Life Shattering Quotes & Sayings

And I thought to myself, even though life could be horrifying and earth-shattering, terrible and tragic, it was also filled with moments of breathtaking beauty. And sometimes you just had to laugh. — Mia Sheridan

We as human beings need freedom, and justice, and a true cause to engage in to make life meaningful. This basic and comprehensive dream cannot be allowed to be shattered under any circumstances; if it starts shattering then the resistance will arise. The elimination of torture and other practiced cruelty needs to be effected for there to be freedom and justice. It will guide us in our search for a secure place to enjoy personal liberties. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

2. The banality of time torments us, the tedium of existence mocks us, and many minor incidences irritate human beings. While we seek to inscribe a personal place in a finite realm, we live in a world without any actual boarders known as the universe. Human wastefulness, suffering, and cruelty know no bounds. Irrespective of all the unfortunate occasions in life that prove painful, stressful, sorrowful, or dreary, all misfortunate setbacks along with the shattering monotony of human existence are part of the vicissitudes of living a sentient life. If a person can view the enigmas of life from a detached perspective that respects life without worrying about the ultimate tragedy of all existence, when we return to the void from which we came, life will appear as a dream, a phantasm. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Here was the shattering of the second wall: I had read the Bible many times through, and I saw for myself that it had a holy Author; I saw for myself that it was a canonized collection of sixty-six books with a unified biblical revelation. I heard for myself that when the words "this is mine" came out of my mouth in congregational singing, I was attesting to this one, simple truth: that the line of communication that God ordained for his people required this wrestling with Scripture, and that I truly wanted both to hear God's voice breathed in my life, and I wanted God to hear my pleas. The fog burned away. The whole Bible, each jot and tittle, was my open highway to a holy God. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

When we live according to our fears and our hates, our lives become small and defensive, lacking the deep, joyous generosity of God. If you find some part of your life where your daily round has grown thin and controlling and resentful, life with God is much, much larger, shattering our little categories of control, permitting us to say that God's purposes led us well beyond ourselves to live and to forgive, to create life we would not have imagined — Walter Brueggemann

Of course I didn't think I'd heard him correctly. Why would he have told me something so important now, so casually, in the middle of a street fair?
Before I could stop myself, I blurted out the first thing I thought.
"Just one?"
The look he gave me was shattering.
Given everything I knew about him, though, I'd expected him to have killed a man.
It was the fact that his having taken a single life had resulted in his banishment to the Underworld for all eternity that I found so astonishing.
"I had no idea," he said, with a dry smile, "that you were so bloodthirsty, Pierce. Should we try to find you one of those pirate costumes? — Meg Cabot

This is the first time in history that a war has involved the whole world, and also it may last many years more; this thought is soul-shattering for all of us as human beings. It is horrible to think that the crimes committed by this one man Hitler have these many years been destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands and millions, and one would despair entirely were it not certain that the majority, the innumerable majority which opposes him openly or secretly, will succeed in wiping out once and for all him and his. — Stefan Zweig

No-one would want to go through a traumatic experience but when you've survived something life-shattering and risen above it, you achieve a kind of serenity. — Jane Wilson-Howarth

One chapter of my life seemed to have ended; perhaps the whole book was closing. Instead of being the pastoral figure aiding a life transition, I found myself the sheep, lost and confused. Severe illness wasn't life-altering, it was life-shattering. — Paul Kalanithi

You forget what it was like. You'd swear on your life you never will, but year by year it falls away. How your temperature ran off the mercury, your heart galloped flat-out and never needed to rest, everything was pitched on the edge of shattering glass. How wanting something was like dying of thirst. How your skin was too fine to keep out any of the million things flooding by; every color boiled bright enough to scald you, any second of any day could send you soaring or rip you to bloody shreds. — Tana French

When I look back on my life's greatest traumas ... I see that each one has something in common. No matter how life-shattering they felt at the time, there was an end to them. — Anna Maxted

Severe illness wasn't life-altering, it was life-shattering. It felt less like an epiphany - a piercing burst of light, illuminating What Really Matters - and more like someone had just firebombed the path forward. — Paul Kalanithi

If the beginning of wisdom is in realizing that one knows nothing, then the beginning of understanding is in realizing that all things exist in accord with a single truth: Large things are made of smaller things.
Drops of ink are shaped into letters, letters form words, words form sentences, and sentences combine to express thought. So it is with the growth of plants that spring from seeds, as well as with walls built from many stones. So it is with mankind, as the customs and traditions of our progenitors blend together to form the foundation for our own cities, history, and way of life.
Be they dead stone, living flesh, or rolling sea; be they idle times or events of world-shattering proportion, market days or desperate battles, to this law, all things hold: Large things are made from small things. Significance is cumulative
but not always obvious.
Gaius Secondus — Jim Butcher

One can make one's life a complete misery, worrying about burglaries and shipwrecks, but ask anyone, anyone you know ... earth-shattering disasters and fabulous inheritances all seems to take place exclusively in the newspapers. — Jean Anouilh

Brokenness is the shattering of my self-will - the absolute surrender of my will to the will of God. It is saying "Yes, Lord!" - no resistance, no chafing, no stubbornness - simply submitting myself to His direction and will in my life. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

But I'm tone deaf - window-shattering tone deaf. I can't sing for the life of me. I can't sing or dance, so no remake of 'Grease' for me! — Dev Patel

When their mouths collided, the earth shifted, and she felt like she was coming face-to-face with death, and the brush was sweet, while he experienced life in the most shattering way. — Rae Elle

Christ will never more come down to earth nor will there be any law-giver, nor will murder cease nor theft, nor rape, and yet ... and yet one expects something, something terrifyingly marvellous and absurd, perhaps a cold lobster with mayonnaise served gratis, perhaps an invention, like the electric light, like television, only more devastating, more soul rending, an invention unthinkable that will bring a shattering calm and void, not the calm and void of death but of life such as the monks dreamed, such as is dreamed still in the Himalayas, in Tibet, in Lahore, in the Aleutian Islands, in Polynesia, in Easter Island, the dream of men before the flood, before the word was written, the dream of cave men and anthropophagists, of those with double sex and short tails, of those who are said to be crazy and have no way of defending themselves because they are outnumbered by those who are not crazy. — Henry Miller

Then in the darkness and purity of the meadows he began to feel that the world had many secrets, that they were shattering even to glimpse or sense, and that they were not necessarily unpleasant. In certain states of light he could see, he could begin to sense, things most miraculous indeed. Although it seemed self-serving, he concluded nonetheless, after a lifetime of adhering to the diffuse principles of a science he did not know, that there was life after death, that the dead rose into a mischievous world of pure light, that something most mysterious lay beyond the the enfolding darkness, something wonderful. — Mark Helprin

He has yet to confront society with this ego-shattering, life-redeeming elixir, and take the return blow of reasonable queries, hard resentment, and good people at a loss to comprehend. — Joseph Campbell

Tonight, he'd looked broken. She'd been afraid to touch him, as if one brush of skin would send him shattering into a million pieces. But then she had, and he'd clung to her as if he'd been afraid to let go. Some people might see it as weakness, but she didn't. She knew how it felt to have life yank the rug out from under you. She knew what it meant to need someone to hold you, to share the weight of the world for a minute. For a second. She would have held him all night. And then her father had shown up to act like Detective Dickhead. As usual. — Brigid Kemmerer

Imagination must first be filled to the point of saturation with life of every kind before the moment arrives when the friction of free sociability electrifies it to such an extent that the most gentle stimulus of friendly or hostile contact elicits from it lightning sparks, luminous flashes, or shattering blows. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

I don't believe, however, that every fiction we orchestrate is good. I cling to those that are painful, those that arise from a profound crisis of all our illusions. I love unreal things when they show signs of firsthand knowledge of the terror, and hence an awareness that they are unreal, that they will not hold up for long against the collisions. Human beings are extremely violent animals, and the violence they are always ready to use in order to impose their own eternal, salvific life vest, while shattering those of others, is frightening. — Elena Ferrante

As far as he knew there had been no earth-shattering event unfolding in the world, and if there were, what did it matter to him anyway? He could easily remain in bed all day and not know about it, and as far as he was concerned, if it was something he knew nothing about, it hadn't happened and had no bearing on his life. — Ken Puddicombe

She flashed upon his life with an electric energy, shattering every day's effort at work and leaving a kind of glimmering burning feeling all day and night around the edges of his heart. — Niall Williams

Steep fall to the ground
shattering
like clay pigeons
missed
by bad shots
and unsteady hands. — Jessica Kristie

I discovered for myself and by myself that there is no self to realize
that's the realization I am talking about. It comes as a shattering blow. It hits you like a thunderbolt. You have invested everything in one basket, self-realization, and, in
the end, suddenly you discover that there is no self to discover, no self to realize
and you say to yourself "What the hell have I been doing all my life?!" That blasts you. — U.G. Krishnamurti

The funny thing about life is that even though something entirely earth-shattering rocks you to your core, something that shakes you off your axis, the world around you somehow doesn't feel the impact. — T.M. Frazier

When horrible life-shattering things take place, especially in our relationships, these events become central to our experience and most everything else is viewed in their light, God included. You may have your — Gary W. Deddo

No matter the life-shattering circumstance that delivers the devastating blow to our spirit, God is bigger. He is faithful and unchanging, merciful and consistent with His offer to us, that through it all, we will be comforted, we will be loved, we will be HELD. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

You wouldn't think the touch of someone's hand could blow your mind. It's nothing, right? People don't right songs and poems about holding hands - they write them about kisses and sex and eternal love. I mean, when you're a little kid you hold hands with your parents to cross the street. Who's going to write an ode to that?
We were alone in the dark, even though the enormous theater was filled with probably a thousand people. We were a tiny island in a sea of other people who didn't matter, who had no meaning, who were so stupid, so oblivious, so stuck in their own boring lives that they didn't even notice the huge, momentous, life-shattering event that was taking place right there in row L, between seats 102 and 104.
Derek Edwards was holding my hand. — Claire LaZebnik

Spirituality is a mixed-up, topsy-turvy, helter-skelter godliness that turns our lives into an upside-down toboggan ride of unexpected turns, surprise bumps and bone shattering crashes ... a life ruined by a Jesus who loves us right into his arms. — Mike Yaconelli

Writing is both bomb and bomb disposal-a necessary shattering of cliche and assumption, and a powerful defusing of the soul-destroying messages of modern life (that nothing matters, nothing changes, money is everything, etc). Writing is a state of being as well as an act of doing. — Jeanette Winterson

Chili is one of those marvelous-simple, elemental, all-important, and fundamental concepts that has been elaborated out of all recognition: rather like justice, or objective reality, or 'being' (ens) in Aquinas. Lean closer and I will whisper to you a horrific, soul-shattering secret: there are actually people so lost to any sense of decency that they put beans in chili. (I hope you sent the children of tender years out of the room before we discussed that horror, lest they be warped for life). — Markham Shaw Pyle

When I started reading the literature of molecular biology, I was stunned by certain descriptions. Admittedly, I was on the lookout for anything unusual, as my investigation had led me to consider that DNA and its cellular machinery truly were an extremely sophisticated technology of cosmic origin. But as I pored over thousands of pages of biological texts, I discovered a world of science fiction that seemed to confirm my hypothesis. Proteins and enzymes were described as 'miniature robots,' ribosomes were 'molecular computers,' cells were 'factories,' DNA itself was a 'text,' a 'program,' a 'language,' or 'data.' One only had to do a literal reading of contemporary biology to reach shattering conclusions; yet most authors display a total lack of astonishment and seem to consider that life is merely 'a normal physiochemical phenomenon. — Jeremy Narby

For the first time, vague doubts assaulted me, the shattering suspicion that for all pleasure and joy in life we had to pay ... I repel fear. If I had to pay I would pay, after all, the memory of ecstasy while pungisse its pain could never be erased. — Frank Harris

We take life for granted, sleepwalking until a shattering event knocks us awake. Zen says, don't wait until the car accident, the cancer diagnosis, or the death of a loved one to get your priorities straight. Do it now. — Philip Toshio Sudo

In other words, Hitler's soul life was not mature enough at that moment to maintain an awareness of himself and his surroundings when this alien entity entered him. During the following six months during a series of irregular meetings and discussions with Hitler, Walter Stein was to witness a maturing soul development in this enigmatic character through which he became more and more a conscious and responsive tool of the world-shattering purposes of the demonic Spirit which overshadowed him. 'I move like a sleep-walker where Providence dictates,' said Adolf Hitler at a press interview. — Trevor Ravenscroft

Soccer has given me a place to express myself, fully and openly. To not be shy. To feel. To be crazy. To try things I might not try. To be honest in relationships. To make mistakes and realize that they're not life-shattering. — Brandi Chastain

First-class delivery of children's palliative care is life-changing. When families are confronted with the shattering news that their children have a life-limiting condition, their world can fall apart. — Kate Middleton

God, he was going to destroy her. But maybe for the first time in her life, she'd found a man worth shattering for. — Joey W. Hill

The transience of humanity frames the tragedy of all people. There are no happy conclusions to life, we all die, and until we die, we will experience both happiness and pain. Acceptance of the tragedy of humankind without remorse is a shattering experience; it enables us to relinquish mawkish misconceptions, destructive obsessions, and crippling attachments. Only by accepting the tragedy of life as an integral part of the incandescent beauty of life, will I understand what it means to rejoice in the indelible bloom of life. — Kilroy J. Oldster

We were alone in the dark, even though the enormous theater was filled with probably a thousand people. We were a tiny island in a sea of other people who didn't matter, who had no meaning, who were so stupid, so oblivious, so stuck in their own boring lives that they didn't even notice the huge, momentous, life-shattering event that was taking place right there in row L, between seats 102 and 104. — Claire LaZebnik

That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided by intuitions rather than by concepts. There is no regular path which leads from these intuitions into the land of ghostly schemata, the land of abstractions. There exists no word for these intuitions; when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in unheard - of combinations of concepts. He does this so that by shattering and mocking the old conceptual barriers he may at least correspond creatively to the impression of the powerful present intuition. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Truth, acceptance of the truth, is a shattering experience. It shatters the binding shroud of culture trance. It rips apart smugness, arrogance, superiority, and self-importance. It requires acknowledgment of responsibility for the nature and quality of each of our own lives, our own inner lives as well as the life of the world. Truth, inwardly accepted, humbling truth, makes one vulnerable. You can't be right, self-righteous, and truthful at the same time. — Paula Gunn Allen

I might not be able to tell you the things you need to hear with the traditional words you need to hear them in, but I swear to God, Rylee, I will try. And if I can't, then I'll show you. I'll show you with everything I have - anything it takes - where your place is in my life," he murmurs to me, shattering every last form of protection I have guarding my heart. — K. Bromberg

[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man ... Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachments to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible. — Joseph Campbell

Once they leave to see to their other duties, I go to stand before the fire, feeling once again as if I have been completely upended and remade anew, when in truth, I have barely caught my breath from the first time my life shattered before my eyes.

But this- this is different. This is no shattering, but rather some great knitting together of the broken pieces into a stronger whole.

I feel cleansed, not only of sin- but of artifice. I am stripped down to nothing but my raw self. As uncomfortable as it makes me feel, there is freedom in it as well, for there is no place left for others' expectations and desires of me to hide. — Robin LaFevers

There are times when one cannot accept facts for fear of shattering one's being. As I listened to Ian's news, all of Digit's life, since my first meeting with him as a playful little ball of black fluff ten years earlier, passed through my mind. From that moment on, I came to live within an insulated part of myself. — Dian Fossey