Shattering Quotes

• I think a curse should rest on me - because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment - and yet - I can't help it - I enjoy every second of it.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Thinking, Helping

  Winston Churchill's letter to a friend, 1916.

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• Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.

  Alvin Toffler

  Change, Time, Stress

  1970 Future Shock.

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• Wars shatter so many lives. I think especially of children robbed of their childhood.

  Pope Francis

  Children, War, Thinking

  Pope Francis (2015). “The Spirit of St Francis: Inspiring Words on Faith, Love and Creation”, p.160, SPCK

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• All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering, the animals are our equals.

  Peter Singer

  Encouragement, Nature, Animal

  "Peter Singer" by Ed Vulliamy, www.theguardian.com. February 14, 2009.

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• The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

  George Orwell

  Running, War, Intelligent

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.283, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Let fire and the cross; let the crowds of wild beasts; let tearings ... let shatterings of the whole body; and let all the evil torments of the devil come upon me: only let me attain to Jesus Christ.

  Ignatius of Antioch

  Jesus, Fire, Evil

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• Only in the shattering can the rebuilding occur

  Barbara Marciniak

  Broken, Rebuilding

  Barbara Marciniak (1998). “Family of Light: Pleiadian Tales and Lessons in Living”, p.40, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co

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• The most shattering thought I've ever had is my personal accountability to God one day

  Leonard Ravenhill

  Personal Accountability, Accountability, One Day

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• A fantastic, gleeful, chrome-plated-slick debut of a novel. In Jonathan Chase, Markham has created the perfect cliche-shattering super spy while honoring the progenitors. Dangerously sharp, and genuinely fun-and very, very, very smart. I want more books like this. I want more books from the mind of Mr. Markham!

  Greg Rucka

  Fun, Smart, Book

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• Love, it’s such a night, laced with running water, irreparable, riddled with a million leaks. A night shaped like a shadow thrown by your absence. Every crack trickles, every overhang drips. The screech of nighthawks has been replaced by the splash of rain. The rain falls from the height of streetlights. Each drop contains its own shattering blue bulb.

  Stuart Dybek

  Running, Rain, Fall

  Stuart Dybek (2004). “The Coast of Chicago: Stories”, p.86, Picador

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• During an earthquake it sometimes happens that fresh springs break out in dry places which water and quicken the land so that plants can grow. In the same way the shattering experiences of suffering can cause the living water to well up in a human heart.

  Sadhu Sundar Singh

  Spring, Heart, Earthquakes

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• All the unhallowed beauty I have found; All free - discordant shrills and form-defying wonders above ground, like writhen trees with draggled foliage struggling along the courses of wayback creeks; scarlet - and - green sky - streaking parrot - fires with parrot shrieks echo - shattering the shoulders of the hills; and desert - sunset - rage Rage for my mind, be clamant, do not cease you are my holiest habitat of peace.

  Rex Ingamells

  Beauty, Struggle, Sunset

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• She didn't say a work, and I gave up trying, because you couldn't hear either one of us over the shattering noise of hearts breaking and the looming shadow of the last word, the one we refused to say.

  Kami Garcia

  Heart, Shadow, Trying

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• Now do I begin to be a disciple of Christ, and care for nothing in this world, that so I may find Jesus. Let fire, or the cross, or wild beasts, or the breaking of my bones, or the cutting of me to pieces, or the shattering of my whole body, yea, all the tortures of the devil - let them all come upon me, only let me enjoy my God.

  Ignatius of Antioch

  Jesus, Cutting, Fire

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• The world's religions, for all their parochialism, did supply a kind of consolation for this great ache. This shattering recognition of our mortality is at the root of far more mental illness than I suspect even psychiatrists are aware.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Depression, Roots, World

  Interview with Eric Nordern, Playboy, September 1968.

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• Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving on the road at night I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.

  Christopher Walken

  Artist, Night, Thinking

  "Fictional character: Duane". "Annie Hall", www.imdb.com. 1977.

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• 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

  Life, Rip, Fall

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• The unexpected action of deep listening can create a space of transformation capable of shattering complacency and despair.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Space, Listening, Despair

  Terry Tempest Williams (2012). “When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice”, p.59, Macmillan

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• Heavy metal is a universal energy -- it's the sound of a volcano. It's rock, it's earth shattering. Somewhere in our primal being we understand.

  Billy Corgan

  Rocks, Volcanoes, Energy

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• 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

  Spiritual, Blow, Imagination

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• Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

  Fall, Democracies Have, Two

  "Iran Leader Says Western-Style Democracy Has Failed". abcnews.go.com. May 9, 2006.

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• During their college years the oarsmen put in terrbily long hours, often showing up at the boathouse at 6:00am for preclass practices. Both physically and psychologically, they were separated from their classmates. Events that seemed earth-shattering to them-- for example, who was demoted from the varsity to the junior varsity -- went almost unnoticed by the rest of the students. In many ways they were like combat veterans coming back from a small, bitter and distant war, able to talk only to other veterans.

  David Halberstam

  War, College, Years

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• It's like the sound of a chuckle in the darkness. The sense that some shattering and disarming simplicity is the real answer.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Simplicity, Darkness

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.34, Faber & Faber

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• There is in India a story of a dying youth who, hearing the sobs of grief around him, cried: Insult me not with your cries of sympathy. When I soar to the land of eternal light and love; it is I who should feel for you. For me, disease, shattering of bones, sorrow, excruciating heartaches no more. I dream joy, I glide in joy, I breathe in joy evermore.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Death, Dream, Grief

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• Over the course of four rough, ego-shattering hours, the ayahuasca shows me that opening myself to love of Zoe and all others is the sure way to tap my deepest and most vital energetic reserves. The lesson is vivid, technicolor, indelibly imprinted on my psyche.

  Chris Kilham

  Ayahuasca, Medicine, Ego

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