When Something Breaks Quotes & Sayings

Another way to be prepared is to think negatively. Yes, I'm a great optimist. but, when trying to make a decision, I often think of the worst case scenario. I call it 'the eaten by wolves factor.' If I do something, what's the most terrible thing that could happen? Would I be eaten by wolves? One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist, is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose. There are a lot of things I don't worry about, because I have a plan in place if they do. — Randy Pausch

When people start talking about enjambment and line endings, I always shut them up. This is not something to talk about, this is a private matter, it's up to the poet. — James Tate

Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down. — Mahmoud Darwish

I get a little freaked out when I'm around too many redheads. I only have about one or two red-haired friends, and when a bunch of us get together, I feel like there's going to be a fight that breaks out or something. — Jesse Plemons

Ever since that first day on the beach, I haven't been able to stop thinking about you." A burst of warmth breaks free low in my abdomen. "And then later," he continues, "when you were in the pool, drifting just out of reach." His fingers dance along my hip toward my back, setting me on fire from the outside in.
I press my palms flat against the door behind me, needing to feel something but afraid to reach for him. His head drops lower and for a moment I think he's about to finally kiss me. But instead he shifts, bringing his lips slowly to my ear. "Do you know how many times I've imagined what would have happened if I'd just gone in after you? — Carrie Ryan

People say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. They say that when you been through something terrible ... But it doesn't. It breaks your bones, leaving everything splintered and held together with grubby bandages and yellowing sticky tape. Creaking along the fault lines, Fragile and exhausting to hold together. Sometimes you wish it had killed you. — Fiona Barton

Maybe something can only be born when something else dies. Maybe our 'coming alive' feels like being dragged through the dirt. Maybe you and I are hanging my a thread of grace for most of our lives and we're expected to be humble, not haughty, with the breaks we've been given. Maybe we're supposed to pay good deeds forward. Maybe we're supposed to think what's in it for me? far less than we do. Maybe we need to sacrifice more. Maybe it won't feel like a sacrifice at all, but more like the sensation of becoming unnumbed. — Jeff Goins

We're so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks - we're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing? He — Mitch Albom

Day 72
I remember oranges and you don't mind me leaving the queue momentarily to find some. When you say, Of course, you reach for my arm in sympathy and recognition. This may be the thing that breaks me today, that stops me in my tracks before driving me forward, turning a corner, making something work, letting everything happen. When I return, you're touching my yoghurts, reading the ingredients, as though you are making them yours, protecting them in my absence and amusing yourself with the cherry-ness of them. On days like this, I want to take my strangers home with me. — Gemma Seltzer

Have you heard of the illness hysteria siberiana? Try to imagine this: You're a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plow your fields. As far as the eye can see, nothing. To the north, the horizon, to the east, the horizon, to the south, to the west, more of the same. Every morning, when the sun rises in the east, you go out to work in your fields. When it's directly overhead, you take a break for lunch. When it sinks in the west, you go home to sleep. And then one day, something inside you dies. Day after day you watch the sun rise in the east, pass across the sky, then sink in the west, and something breaks inside you and dies. You toss your plow aside and, your head completely empty of thought, begin walking toward the west. Heading toward a land that lies west of the sun. Like someone, possessed, you walk on, day after day, not eating or drinking, until you collapse on the ground and die. That's hysteria siberiana. — Haruki Murakami

But love like that can be too big, too. It can be something you shouldn't be trusted to hold when you're the kind of person who drops the eggs and breaks the remote control. — Amy Garvey

It is only through letting our heart break that we discover something unexpected: the heart cannot actually break, it can only break open. When we feel both our love for this world and the pain of this world-together, at the same time-the heart breaks out of its shell. To live with an open heart is to experience life full-strength. — John Welwood

When something breaks down or does not go as planned, we are given a glimpse of our great need. — Christie Purifoy

When a seed sprouts, it's a violent process. The skin breaks and splits in two. Something dies and something is born. Anytime you paint a strong or violent image, you may be expressing that part of yourself that's opening in order to let the new emerge. — Michele Cassou

What happens when someone breaks your heart?
When someone breaks your heart, first you are shocked. Someone will say you are heartbroken and you examine the words break and heart and heartbroken and you immediately decide that it's inaccurate. You feel pain in the region of your heart and you think it's your heart breaking but one's heart doesn't really break, something else does - faith. You stop believing. — M.D. Balangue

No one ever tells you that when your heart breaks, you can feel it. But you can. It feels like something has crumbled inside you and the pieces are falling into your stomach. It hurts more than any punch ever could. You stop breathing, and for a while you can't remember how. When you finally do, it feels like your throat has closed up, like you're trying to suck air through a straw. — Michael Thomas Ford

Nature is very clear on this. In fact, there's one fundamental law that all of nature obeys that mankind breaks everyday. Now this is a law that's evolved over billions of years and the law is this: nothing in nature takes more than it needs. A redwood tree doesn't take all of the soil's nutrients, just what it needs to grow. A lion doesn't kill every gazelle, just one. We have a term for something in the body when it takes more than its share. We call it cancer. — Tom Shadyac

By the way, I may have misled you by using the word 'tea'. None of your wafer slices of bread-and-butter. We're good trencher-men, we of the Revolution. What we shall require will be something on the order of scrambled eggs, muffins, jam, ham, cake and sardines. Expect us at five sharp."
"But, I say, I'm not quite sure - "
"Yes, you are. Silly ass, don't you see that this is going to do you a bit of good when the Revolution breaks loose? When you see old Rowbotham sprinting up Piccadilly with a dripping knife in each hand, you'll be jolly thankful to be able to remind him that he once ate your tea and shrimps. — P.G. Wodehouse

It seems devastating to have your heart so completely undone for a single person. If they screw up, if they don't feel the same, if their life is too busy or too complicated or too far away to fit you into it, something inside you breaks. Even when it heals, there are scars.
There are always scars. — Jen Klein

When we are forced to endure what we cannot endure, something breaks inside our minds. That broken-mindedness is commonly called trauma. — John A. Macdougall

When I really get invested in something, the one thing that really disappoints me is when it breaks its own rules. — Grant Bowler

I cannot really play. Either at piano or at life; never, never have I been able to. I have always been too hasty, too impatient; something always intervenes and breaks it up. But who really knows how to play, and if he does know, what good is it to him? Is the great dark less dark for that, are the unanswerable questions less inscrutable, does the pain of despair at eternal inadequacy burn less fiercely, and can life ever be explained and seized and ridden like a tamed horse or is it always a mighty sail that carries us in the storm and, when we try to seize it, sweep us into the deep? Sometimes there is a hole in me that seems to extend to the center of the earth. What could fill it? Yearning? Dispair? Happiness? What happiness? Fatigue? Resignation? Death? What am I alive for? Yes, for what am I alive? — Erich Maria Remarque

There are things that, when they break, they keep on functioning, just in some other, lesser way. Like an elevator: it breaks, and it's a room. An escalator: it breaks, and it's stairs
The heart is the same.
It breaks, and you might not even notice, because you still feel things, you still have emotions.
But there's a dimension missing, like for the elevator; it still works as a room, but it has lost its vertical axis of motion, and it's the same with a heart: it breaks, and yeah, you can still have feelings, you can still feel sorry for someone, or angry, or sad, but there's something that's lost, a motion, a dimension. It breaks, and it's just an organ, beating. — Nick Lake

He has depths of silence - which he breaks only at the longest intervals by a remark. And when the remark comes it's always something he has seen or felt for himself - never a bit banal. That would be what one might have feared and what would kill me. But never. She — Henry James

We wake up to be alive and to revive our lives; we don't wake up to keep sleeping! We wake up not just to be alive, but also to keep our works alive and mind the business of the day! When you wake up, revive your work! Sometimes you may just feel reluctant to do something when day breaks, but you must remember that there is always something that needs to be done when day breaks, for each day we meet as we journey in life comes with its own agenda! He who fails to know the real reasons why day breaks shall always abuse the real and true essence of each day, knowingly or unknowingly! Be alive when you wake up and do something with all your might when day breaks for you surely leave a footprint each day you wake up! When you wake up, wake up! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

There is something noble as well as terrible about suicide. The downfall of many men is not dangerous, for they fall like children, too near the ground to do themselves harm. But when a great man breaks, he has soared up to the heavens, espied some inaccessible paradise, and then fallen from a great height. The forces that make him seek peace from the barrel of a gun cannot be placated. How many young talents confined to an attic room wither and perish for lack of a friend, a consoling wife, alone in the midst of a million fellow humans, while throngs of people weary of gold are bored with their possessions. — Honore De Balzac

Kintsugi is a pottery technique. When something breaks, like a vase, they glue it back together with melted gold. Instead of making the cracks invisible, they make them beautiful. To celebrate the history of the object. What it's been through. And I was just ... Thinking of us like that. My heart full of gold veins, instead of cracks. — Leah Raeder

Now I'm going to tell you something I've kept to myself for years. None of you ever knew George Gipp. He was long before your time, but you all know what a tradition he is at Notre Dame. And the last thing he said to me, "Rock," he said, "sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock," he said, "but I'll know about it and I'll be happy."
— Knute Rockne

I hold his gaze until the chaos outside breaks my concentration. Outside, where everything is falling, landing and breaking at once. Sometimes you catch something specific like the screams and cries of people trying to hold on to each other before they're swallowed into other, bigger noises. This is what it sounds like when the world ends. — Courtney Summers

If true love breaks as easily as a delusion, on what can we rely? What will people pin their hopes on?" [Nilima]
"They'll have the sweet, intimate memories of a lost paradise, and beside it a sea of sorrow ... People looking on from outside think all is lost ... What remains when everything is lost can be held in the palm, like a jewel. It can't be flaunted in a pageant, so the lookers-on are disappointed and jeer as they return home.." [Kamal]
" ... Jewels are not meant for everybody, certainly not for the rabble. People who're only happy when decked out with gold and silver from top to toe won't understand the value of your tiny diamonds and gems. Those who want a lot feel secure only after tying knot upon knot. They put a price on something only by its weight and show and bulk. But it's useless to try and show the sunrise from a western window..[Nilima] — Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay

It breaks your heart when you throw something away, but it's what left that counts. It's like worrying about the bits of rock you have knocked off in order to make a beautiful statue. You've wasted half the rock, yeah, but it's the Venus di Milo! — Ricky Gervais

I don't know anything about heartbreak, but I think that was something close, and I know the heart only breaks when you've given it to someone else. When you've trusted someone to care for it, keep it safe. When you're in love. — L.M. Turner

You go to developing countries today and you'll find automobiles that you haven't seen since you're childhood and that's because they really are valuable, they're taken care of, they're repaired, and when something breaks, they just don't buy a new one, they actually fix it. — Nicholas Negroponte

Be persistent. Establishing yourself in this field could easily take years. Rarely will any composer get that one "big break." More often, success is built on hundreds - or thousands - of very small breaks. When I decided that I was definitely going to pursue a career as a film composer, I decided I was going to beat my head against that particular wall until something broke. — John Keltonic

When I look at someone's face, there's something in my brain that just clicks - that breaks down their face into the elements that go into a caricature. It might be like the way a chef tastes a dish and can break down into elements what went into it. — Steve Breen

there are times when simply looking at him breaks her heart. Not in a sad way. It's the other kind of heartbreak. The kind that clenches the insides upon discovery of something particularly beautiful or altogether implausible. — Barbara Forte Abate

Limitations are something that I latch onto - like working in genre, or if you're writing TV, there are act breaks, there's a length of time it's supposed to be. The restrictions of budget and sets can be really useful. When you can have everything, it's very hard to make things feel real and lived in. — Joss Whedon

If something breaks when you're out crossing oceans, your choices are to fix it, replace it, or do without it. — Daria Blackwell

64. Surprising and Distressing Things
While one is cleaning a decorative comb, something catches in the teeth and the comb breaks.
A carriage overturns. One would have imagined that such a solid, bulky object would remain forever on its wheels. It all seems like a dream
astonishing and senseless.
A child or grown-up blurts out something that is bound to make people uncomfortable.
All night long one has been waiting for a man who one thought was sure to arrive. At dawn, just when one has forgotten about him for a moment and dozed off, a crow caws loudly. One wakes up with a start and sees that it is daytime
most astonishing.
One of the bowmen in an archery contest stands trembling for a long time before shooting; when finally he does release his arrow, it goes in the wrong direction. — Sei Shonagon

Eleven reasons you want to become a robot:

1. Robots are logical and know their purpose.
2. Robots have programming they understand.
3. Robots are not held to unattainable standards and then criticized when they fail.
4. Robots are not crippled by emotions they don't know how to process.
5. Robots are not judged based on what sex organs they were born with.
6. Robots have mechanical bodies that are strong and durable. They are not required to have sex.
7. Robots do not feel guilt (about existing, about failing, about being something other than expected).
8. Robots can multitask.
9. Robots do not feel unsafe all the time.
10. Robots are perfect machines that are capable and functional and can be fixed if something breaks.
11. Robots are happy. — A. Merc Rustad

The culture doesn't encourage you to think about such things until you're about to die. We're so wrapped up with egostical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks. We're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going . So we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing? — Morrie Schwartz.

When we force something to fit where it doesn't belong, it breaks. When surrounded by people who can't appreciate our beauty, humans essentially do the same. — Kayla Krantz

If I seem to be over-interested in junk, it is because I am, and I have a lot of it, too - half a garage full of bits and broken pieces. I use these things for repairing other things. Recently I stopped my car in front of the display yard of a junk dealer near Sag Harbor. As I was looking courteously at the stock, it suddenly occurred to me that I had more than he had. But it can be seen that I do have a genuine and almost miserly interest in worthless objects. My excuse is that in this era of planned obsolescence, when a thing breaks down I can usually find something in my collection to repair it - a toilet, or a motor, or a lawn mower. But I guess the truth is that I simply like junk. — John Steinbeck

A gauge of a life well-led: when it won't change if something you own breaks or is stolen; even a heart. — Gregor Collins

You need to understand plant chemistry, be inured to discomfort and awesomely flexible. When something breaks down-the plane, the boat, you just have to roll with it. — Chris Kilham

You should get as close to the power when you're pitching something. I got my two biggest breaks with the man who owned CBS and the guy that owned Paramount, because I was dealing with the guy who would say yes or no. — Albert S. Ruddy

Sometimes it was during the breaks that the real meditation happened - moments when it was obvious that wisdom is not something you have, but a wave-length you tune in to. — Matt Padwick

And then one student said that happiness is what happens when you go to bed on the hottest night of the summer, a night so hot you can't even wear a tee-shirt and you sleep on top of the sheets instead of under them, although try to sleep is probably more accurate. And then at some point late, late, late at night, say just a bit before dawn, the heat finally breaks and the night turns into cool and when you briefly wake up, you notice that you're almost chilly, and in your groggy, half-consciousness, you reach over and pull the sheet around you and just that flimsy sheet makes it warm enough and you drift back off into a deep sleep. And it's that reaching, that gesture, that reflex we have to pull what's warm - whether it's something or someone - toward us, that feeling we get when we do that, that feeling of being safe in the world and ready for sleep, that's happiness. — Paul Schmidtberger

When we see too many battlefields, it breaks something inside of a person and they lose the ability to distinguish between cruelty and necessity. — Laila Blake

Well it's been about 100 years and every attempt at a comics writers' union has failed miserably. There is, sadly, a long history of short-term thinking and self-destructive behavior among my fellow comic book creators. No matter how many horror stories they have heard they won't even go so far as to hire themselves a lawyer when they need it. It breaks my heart. I am a very proud union member of the Writers Guild. And I can't imagine my fellow comic creators being able to pull something like this together. — Brian Michael Bendis

There are so many kinds of madness, so many ways in which the human brain may go wrong; and so often it happens that what we call madness is both reasonable and just. It is so. Yes. A little reason is good for us, a little more makes wise men of some of us
but when our reason over-grows us and we reach too far, something breaks and we go insane. — James Oliver Curwood

At Latham House, we were asked to believe in unlikely miracles. In second chances. We woke up each morning hoping that the odds had somehow swung in our favor.
But that's the thing about odds. Roll a die twice, and you expect two different results. Except it doesn't work that way. You could roll the same side over and over again, the laws of the universe intact and unchanging with each turn. It's only when you consider the past that the odds change. That things become less and less likely.
Here's something I know because I'm a nerd: up until the middle of the twentieth century, dice were made out of cellulose nitrate. It's a material that remains stable for decades but, in a flash, can decompose. The chemical compound breaks down, releasing nitric acid. So every time you roll a die, there's a small chance that it won't give you a result at all, that instead it will cleave, crumble, and explode. — Robyn Schneider