But Not Broken Quotes & Sayings

Naturally the first emotion of man toward the being he calls God, but of whom he knows so little, is fear. Where it is possible that fear should exist, it is well it should exist, cause continual uneasiness, and be cast out by nothing less than love ... . Until love, which is the truth toward God, is able to cast out fear, it is well that fear should hold; it is a bond, however poor, between that which is and That which creates - a bond that must be broken, but a bond that can be broken only by the tightening of an infinitely closer bond. Verily God must be terrible to those that are far from Him: for they fear He will do, yea, He is doing with them what they do not, cannot desire, and can ill endure. — George MacDonald

I yank open the cutlery drawer to be confronted with an anomaly worse than emails from dead people or a man with a gun sitting on my bed. It's a large carving knife with a viciously serrated edge and two broken teeth. It's tarnished with rust. It's not mine. And neither is the china figurine of a kitten with one paw playfully raised, also stained with rust. But it's not rust. It's not rust at all. Perversely, the thought that flashes through my brain is "I can haz murder weapon?" I laugh out loud, a sobbing hiccup. — Lauren Beukes

We all have love stories that go terribly wrong; we all have horribly broken hearts. And somehow we endure. We're not destroyed by it. We endure and go on to do interesting things and have worthy lives, even though we carry our heartbreaks with us. That's a kind of personal story of mine that I don't think I would tell in memoir but I do think I can tell in fiction. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The dog writhing in the gutter, its back broken by a passing car, knows what it is to be alive. So too with the aged elk of the far north woods, slowly dying in the bitter cold of winter. The asphalt upon which the dog lies knows no pain. The snow upon which the elk has collapsed knows not the cold. But living beings do. — George Greenstein

Henry's universe was modeled on the highball. It was a mixture in which half a pint of the fizziest philosophical and scientific ideas all but drowned a small jigger of immediate experience, most of it strictly sexual. Broken reeds are seldom good mixers. They're far too busy with their ideas, their sensuality and their psychosomatic complaints to be able to take an interest in other people - even their own wives and children. They live in a state of the most profound voluntary ignorance, not knowing anything about anybody, but abounding in preconceived opinions about everything. — Aldous Huxley

There is an Arabic proverb which says that "Peace comes from understanding, not agreement." Agreements are more easily broken than made; but understanding never. It is urgent, therefore, and in the interest of peace, that there be better understanding among nations. As people we are one, seeking the same goal. As nations, we lose each other down the different paths we choose to fulfill our national objectives. that is why we must understand each other better. — King Hussein I

The landscape was snow and green ice on broken mountains. These weren't old mountains, worn down by time and weather and full of gentle ski slopes, but young, sulky, adolescent mountains. They held secret ravines and merciless crevices. One yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goatherd, but fifty tons of express-delivery snow. — Terry Pratchett

Laws were made to establish a gradation of ranks; but it was soon found that the soil of America was opposed to a territorial aristocracy. To bring that refractory land into cultivation, the constant and interested exertions of the owner himself were necessary; and when the ground was prepared, its produce was found to be insufficient to enrich a proprietor and a farmer at the same time. The land was then naturally broken up into small portions, which the proprietor cultivated for himself. Land is the basis of an aristocracy, which clings to the soil that supports it; for it is not by privileges alone, nor by birth, but by landed property handed down from generation to generation, that an aristocracy is constituted. A nation may present immense fortunes and extreme wretchedness; but unless those fortunes are territorial, there is no true aristocracy, but simply the class of the rich and that of the poor. — Alexis De Tocqueville

We do not believe that the heavens are sealed over our heads, but that the same Father who loved and cherished the children of Israel loves and cherishes us. We believe that we are as much in need of the assistance of our Heavenly Father in the directing of our lives as they were. We know that in the day and age in which we live the seal has been broken, and God has again spoken from the heavens. — George Albert Smith

I smell guilt. There is a stench of guilt upon the air.
I see you all, whole and healthy, with your powers intact - such prompt appearances! - and I ask myself ... why did this band of wizards never come to the aid of their master, to whom they swore eternal loyalty? And I answer myself, they must have believed me broken, they thought I was gone. They slipped back among my enemies, and they pleaded innocence, and ignorance, and bewitchment ...
And then I ask myself, but how could they have believed I would not rise again? They, who knew the steps I took, long ago, to guard myself against mortal death? They, who had seen proofs of the immensity of my power in the times when I was mightier than any wizard living? And I answer myself, perhaps they believed a still greater power could exist, one that could vanquish even Lord Voldemort ... perhaps they now pay allegiance to another ... — J.K. Rowling

Stop waiting for someone to give you what you want. The universe is too busy to care. It has worlds to create and galaxies to destroy. If you're worried about death and about your own end, don't. It's coming whether you like it or not. You will either arrive at the end of your life in style or you will arrive broken and beaten, but whichever way you choose, have no doubt that you WILL ARRIVE. There is only now. If you have power, it's now. If you can change anything, you have to do it now. If you want to be or to have that next great thing, be it. Have it. Take it. Own it. Do it. Become it. Be awesome. Do epic shit. Do it now. The clock is ticking. — Johnny B. Truant

True evil - conscious, calculating evil - does not seek to destroy life, but rather encourage it. True evil - malicious in every action - cheers life on. True evil - defiled in every pursuit - is not, as Max Andrews proposes, maximally selfish, rather full of restraint and accommodating in every way to the needs of men, mice, mushrooms, and microbes. True evil - debased in every motion - promotes, defends, and even admires life in its struggle to persist and self-adorn. True evil - known only to itself - urges life to grow more complex, more bold, more adventurous and more expressive, for only then is it at its most vulnerable, and when it is at its most vulnerable it is pregnant with possibility. Nothing, after all, can be truly lost or truly broken before it is first acquired, held to the bosom, adored, and cherished. — John Zande

When you feel like you can't keep going, turn your heart to Allah and say this: I can't. But You can. I'm weak. But You're strong. Take me in, not because of me
but because of You. Your mercy is stronger than my weakness. Your perfection is greater than my humanness. I beseech You to replace what's lost, mend what's broken, and allow my hope in You to kill my despair. — Yasmin Mogahed

When I use the word 'healing,' by that I mean that every disease has a physical element that we're very good at handling, but there's always a sense of the violation. 'Why me?' 'Why is my leg broken on the ski trip and not anyone else's?' And I think that medicine has done a terrible job of addressing that spiritual violation. — Abraham Verghese

We're not broken up."
"I know, but we're still broken. — Rainbow Rowell

I have used the words and expressions which my experiences from Minsk to Kharkov to the Don suggested to me. But I should have reserved those words and expressions for what came later, even though they are not strong enough. It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later. It's a mistake, for instance, to used the word frightful to describe a few broken up companions mixed into the ground: but it's a mistake that might be forgiven. — Guy Sajer

Perhaps that's what she caught, not Life Fatigue but just grief over a broken heart--and the bitterness that comes with being cheated too early of something true--like a young husband's love. — Joseph G. Peterson

The great error consists in supposing that poetry is an unnatural form of language. We should all like to speak poetry at the moment when we truly live, and if we do not speak it, it is because we have an impediment in our speech. It is not song that is the narrow or artificial thing, it is conversation that is a broken and stammering attempt at song. When we see men in a spiritual extravaganza, like Cyrano de Bergerac, speaking in rhyme, it is not our language disguised or distorted, but our language rounded and made whole. — G.K. Chesterton

More often than not, the chances that are presented to us go unnoticed. Their lessons left unlearned. The most common occurrence is love. Many guard their hearts out of fear that they will be broken, but what is learned by denying one's self? Chance is a miracle. Not an act of God, but a genuinely inexpiable opportunity that can surpass the bonds of one's fate potentially altering the outcome. — A.C. Heller

How is he so rich and hot and normal?"
I shake my head, "He's rich and hot, but he's not normal. I see a sickness in his eyes. They're broken like mine. Like a mirror with cracks in it but none of the glass has fallen out of the frame. — Tara Brown

He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken. — Haruki Murakami

The power of the Church is not a parade of flawless people, but of a flawless Christ who embraces our flaws. The Church is not made up of whole people, rather of the broken people who find wholeness in a Christ who was broken for us. — Mike Yaconelli

Thus it is that four strangers sit in the red chairs, strip off their socks, plunge their feet into the ink-baths, and hold hands under an amphibian stare. This is the first act of anyone entering Palimpsest: Orlande will take your coats, sit you down, and make you family. She will fold you four together like Quartos. She will draw you each a card - look, for you it is the Broken Ship reversed, which signifies Perversion, a Long Journey without Enlightenment, Gout - and tie your hands together with red yarn. Wherever you go in Palimpsest, you are bound to these strangers who happened onto Orlande's salon just when you did, and you will go nowhere, eat no capon or dormouse, drink no oversweet port that they do not also taste, and they will visit no whore that you do not also feel beneath you, and until that ink washes from your feet - which, given that Orlande is a creature of the marsh and no stranger to mud, will be some time - you cannot breathe but that they breathe also. — Catherynne M Valente

The things here are stronger
the things that differentiate us from one another are too powerful. The common interest is no longer decisive. It has broken up already and given place to the interest of the individual. Now and then something still will shine through from that other time when we all wore the same rig, but already it is dwindled and dim. These others here are still our comrades and yet our comrades no longer
that is what is so sad. All else went west in the war, but comradeship we did believe in; now only to find that what death could not do, life is achieving; it is driving us asunder. — Erich Maria Remarque

Then, and only then, do they see me. But they do not always know what they have seen.
I see you as a code to be broken, or a puzzle to be cracked. Or a jig-saw puzzle, to be put together. I walk through your life, and I stand motionless at the edge of my own life. — Neil Gaiman

Today humankind has broken the law of the jungle. There is at last real peace, and not just absence of war. For most polities, there is no plausible scenario leading to full-scale conflict within one year. What could lead to war between Germany and France next year? Or between China and Japan? Or between Brazil and Argentina? Some minor border clash might occur, but only a truly apocalyptic scenario could result in an old-fashioned full-scale war between Brazil and Argentina in 2014, with Argentinian armoured divisions sweeping to the gates of Rio, and Brazilian carpet-bombers pulverising the neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires. Such wars might still erupt between several pairs of states, e.g. between Israel and Syria, Ethiopia and Eritrea, or the USA and Iran, but these are only the exceptions that prove the rule. — Yuval Noah Harari

We're all inadequate," David answered. "Just think: the light from the outside world is mapped onto the retina, then further mapped onto the visual cortex, then broken apart and analyzed in other areas of the brain. At every step there's a loss of information. In the end, what we are aware of is not the outside world per se, but the image of the world projected onto our brains. Plato was anatomically right; we do see shadows on a wall. — Carolyn Ives Gilman

The ascendancy over men's minds of the ruins of the stupendous past, the past of history, legend and myth, at once factual and fantastic, stretching back and back into ages that can but be surmised, is half-mystical in basis. The intoxication, at once so heady and so devout, is not the romantic melancholy engendered by broken towers and mouldered stones; it is the soaring of the imagination into the high empyrean where huge episodes are tangled with myths and dreams; it is the stunning impact of world history on its amazed heirs. — Rose Macaulay

Now he haunts me seldom: some fierce umbilical is broken,
I live with my own fragile hopes and sudden rising despair.
Now I do not weep for my sins; I have learned to love them
And to know that they are the wounds that make love real.
His face illudes me; his voice, with its pity, does not ring in my ear.
His maxims memorized in boyhood do not make fruitless and pointless my experience.
I walk alone, but not so terrified as when he held my hand.
I do not splash in the blood of his son
nor hear the crunch of nails or thorns piercing protesting flesh.
I am a boy again
I whose boyhood was turned to manhood in a brutal myth.
Now wine is only wine with drops that do not taste of blood.
The bread I eat has too much pride for transubstantiation,
I, too
and together the bread and I embrace,
Each grateful to be what we are, each loving from our own reality. — James Kavanaugh

What are you looking at, Matthias?" The low thrum of her voice vibrated straight through him.
He kept his eyes on the ceiling, whispering softly. "Nothing."
"Matthias, are you praying?"
"Possibly."
"For restraint?" she said sweetly.
"You really are a witch."
"I'm not proper, Matthias."
"I am aware of this." Miserably, keenly, hungrily aware.
"And I'm sorry to inform you, but you're not proper either."
His gaze dropped to her now. "I - "
"How many rules have you broken since you met me? How many laws? They won't be the last. Nothing about us will ever be proper," she said. She tilted her face up to his. So close now it was as if they were already touching. "Not the way we met. Not the life we lead. And not the way we kiss. — Leigh Bardugo

Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or dangers. He was a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken; but his courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character. — Frederick Douglass

Everything was Amelia's fault. He hadn't done anything wrong and neither had Kaitlin, but they were the ones paying the price and for what? To bring back a girl that he hated and wished he could kill but couldn't? To bring back a girl who had broken her mother's heart to such an extent that it killed her? As far as Damian was concerned, it wasn't worth it. She didn't deserve to come back; she didn't deserve to live. No, Amelia deserved nothing, and especially not his love. — Elaine White

Interest rates do not have to be identical across the whole euro area, but it is unacceptable if major differences arise from broken capital markets or concern about a euro area break-up. — Mario Draghi

To make an omelette, you need not only those broken eggs but someone 'oppressed' to beat them: every revolutionist is presumed to understand that, and also every woman, which either does or does not make 51 percent of the population of the United States a potentially revolutionary class. — Joan Didion

I look down and feel a sort of distant horror as I see a body that is mine but not mine. My limbs are bent at odd angles. Shards of bone poke out though my skin. When I try to move, I realize that I feel no pain because I feel nothing. Nothing at all. And no matter how hard I try, I can't move anything but my head.
I'm broken, like Luka. Broken and bloody.
The thought feels hazy, as though it ought to mean more to me than it does. — Eve Silver

The incomprehensible suffering of Jesus Christ ended sacrifice by the shedding of blood, but it did not end the importance of sacrifice in the gospel plan. Our Savior requires us to continue to offer sacrifices, but the sacrifices He now commands are that we 'offer for a sacrifice unto [Him] a broken heart and a contrite spirit' (3 Nephi 9:20). He also commands each of us to love and serve one another - in effect, to offer a small imitation of His own sacrifice by making sacrifices of our own time and selfish priorities. — Dallin H. Oaks

The urge to change my mind and not go at all is enormous. I'm absolutely terrified to leave on that boat. But, if I don't go, there'll be one more broken person in this world who gave up a dream to sit in a chair, pick up the TV remote and shrink. — Lexis De Rothschild

I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,' I said. 'By Black and White. By Indian and White. But I know this isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not. — Sherman Alexie

The law exists for a reason. There is a dominant American culture that people used to want to preserve. That's going by the wayside, too. But if it's now okay for an illegal alien to practice law in California, then can anybody else who's broken the law get a law license? And if not, why not? — Rush Limbaugh

Your dress is thin, you have been dancing, you are heated." "Always preaching," retorted she; "always coddling and admonishing." The answer Dr. John would have given did not come; that his heart was hurt became evident in his eye; darkened, and saddened, and pained, he turned a little aside, but was patient. — Charlotte Bronte

Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is - which was the only way he could get there - thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely his was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be a true philosopher, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have 'broken his digester. — Herman Melville

I became a reporter because I never found out the ending to my own story. Thirty years after Ben's abduction, the only answers I could find were for others, the victims, or those they left behind. The crime beat was a natural for me. The people I wrote about were the most fragile, the most broken, and they needed the most answers. I pieced together the frayed strands that had once been their lives, not always happy, but better off than where they ended up. I had to tell their stories. I felt like I owed the victims at least that...Julia Gooden, THE LAST TIME SHE SAW HIM — Jane Haseldine

God is not looking for repayment, but repentance. What heals a broken relationship is sincere love and contrition. — Frederica Mathewes-Green

You can overcome the things that are done to you, but you cannot escape the things that you have done.
Here is the truth: It matters, what you do at war. It matters more than you ever want to know. Because countries, like people, have collective consciences and memories and souls, and the violence we deliver in the name of our nation is pooled like sickly tar at the bottom of who we are. The soldiers who don't die for us come home again. They bring with them the killers they became on our national behalf, and sit with their polluted memories and broken emotions in our homes and schools and temples. We may wish it were not so, but action amounts to identity. We become what we do.You can tell yourself all the stories you want, but you can't leave your actions over there. You can't build a wall and expect to live on the other side of memory. All of the poison seeps back into our soil. — Megan K. Stack

Mankind progresses not smoothly, as by a sliding carpet ascent, but by rugged steps broken by gaps. He halts long on one stage before taking the next. Often he remains stationary, unable to form resolution to step forward - sometimes even has turned round and retrograded. — Sabine Baring-Gould

Lovegood had got out The Quibbler again. Meanwhile, at the Hufflepuff table Ernie Macmillan was one of the few still staring at Professor Umbridge, but he was glassy-eyed and Harry was sure he was only pretending to listen in an attempt to live up to the new prefect's badge gleaming on his chest. Professor Umbridge did not seem to notice the restlessness of her audience. Harry had the impression that a full-scale riot could have broken out under her nose and she would have ploughed on with her speech. The teachers, however, were still listening very attentively, and Hermione seemed to be drinking in every word Umbridge spoke, though, judging by her — J.K. Rowling

I-I didn't ... " Derek began.
He scrambled from under Liam. The werewolf's body fell, limp, to the side, his head twisted, neck broken.
Derek swallowed. The sound echoed in the silence.
"I didn't
I just
I was trying to stop him."
"You didn't mean it," I said softly. "But he did."
He looked at me, eyes refusing to focus.
"He would have killed you," I said."Killed both of us, if it came down to it. You might not have meant to do it, but ... "
I didn't finish. I could have said the world was better off without Liam, but we both knew the point wasn't whether Liam deserved to die, but whether Derek deserved the guilt of killing someone. He didn't. — Kelley Armstrong

I maybe many things to many people; but for me I am a writer; always have been and always will be.
I may not contribute to great literatures, but my contribution to writing would be always there; etched in the minds of the people whose lives I have touched with words.
Only a writer can understand what it means to a writer to not be able to be one.
To have the nib of pen broken ... like a death sentence ..
Or a life imprisonment in one's own mind without an outlet to thoughts.
I would give up things I love the most if that's the choice I am given to be able to be what I really want to be - A writer.
(C) Arti Honrao — Arti Honrao

If our identity gets broken, it affects our ability to connect. And I wonder if we're not all a lot better for each other than we previously thought. I know we're not perfect, but I wonder how many people are withholding the love they could provide because they secretly believe they have fatal flaws. — Donald Miller

China is never going to be a global model. Western system is really broken in some fundamental ways, but the Chinese system is not going to work either. It is a deeply unfair and immoral system where everything can be taken away from anyone in a split second. — Francis Fukuyama

He'd never had sex like this before. Usually it was sweat and panting and driving each other insane until they came. And then maybe they'd collapse together if they liked each other well enough, and maybe they'd catch their breath and do it all over again until sleep took over and tomorrow hurt. This ... this was all that and more. Every touch, every kiss, every frantic, trembling movement, added up to something he'd never imagined. This wasn't the cooperative pursuit of pleasure and orgasms. They held each other, clawed at each other, like they thought they might actually start fusing together. Molecule by molecule, cell by cell, not just getting under each other's skin but becoming part of each other. One thing that could only become two again if it was broken. — L.A. Witt

His hand came to her neck, his fingers tracing the corded muscle there, and she knew he could feel her pulse racing. "You think I did not miss you?" She froze at the words, her breath coming shallow, desperate for him to say more. "You think I did not miss everything about you? Everything you represented?" He pressed against her, his breath soft against her temple. She closed her eyes. How had they found themselves here, in this place where he was so dark and so broken? "You think I did not want to come home?" His voice was thick with emotion. "But there was no home to which I could return. There was no one there." "You're wrong," she argued. "I was there. I was there . . . and I was . . ." Alone. She swallowed. "I was there. — Sarah MacLean

The hearts I make are shattered, but whole. They're kaleidoscopes that beam under the sun. They signify hope in love when you've lost it because, like love, you can look at a kaleidoscope a thousand different ways and find something new every time. Shattered or not, if you look carefully enough, you'll find something beautiful in them, and all beautiful things are a little broken. — Claire Contreras

I rapped on the door. By which I mean I knocked on it, not that I did a little MC-ing. But if I had've done a little MC-ing, it would've been quite angry stuff, like NWA when they're on about the Rodney King incident. Only I'd have made it less about police brutality and more about old Devon men ripping young folk off with their made-up stories of broken down cars. And there I think you'll find the main difference between British and American crime. — Danny Wallace

The great barrier to worship among God's people is not that we are always seeking our own satisfaction, but that our seeking is so weak and half-hearted that we settle for little sips at broken cisterns when the fountain of life is just over the next hill. — John Piper

The next day he passed Alai in the corridor, and they greeted each other, touched hands, talked, but they both knew that there was a wall there now.

It might be breached, that wall, sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between them was the roots that had already grown low and deep, under the wall, where they could not be broken. — Orson Scott Card

Try to let what is unfair teach you ... what is unfair can be a stern but invaluable teacher ... you can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard. — David Foster Wallace

The old woman smiled sweetly at Fermin. My friend stroked her face and her forehead. She appreciated the touch of another skin like a purring cat. I felt a lump in my throat.
'A stupid question, wasn't it?' Fermin went on. 'What
you'd like is to be out there, dancing a foxtrot. You look like a dancer; everyone must tell you that.'
I had never seen him treat anyone with such delicacy, not even Bernarda. His words were pure flattery, but the tone and expression on his face were sincere.
'What pretty things you say,' she murmured in a voice that was broken from not having had anyone to speak to or anything to say. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

There are ways in, journeys to the center of life, through time; through air, matter, dream and thought. The ways are not always mapped or charted, but sometimes being lost, if there is such a thing, is the sweetest place to be. And always, in this search, a person might find that she is already there, at the center of the world. It may be a broken world, but it is glorious nonetheless. — Linda Hogan

Her six-year-old brain had lost her father at sweet and was still stuck trying to decipher lemonade.
"But lemon is pretty, Dad. It's yellow. Like sun."
Her father nodded, his lips curved up at the corners.
"Sun is pretty and it has a smiley face. Sun is not bad."
"No, I guess it's not." Her father chuckled.
"I love sun."
"Of course you do, sweetie-pie."
"So lemon is nice, too."
"I believe so, but some people don't like the taste. It's too sour, they say."
She looked back at her father and said with a tone that suggested what other people thought about lemon was crazy. "Then add sugar. No need to blame the lemon. — E. Mellyberry

But the most important thing to know about being an introvert is that there's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken because you're quiet. It's okay to stay home on a Friday night instead of going to a party. Being an introvert is a perfectly normal 'thing' to be. — Jenn Granneman

I made one mistake. Who doesn't? But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands. Of course it left me deformed and unserviceable, defective and dangerous to associate with. ... But what in God's name has happened to charity? ... Self-interest guides me like the next man but not invariably; not all the time. I use compassion more than you do; I have loyalties and I keep by them; I serve honesty in a crooked way, but as best I can; and I don't plague my debtors or even make them aware of their debt. ... Why is it so impossible to trust me? — Dorothy Dunnett

If the sky has turned a darkened grey and the sea threatens to spill the occupants in the boat, know that the Lord God made the storm still, and though you shall face storms in your life the Lord God will still them with his hand. When you are alone, Jesus will have his arms wrapped around you, holding you tightly, the angels shall call out your name when you feel that you have been deaf, and you shall see the light of Heaven when you think you are blind. When you feel your dreams are broken it does not do well to cast yourself into misery but look at the brighter side of life, and see all the Lord has blessed you with! — Ariana Pedigo

Fundamental security comes from realizing that you have broken through something. You reflect back and realize that you used to be extraordinarily paranoid and neurotic, watching each step you made, thinking you might lose your sanity, that situations were always threatening in some way. Now you are free of all those fears and preconceptions. You discover that you have something to give rather than having to demand from others, having to grasp all the time. For the first time, you are a rich person, you contain basic sanity. You have something to offer, you are able to work with your fellow sentient beings, you do not have to reassure yourself anymore. Reassurance implies a mentality of poverty--you are checking yourself, "Do I have it? How could I do it?" But the bodhisattva's delight in his richness is based upon experience rather than theory or wishful thinking. It is so, directly, fundamentally. He is fundamentally rich and so can delight in generosity. — Chogyam Trungpa

Don't start on the tortured poet crap, okay? You have no idea what it's like to deal with you guys. You just walk away when it suits you. You have all these soulful songs, you have these grandiose feelings, angst and pain. You cry and I feel sorry for you. I want to cradle you and care for you, do anything to help put the broken pieces back together. But then, guess what? When it's over, when it all falls apart, I'm broken, too. You're perfectly happy being in pieces, but I'm not. I'm not happy being broken. — Sayer Adams

Wherever you go, there you are. Your emptiness goes with you. Maddening. Things that help: writing, reading, water, walks, forgiving myself every other minute, practicing easy yoga, taking deep breaths, and petting my dogs. These things don't fill me completely, but they remind me that it is not my job to fill myself. It's just my job to notice my emptiness and find graceful ways to live as a broken, unfilled human ...
If there's a silver lining to the emptiness, here it is: the unfillable is what brings people together. I've never made a friend by bragging about my strengths, but I've made countless by sharing my weakness and my emptiness. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Sulien held up the broken spear, one piece in each hand. "A warhammer did this?"
"You saw that hammer the Lightning almost hit Addolgar with. And that's not even the one he uses during battles. That one is bloody huge. Nearly as
big as the bastard's head."
Her father chuckled and stepped around her. "The only purpose of this spear was to protect you - and it did. Its job is now done." He started to
throw the pieces into a bin he kept for trash.
"Don't you dare throw that out."
"Why not? It's broken, and repairing it would be useless. It'l only break again."
"But you made it for me."
"You cling to what is meaningless, child. Just like your mother sometimes, only with her it's mostly grudges. — G.A. Aiken

Yes. A language that will at last say what we have to say. For our words no longer correspond to the world. When things were whole, we felt confident that our words could express them. But little by little these things have broken apart, shattered, collapsed into chaos. And yet our words have remained the same. Hence, every time we try to speak of what we see, we speak falsely, distorting the very thing we are trying to represent. [ ... ] Consider a word that refers to a thing- " umbrella", for example. [ ... ] Not only is an umbrella a thing, it is a thing that performs a function. [ ... ] What happens when a thing no longer performs its function? [ ... ] the umbrella ceases to be an umbrella. It has changed into something else. The word, however, has remained the same. Therefore it can no longer express the thing. — Paul Auster

You told me that the children of the forest had the greensight. I remember."
"Some claimed to have that power. Their wise men were called greenseers."
"Was it magic?"
"Call it that for want of a better word, if you must. At heart it was only a different sort of knowledge."
Oh, to be sure, there is much we do not understand. The years pass in their hundreds and
their thousands, and what does any man see of life but a few summers, a few winters? We look at mountains and call them eternal, and so
they seem ... but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, stars fall from the sky, and great cities sink
beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes.
So long as there was magic, anything could happen. Ghosts could walk, trees could talk, and broken boys could grow up to be knights. — George R R Martin

I'm in a weird-ass mood today, Doc. Wired up, mind all over the place, looking for answers, reasons something solid to cling to, something real, but just when I think I've got it figured out and neatly filed under fixed instead of fucked, turns out I'm still shattered, scattered, and battered. But you probably already knew that, didn't you? ... You might not be able to help me. That makes me sad, but not for me. It makes me sad for you. It must be frustrating for a shrink to have a patient who's beyond fixing. That first shrink I saw when I got back to Clayton Falls told me no one is a lost cause, but I think that's bullshit. I think people can be so crushed, so broken, that they'll never be anything more than a fragment of a whole person. (129) — Chevy Stevens

Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we let go of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. — Mike Yaconelli

The history of Germany is not the history of a nation, but of a race. It has little unity, therefore; it is complicated, broken, and attached on all sides to the histories of other countries. — Bayard Taylor

Fearlessness is not what you do to win, but what you don't do. When you love yourself as much as your God, you won't see other people as the source of your pain. Rather, you will see who you have become because you honestly believed that your chains would be broken through hatred, instead of kindness. — Shannon L. Alder

We talk about the value of hard work but tell ourselves that the reason we're not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell ourselves to solve the cognitive dissonance - the broken connection between the world we see and the values we preach. — J.D. Vance

It has been long considered possible to explain the more ancient revolutions on ... the Earth surface by means of these still existing causes; in the same manner as it is found easy to explain past events in political history, by an acquaintance with the passions and intrigues of the present day. But we shall presently see that unfortunately this is not the case in physical history:-the thread of operation is here broken, the march of nature is changed, and none of the agents that she now employs were sufficient for the production of her ancient works. — Georges Cuvier

Or else she stayed in and nursed a mood with which she was becoming too familiar for her own comfort and peace of mind. It was not despair; but it seemed to her as if life were passing by, leaving its promise broken and unfulfilled. — Kate Chopin

You fix what's broken, not what's lost. He's gone. You can't fix that. You can't bring him back. But you can fix yourself; you can put yourself back together and not be the person who did that anymore. And I think that's maybe the key, because you can say sorry until you're blue in the face, but it doesn't count until they see repentance. — J.M. Darhower

They were not unfortunate girls who, as outcasts or in the belief that they were cast out by society, grieved wholesomely and intensely and, once in a while at times when the heart was too full, ventilated it in hate or forgiveness. No visible change took place in them; they lived in the accustomed context, were respected as always, and yet they were changed, almost unaccountably to themselves and incomprehensibly to others. Their lives were not cracked or broken, as others' were, but were bent into themselves; lost to others, they futilely sought to find themselves. — Soren Kierkegaard

If I could tell the world just one thing
It would be that we're all OK
And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful
And useless in times like these
I won't be made useless
I won't be idle with despair
I will gather myself around my faith
For light does the darkness most fear
My hands are small, I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
And I am never broken — Jewel

Demons are coming, Vivian. They're finding ways around the rules. The genetic checks and balances have been broken, and the demon genome is going to repair itself. We're going to become who we were. Maybe not this generation, maybe not the next, but when it happens, the witches can either be ready, or they can be pixies being eaten by giant birds. — Kim Harrison

With Jason I thought I'd finally played my cards right, and now I'm just one more of those
broken, sad people out there, figuring out a year in advance where they can have Easter and
Christmas dinner without feeling like a burden or duty to others, cursing the quality of modern
movies because it's so hard to fill weeknights with movies when they're all crap, and waiting, just
waiting, for those three drinks a night to turn into four - and then, well, then I'll be applying my
makeup in the morning, combing my hair, washing my clothes, but it's not really for anyone. I'm
alive, but so what. — Douglas Coupland

She is often the broken-winged one, who does everything all wrong until people realize she's been doing it ... pretty right all along. She's the poor girl who never dressed right, who had torn hose, and they were all baggy around her ankles. She's the Raggedy Ann of the sophisticated world, who pulls it out at the last minute, flies by the seat of her pants, cackling all the way home. She is the late bloomer, the late start, the autumn bush, the winter holly. She is Baubo, all the classical Greek goddesses. She is the old girl who still blushes, and laughs, and dances. She's the truth teller, maybe that people hate to hear, but they learn to listen to. She is not dumb and in some ways is not shrewd. She works on passion, and the doll in her pocket, and the intuition that leads her into and through all the world. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Silence is not broken by speech, but by the anxiety to be heard. — Thomas Merton

I think I have broken into the mainstream, and I think that may happen in a broader way, but I want to do it on my own terms, not become a standard producer. — Joe R. Lansdale

All the way back she talked haltingly about herself, and Amory's love waned slowly with the moon. At her door they started from habit to kiss good night, but she could not run into his arms, nor were they stretched to meet her as in the week before. For a minute they stood there, hating each other with a bitter sadness. But as Amory had loved himself in Eleanor, so now what he hated was only a mirror. Their poses were strewn about the pale dawn like broken glass. The stars were long gone and there were left only the little sighing gusts of wind and the silences between ... but naked souls are poor things ever, and soon he turned homewards and let new lights come in with the sun. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I know it is difficult to believe in your own courage or fortitude when everything inside of you feels weak and shattered. But do not believe what you feel. You will not be easily broken. — Rachel L. Schade

A child dragging bent useless legs is crawling up the hill outside the village. Nose to the stones, goat dung, and muddy trickles, she pulls herself along like a broken cricket. We falter, ashamed of our strong step, and noticing this, she gazes up, clear-eyed, without resentment - it seems much worse that she is pretty. In Bengal, GS says stiffly, beggars will break their children's knees to achieve this pitiable effect for business purposes: this is his way of expressing his distress. But the child that lies here at our boots is not a beggar; she is merely a child, staring in curiosity at tall, white strangers. I long to give her something - a new life? - yet am afraid to tamper with such dignity. And so I smile as best I can, and say "Namas-te!" "Good morning!" How absurd! And her voice follows as we go away, a small clear smiling voice - "Namas-te!" - a Sanskrit word for greeting and parting that means, "I salute you". — Peter Matthiessen

It will not be possible for me to escape the past. But if I go back there, it will only be to find ways to make rich my present. To accept that there are no villains in my life, just broken people, trying to heal, stumbling in darkness and breaking each other...To stop living what has been, until now, this pale imitation of life. — Petina Gappah

We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it. — C.S. Lewis

She did not know what she had expected from her Dante, but she definitely hadn't received it. So with the wisdom that comes only from having experienced a broken heart, she resolved to let him go once and for all. — Sylvain Reynard

I believe that the civilization India evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors, Rome went, Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan has become Westernized; of China nothing can be said; but India is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation. — Mahatma Gandhi

The broken branch hissed loudly, and then that
wind was converted into these words: Briefly will
you be answered.
When the fierce soul departs from the body from
which it has uprooted itself, Minos sends it to the
seventh mouth.
It falls into the wood, and no place is assigned to
it, but where chance hurls it, there it sprouts like a
grain of spelt.
It grows into a shoot, then a woody plant; the
Harpies, feeding on its leaves, give it pain and a
window for the pain.
Like the others, we will come for our remains, but
not so that any may put them on again, for it is not
just to have what one has taken from oneself.
Here we will drag them, and through the sad
wood our corpses will hang, each on the thornbrush
of the soul that harmed it. — Dante Alighieri

The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken; only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish. — W. H. Auden

The accession of not one but three illegal drug users in a row to the US presidency constitutes an existential challenge to the prohibitionist regime. The fact that some of the most successful people of our time, be it in business, finances, politics, entertainment or the arts, are current or former substance users is a fundamental refutation of its premises and a stinging rebuttal of its rationale. A criminal law that is broken at least once by 50% of the adult population and that is broken on a regular basis by 20% of the same adult population is a broken law, a fatally flawed law. How can a democratic government justify a law that is consistently broken by a substantial minority of the population? What we are witnessing here is a massive case of civil disobedience not seen since alcohol prohibition in the 1930 in the US. On what basis can a democratic system justify the stigmatization and discrimination of a strong minority of as much as 20% of its population? — Jeffrey Dhywood

Clearly, we have entered a world very different from the world of modernity as previously described. The subject/object distinction has broken down. In this world, foundationalism is a washout;49 the old distinction between fact and opinion is disappearing from view. The quest for certainty, precision, and ahistorical knowledge of objective truth is judged impossible. "Truth" is not an objective entity; the classic dikes between fact and opinion are springing leaks. Of course, not all the tenets of modernity have been sacrificed. Irrationally, philosophical naturalism (for most advocates of this radical hermeneutics), still holds sway; moreover, I must still say something about the place of science in this new model. But some variation of what once held the status of a minority report advanced only by a few intellectuals is now adopted almost everywhere. — D. A. Carson

I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me as these blistering summers. They have broken heat records in a number of cities already this year and broken all-time records and it is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a build up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels. — Pat Robertson

We live in this irreparably broken world, and I don't wish to deny reality, but the amazing thing to me is not that we refuse to relinquish hope as a species. The amazing thing is that we're right to hold on to hope. The world may be broken, but hope is not crazy ... Obviously not all stories end happily. We don't always have good fortune, but hope gives us, as a species and as individuals, what we otherwise wouldn't have: A chance. — John Green

Not only our political system is broken, but how we do business and have public discourse with one another. The system in Hollywood, specifically, is not depicting people of color; we're not even talking about Asian Americans or Latino Americans; we're not even getting into that question. — Isaiah Washington

She insisted, but he would not receive her. He was not even acting out of necessity: she meant nothing to him anymore. Death had rapidly broken the bonds whose enslavement he had been dreading for several weeks. When he tried to think of Oliviane, nothing presented itself to his mind's eye: the eyes of his imagination and of his vanity had closed. — Marcel Proust

If I could change it all for you, if it were in my power to spare you, I would do so. If I could trade places with you, I would. But I can only be here with you, and I will tell you this: you are not broken, and every inch of you is dear to me and whole. — Kristen Britain