulty brought itself to subdue to its impulse, to renounce its right to abandon itself to its own uncontrolled desires, and consequent sufferings, would fain cast its guiding reins into the hands of circumstances, coercive and, it may be, cruel. — Marcel Proust

The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you. In books the heroes can make as many mistakes as they like. It doesn't matter what they do, because everything works out in the end. They'll beat the bad guys and put things right and everything ends up cool.
In real life, vacuum cleaners kill spiders. If you cross a busy road without looking, you get whacked by a car. If you fall from a tree, you break some bones.
Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.
I just wanted to make that clear before I begun. — Darren Shan

Let me put it this way: I don't feel as settled as I look. I think that's true of everyone, probably. Except for Beyonce and Jay-Z. I don't think they wake up and think, 'Ugh, when's it going to work out for us? Why can't we catch a break?' Aside from them, I'm pretty sure everyone's life feels a lot less intentional. — Sloane Crosley

Because the kind of nonfiction I write has a plot, the events and transactions that make up a life, nonfiction offers me a break from plotting. — Kathryn Harrison

Solitude well practiced will break the power of busyness, haste, isolation, and loneliness. You will see that the world is not on your shoulders after all. Your will find yourself, and God will find you in new ways. Silence also brings Sabbath to you. It completes solitude, for without it you cannot be alone. Far from being a mere absence, silence allows the reality of God to stand in the midst of your life. God does not ordinarily compete for our attention. In silence we come to attend. Lastly, fasting is done that we many consciously experience the direct sustenance of God to our body and our whole person. — Dallas Willard

As you learn to fight, you learn to defend yourself from physical harm. You acquire a powerful self-preserving skill set, and a specific attitude. This attitude carries across to other aspects of your life. So that you can defend yourself from other less tangible but far more dangerous things that can break you - not just your body, but your spirit. Things such as deception, corruption, disparagement, coercion, false accusation and persecution. Subtle evil things that undermine you. — Vera Nazarian

When Verlaine and Rimbaud were young," [Snyder] said, they were protesting the iron-grip bourgeois rationality had on all aspects of nineteenth-century French culture - the manners, the view of reality, and the exclusion of 'the wild' from public life. Rationality in business and society were dominant values. 'Deranging the senses' was one strategy artists like Verlaine and Rimbaud employed to break free of that.

"Today," he continued, "the bourgeoisie is sociopathic, overindulged, distracted, spoiled beyond measure, and unable to restrain its gluttony, even in the face of pending planetary destruction. In the face of such a threat, it has, by necessity, become the responsibility of the artist to model health and sanity. — Peter Coyote

Mortality
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passes from life to his rest in the grave.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, the low and the high,
Shall molder to dust, and together shall lie.
Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together in sunshine and rain;
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
'Tis the wink of an eye - 'tis the draught of a breath -
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud? — William Knox

The weakness of our age is in want of great men and women. It is hard to resist the current. Someone must completely detach himself from the ordinary run of politicians if he is to save politics; economists must break with the ordinary run of the mill of capital and labor commonplaces, if economics is to be saved. In other words, we need saints. These are not easy to make. First of all - because we do not always want the best; the best demands sacrifice of the ordinary and the discipline of the lower self. God, in His turn, finds it hard to give, because He gives only the best - moral perfection - and few there are who want it. As Augustine said at one point in his life, "I want to be good, dear Lord...but not now - a little later on. — Fulton Sheen

Who can tell?
Your living is an organized hell.
The mansion of your mind just an oversized cell.
The pressure, everything is done to a measure.
In the sea of competition sunk like a treasure.
Like a feather falling slow spiraling to the floor.
Strung up like a broken violin to your course.
Opportunity is knocking at your door,
But you never left a welcome mat (It doesn't matter anymore.).
Or anyhow, but you're too late to turn back.
Fate pushing you into the wall like a thumbtack.
Ain't no comebacks in this game of life.
Roll the dice again,
Roll it once, never twice.

Keep on going, and taste the stars.
Keep on growing, and raise the bar.
You're living life for the As down to the Zs,
After one drop you got a fountain to seize.

Wanna break from the world, but the world wanna break you,
The weight makes your backbone curl up and make you. — Tablo

Being in Nirvana was amazing an experience that will never happen again for me. And I look on them as some of the best and worst times of my life. But we're in this band, the Foo Fighters, making music for the love of music. We all came from bands that had disbanded, and we were drawn to each other because we missed playing - we missed getting in the van, loading our equipment, and watching it break down in the middle of a show. And that feeling hasn't gone away. There's nothing I'd rather do than make music. It's the love of my life. — Dave Grohl

I am a vacation. I am the Caribbean, and a fruity drink and a sunburn and a break from real life. But I am not real life. No one lives in the Caribbean. No one wants a fruity drink every day. I'd rather be water: necessary. — Corey Ann Haydu

"Plaza de la Soledad" is a documentary about Carmen, Lety, Raquel and Esther, four strong women - middle-aged and older - who want to break a vicious circle that began with abuse and abandonment suffered from an early age. They simply want to have a better life. The film follows their quest to find true love and their capacity to transform themselves. — Maya Goded

Never lose yourself on the stage. Always act in your own person, as an artist. The moment you lose yourself on the stage marks the departure from truly living your part and the beginning of exaggerated false acting. Therefore, no matter how much you act, how many parts you take, you should never allow yourself any exception to the rule of using your own feelings. To break that rule is the equivalent of killing the person you are portraying, because you deprive him of a palpitating, living, human soul, which is the real source of life for a part. — Constantin Stanislavski

Life must be terrible for working people, considering they spend every Friday night celebrating a two day break from it. — Robert Black

The philosophy of Atheism has its root in the earth, in this life; its aim is the emancipation of the human race from all God-heads, be they Judaic, Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhistic, Brahmanistic, or what not. Mankind has been punished long and heavily for having created its gods, nothing but pain and persecution, have been man's lot since gods began. There is but one way out of this blunder. Man must break his fetters which have chained him to the gates of heaven and hell, so that he can begin to fashion out of his reawakened and illumined consciousness a new world upon the earth. — Emma Goldman

Why would a white caribou come down to Beaver River, where the woodland herd lives? Why would she leave the Arctic tundra, where the light blazes incandescent, to haunt these shadows? Why would any caribou leave her herd to walk, solitary, thousands of miles? The herd is comfort. The herd is a fabric you can't cut or tear, passing over the land. If you could see the herd from the sky, if you were a falcon or a king eider, it would appear like softly floating gauze over the face of the snow, no more substantial than a cloud. "We are soft," the herd whispers. "We have no top teeth. We do not tear flesh. We do not tear at any part of life. We are gentleness itself. Why would any of us break from the herd? Break, apart, separate, these are hard words. The only reason any of us would become one, and not part of the herd, is if she were lost. — Kathleen Winter

I like documenting people who can break away from the conformist boring world we are stuck in and either live their life in a much more far out way or create art that critiques it well. — Yony Leyser

Those who die young, they are cheated," she said. "Not cheated out of life, because life is a penance, but the young, they're cheated because they don't know it's coming. They don't have time to move closer, to return home. When you know you're going to die, you try to be near the bones of your own people. You don't even think you have bones when you're young, even when you break them, you don't believe you have them. But when you're old, they start reminding you they're there. They start turning to dust on you, even as you're walking here and there, going from place to place. And this is when you crave to be near the bones of your own people. My children never felt this. They had to look death in the face, even before they knew what it was. Just like you did, no? — Edwidge Danticat

The trouble with today's snarky pipsqueaks who break off a sentence or two, or who write a couple of mean paragraphs, is that they don't go far enough; they don't have a coherent view of life. Spinning around in the media from moment to moment, they don't stand for anything, push for anything; they're mere opportunists without dedication, and they don't win any victories. — David Denby

The one general theme I took away from that first week with my new friends, was that everyone had their issues. Life in its simplest form is an attempt to deal with and avoid potential impediments. Some families take dysfunction to lofty heights while other break apart like Oreos mixed in a blender. — Phil Wohl

Gotta take a risk, take a chance, make a change, and break away. I won't forget the place I came from. — Kelly Clarkson

Feel whatever arises fully, and then let go of any identification with what you're feeling. You are at choice. You don't have to go through another moment of suffering. Break free from the societal constructs that say, 'Life is meant to be a challenge.' This is not true. You have the capacity to become the observer of your emotional reactions and check in with your heart each time, to respond from love and compassion. This is the key to becoming liberated from the bonds of emotional suffering. — Dashama Konah Gordon

deep inside the smoldering stump of Israel, a remnant of life was rising to push back the darkness and break through the crust of the desolation of the people of God to find the light of day. Though they struggled to see it, God loved them. He loved them with an everlasting, unfailing love. Salvation was coming, and when all was said and done, "He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. " (Rev 21:3-4) "Behold," he says, "I am making all things new. — Russ Ramsey

I need to take a break from this life as a human for 45 minutes and go experience a little bit of immortality. — D. M. Turner

The fact that each being has its own accordant suffering means that no matter who we are, whether we have a prominent place or the humblest place in society, we all experience suffering. Reflect on all of the ordinary suffering that each and every living being experiences. Many of us face the unbearable suffering of the death of a child. All of us will experience being separated from our parents, either by emotional estrangement or by death. If we are married or in a long-term relationship, that relationship will either break up or end with the death of one of the partners. Many of us have families that do not behave like families due to alcoholism or other kinds of addictions, and we grow up lacking stability and intimacy. Even if we do have a more stable family life, we will still experience the suffering of disagreements, arguing, and fighting. — Anyen Rinpoche

Watching 40 mile chunks of ice break off of Antarctica will change your life forever, but realizing that driving a car, or flying a plane, or having a nice steak, or drinking from a plastic bottle all contributed to the destruction of the environment - it's a bit complex, but music needs to pave the way for getting people to think about this kind of complexity. I'm just doing my share. — DJ Spooky

In search of some rest, in search of a break From a life of tests where something's always at stake Where something's always so far What about my broken car? What about my life so far? What about my dream? — Barry Privett

[Internet] technology, like anything else that mankind creates is a tool and that tool can be used for good or for evil, like a light saber. Technology is supposed to bring people together, streamline things and make life easier and in a lot of ways it does that. However, technology can also disconnect you from other people and break down the social network, the real social network of family and friends and interpersonal communication, and isolate people, make them feel alone, make them feel small. So it's a tool that needs to be used correctly. — Rainn Wilson

Following the death of his wife, Sam Johnson wrote to the Reverend Mr. Thomas Warton, "I have ever since seemed to myself broken off from mankind; a kind of solitary wanderer in the wilds of life, without any certain direction, or fixed point of view: a gloomy gazer on a world to which I have little relation."
But my wife wasn't dead, merely absent. — Mordecai Richler

Women tend to break the network of friends they make, but it is a habit that men have learned. It is an approach to life that involves planning almost without thinking about it. And men sustain this. I came from a northern grammar school. I had a good education, but I didn't have a good network. — Pauline Neville-Jones

Heroine: the artist, the premier mistress writhering in a garden graced w/highly polished blades of grass ... release (ethiopium) is the drug ... an animal howl says it all ... notes pour into the caste of freedom ... the freedom to be intense ... to defy social order and break the slow kill monotony of censorship. to break from the long bonds of servitude-ruthless adoration of the celestial shepherd. let us celebrate our own flesh-to embrace not ones race mais the marathon-to never let go of the fiery sadness called desire. — Patti Smith

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I've shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I'll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that's a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful. — Maggie Smith

Sooner or later the serious runner goes through a special, very personal experience that is unknown to most people. Others say it's a new kind of mystical experience that propels you into an elevated sense of consciousness. A flash of joy. A sense of floating as you run. The experience is unique to each of us but when it happens you break through a barrier that separates you from casual runners. Forever. And from that point on, there is no finish line. You run for your life. You begin to be addicted to what running gives you. — John Brown

We were to write a short essay on one of the works we read in the course and relate it to our lives. I chose the "Allegory of the Cave" in Plato's Republic. I compared my childhood of growing up in a family of migrant workers with the prisoners who were in a dark cave chained to the floor and facing a blank wall. I wrote that, like the captives, my family and other migrant workers were shackled to the fields day after day, seven days a week, week after week, being paid very little and living in tents or old garages that had dirt floors, no indoor plumbing, no electricity. I described how the daily struggle to simply put food on our tables kept us from breaking the shackles, from turning our lives around. I explained that faith and hope for a better life kept us going. I identified with the prisoner who managed to escape and with his sense of obligation to return to the cave and help others break free. — Francisco Jimenez

Why there isn't any drama in my life
So I'll crawl on the cottonfield with a fife
Why to have a dream in vain my life begs
Am a house gecko, I eat flies and lay eggs
My death surely doesn't yield a headline and all
I'll break law by pissing on a castle's wall
For my death there wouldn't be a weeping meni
From the name of Lady Canning there's ledikeni
One foot on heaven and one foot on hell, hanging
One cannon and two cannonballs dangling. — Nabarun Bhattacharya

I shook my head at all the things that can happen to break a man as he grows up and away from the pure potential of infancy, all the things that had fractured inside me. And I prayed silently that this infant, born into chaos, might meet with kindness, experience joy and find passion in life. Every one of us ought to be able to count on that much. (308) — Keith Ablow

Why is it so important for me to forgive that son-of-a-bitch? I'm not the one at fault here. It shouldn't be about me. He's the one that did wrong. Screw his feelings. He should feel like he's hated for what he did." Lisa added another used tissue to the growing pile on the table.
Lyn warmly smiled. "Forgiving Byron isn't for his sake, it's for yours. The block in your life's road can only be removed if you forgive him for what he did. If you don't, you'll just keep bumping into that block again and again. The life you live will be miserable. You'll never be able to break the chains of the past."
Lisa listened and let the words sink into her subconscious. She realized the only way to get to the end of the road was to take the first step. There was a block preventing her from moving forward in life. She had to find a way past it. — Dane Hatchell

To break up the superstition and worship of legality should be our aim. Nothing would please me more than to see Inspector Heat and his likes take to shooting us down in broad daylight with the approval of the public. Half our battle would be won then; the desintegration of the old morality would have set in in its very temple. That is what you ought to aim at. But you revolutionists will never understand that. You plan the future, you lose yourselves in reveries of economical systems derived from what is; where as what's wanted is a clean sweep and a clear start for a new conception of life. That sort of future will take care of itself if you will only make room for it. Therefore I would shovel my stuff in heaps at the corners of the streets if I had enough for that; and as I haven't, I do my best by perfecting a really dependable detonator. — Joseph Conrad

I'm always kind of hoping that I'll get a movie that shoots in Alabama so I can go back and kind of get a break from my city life. — Nolan Gould

We look to artists to feel for us, to suffer and rejoice, to describe the heights of their passionate response to life so that we can enjoy them from a safe distance. . . . We look to artists to stop time for us, to break the cycle of birth and death and temporarily put an end to life's processes. It is too much of a whelm for any one person to face up to without going into sensory overload. Artists, on the other hand, court that intensity. We ask artists to fill our lives with a cavalcade of fresh sights and insights, the way life was for us when we were children and everything was new.39 — Cameron J Anderson

I'm bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A's you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable because Lord knows they'll try
without let up
to break you. — Mary Karr

The life we live is just a colourful and deposit toy.
Some of us take it so seriously and fight and cry for it.
Some of us break and throw it.
Either we give extreme importance, either not enough.
Better to stay far from extremes. — Shams Tabrizi

Reasons for Joy Happy are the people whose God is the LORD. Psalm 144:15 "How's life?" someone asks. And we who've been resurrected from the dead say, "Well, things could be better." Or "Couldn't get a parking place." Or "My parents won't let me move to Hawaii." Or "People won't leave me alone so I can finish my sermon on selfishness." ... Are you so focused on what you don't have that you are blind to what you do? You have a ticket to heaven no thief can take, an eternal home no divorce can break. Every sin of your life has been cast to the sea. Every mistake you've made is nailed to the tree. You're blood-bought and heaven-made. A child of God - forever saved. So be grateful, joyful - for isn't it true? What you don't have is much less than what you do. — Max Lucado

She stopped at the foot of the trio of beach chairs and smiled down at Richter and his men. Richter was in the middle. The one on the left was a hairy beast of a man with the fat-over-muscle build of someone who'd earned their conditioning from life experience, not a gym bike. Someone who possessed the brute core strength to physically break you. The man on the right was younger and leaner, but still carried plenty of brawn. It squared with Isaiah's story - these weren't techie savants hired to pull a sophisticated vault break. Richter was lining up big scary men to storm a hotel room and take down an army of casino thugs by force. — Blake Crouch

I have a loyalty that runs in my bloodstream, when I lock into someone or something, you can't get me away from it because I commit that thoroughly. That's in friendship, that's a deal, that's a commitment. Don't give me paper - I can get the same lawyer who drew it up to break it. But if you shake my hand, that's for life. — Jerry Lewis

The bigger the mistake looks, the better chance I'll have to break out and live a real life. Our real discoveries come from chaos. - Brandy Alexander — Chuck Palahniuk

Fake smiles and hellos are not something I want to be a part of. I watched my mother do it, and I despised it. I want real.
I know I'm young, but losing my mother, whom I never really knew, made me think about what I want from life. I don't want to have to do something to please someone else. I want to break the cycle and not get trapped in their kind of life. I want love, a family, bake sales, date nights, fighting over not taking out the stupid trash. — Alexa Riley

E said, he didn't know what to do. He couldn't move forward. He thought, they should move on. He started crying. Not for himdelf, for her. He'd rescued her from her lousy life, and now he was throwing her back. He felt like a shit for doing it, for things having to be that way, for not being able to gove her what she wanted. The last thing he wanted was to hurt her. The only part that wasn't in the manual, was her response: She started to laugh. "Oh, give me a break," she said. — Candace Bushnell

Today is a new day. Don't let your history interfere with your destiny! Let today be the day you stop being a victim of your circumstances and start taking action towards the life you want. You have the power and the time to shape your life. Break free from the poisonous victim mentality and embrace the truth of your greatness. You were not meant for a mundane or mediocre life! — Steve Maraboli

It is not morbidity which draws crowds to scenes of disaster or unusual joy. It is the desire to participate in a moment when life breaks through to some higher level of intensity so that one's own life might take fire from that sudden spurted flame. — Maya Deren

His eyes were staring at the lonely sun that was now beginning its descent behind some far off hills. How lonely its existence was, Ranjan mused. Traveling every single day from East to West, with no break, no company; nothing to wait for, nothing to look forward to, just going on and on, in a cycle of existence that did not have a beginning or end. — Yamini Vijendran

The next generation should embrace their struggles. A butterfly develops only after a struggle to break free from its cocoon. A diamond can only emerge after taking in all the pressure that it can. Struggle hard and never ever give up! You are born to be a Hero. — Avijeet Das

And keep in mind that the you that makes life worthy of living today won't be the same you that makes life worth living this time next year. Identities aren't meant to be permanent. They're like cars: they take us from one place to another. We work, travel, and seek adventure in them until they break down beyond repair. At that point, living well means finding a new model that better suits us for a new moment. — Kate Bornstein

Make life about more than just you. Take the world around you and transform it for the sake of others. Do a good deed for your neighbor; smile at strangers; volunteer for a bigger purpose and don't except anything in return. The first step of redemption is digging yourself out of the hole you dug around yourself and dedicating your time to others. When the world stops revolving around your comfort zone and draws in the needs of others, you may quickly break the chains that hold you down from reaching your ultimate goal. — Leigh Hershkovich

Because you have no survival instinct, Grace. You're like a tank, you just chug along< thinking nothing can stop you, until you meet up with a bigger tank. Are you sure you want to go out with someone with that kind of history?" mom seemed to warm her theory. " he couldhave a psychotic break. I read that people get those when they're twenty-eight. he could be almost normal and then suddenly go slasher. I mean, you know I've never told you what to do with your life before now. But what if-I told you not to see him?"
I hadn't been expecting that. My voice was brittle. "I would say that by virtue of your not acting parental up to this point, you've relinquished your abiblity to wield any power now. Sam and I are together. It's not an option."
Mom threw her hands up as if trying to stop the Grace-tank from running over her. "Okay. Fine. Just be careful, okay? Whatever. I'm going to get a drink."
And just like that her parental engergies were expendede. — Maggie Stiefvater

In death - no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. — Edgar Allan Poe

I guess it turns out choosing your life partner from a group of men trying to get their break in show business by sitting around shirtless in a swimming pool while cameras watch around the clock isn't the path to a soulmate after all. — Willie Geist

Lou Holtz is a brilliant strategist, a first-class motivator, and an inspiring role model. Winning Every Day coaches you through the hard-won lessons of life that Coach Holtz has gleaned from a lifetime of learning. Using personal behind-the-scenes experiences he shows you how to break through obstacles, capitalize on fleeting opportunities, and achieve success. There is no better mentor than Lou Holtz. — Peter Lowe

The wide world was changing, and she wanted a different place in it.
Not just wanted, but felt she deserved. If the world didn't owe her a living, as her mother repeatedly warned her, it owed her a break. She had a strong sense that a better, more exciting, more rewarding life than that which had been the lot of her parents and grandparents was hers by right. In this she was guilty of nothing more serious than the arrogance of youth, from which every generation suffers and by which it distinguishes itself from the preceding one. — James Robertson

Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow, the density blinds one. Within there is no form, only prodigious detail that reaches everywhere: exotic sounds, spills of sunlight, foliage, fallen trees, small beasts that flee at the sound of a twig-snap, insects, silence, flowers.
And all of this, dependent, closely woven, all of it is deceiving. There are really two kinds of life. There is, as Viri says, the one people believe you are living, and there is the other. It is this other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see. — James Salter

The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it ... I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent. — Andre Maurois

The best way to break free from entitlement eating is to adopt a biblical perspective of life. God never said, "You deserve the good life, and of course you have a right to eat." Instead, He said, "If you want to follow me, you have to be willing to give up everything. — Barb Raveling

Elyograg-He struggled once more to break free, but it was no use. He was tied to the pyre; a torch set the mound ablaze. He closed his eyes and prepared to feel the burn engulfing him, his short life flashing by. But instead of feeling the burning heat of the fire, he felt a cold spread against him from the outside in, turning his human remains not to ash, but to stone. — Lorraine Beaumont