Torn Quotes

• Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are.

  Arthur Golden

  Inspirational, Strength, Success

  "Memoirs of a Geisha". Book by Arthur Golden, September 27, 1997.

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• When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.

  John Donne

  Death, Book, Men

  John Donne (2013). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of John Donne (Illustrated)”, Delphi Classics

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• We are torn between the craving to know and the despair of having known.

  Francoise Sagan

  Despair, Craving, Knows

  7 Copy quote

• The mask is torn off, while the reality remains

  Lucretius

  Reality, Mask, Remains

  "De Rerum Natura". III. 58,

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• The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.

  Saint Augustine

  Long, Soul, Doe

  Saint Augustine (1998). “The Confessions”, p.151, OUP Oxford

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• As we live we all get caught and torn by various traps. Nobody escapes them. Some even live with them. The idea is to realize that a trap is a trap. If you are in one and you don't realize it, then you're finished.

  Charles Bukowski

  Ideas, Realizing, Traps

  14 Copy quote

• I was tired of hanging on, taking the torn pieces to make something whole with them.

  Sarah Dessen

  Tired, Pieces, Hanging On

  Sarah Dessen (2004). “That Summer”, p.123, Penguin

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• The value of love will always be stronger than the value of hate. Any nation or group of nations which employs hatred eventually is torn to pieces by hatred.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Love, Marriage, Couple

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• I have wondered why is it that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death that others.

  John Steinbeck

  People, Life And Death, Affected

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.255, Penguin

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• For years I've wanted to live according to everyone else's morals. I've forced myself to live like everyone else, to look like everyone else. I said what was necessary to join together, even when I felt separate. And after all of this, catastrophe came. Now I wander amid the debris, I am lawless, torn to pieces, alone and accepting to be so, resigned to my singularity and to my infirmities. And I must rebuild a truth-after having lived all my life in a sort of lie.

  Albert Camus

  Inspirational, Lying, Years

  Albert Camus (2008). “Notebooks, 1951-1959”, Ivan R Dee

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• I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

  E. B. White

  Life, Good Morning, Time

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.148, Cornell University Press

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• Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down with incredible swiftness.

  Faith Baldwin

  Character, Swiftness, Reputation

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• I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Forgiveness, Spiritual, Two

  Henry Ward Beecher, Edna Dean Proctor (1860). “Life Thoughts: Gathered from the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher”, p.108

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• 

  Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.

  Jon Stewart

  Death, Hope, Atheist

  "The Daily Show". www.imdb.com. 1996 - ....

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• I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.

  Robertson Davies

  Country, Scotch, Desire

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• Rebel, rebel, you've torn your dress. Rebel, rebel, your face is a mess. Rebel, rebel, how could they know? Hot tramp, I love you so.

  David Bowie

  Love You, Quality, Rebel

  Song: Rebel Rebel, 1974

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• Cezanne said, 'I love to paint people who have grown old naturally in the country.' And I say I love to paint people who have been torn to shreds by the rat race in New York.

  Alice Neel

  Country, New York, Race

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• I glory in this world of men and women, torn with troubles, yet living on to love and laugh through it all.

  Carl Sandburg

  Men, Laughing, World

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• You can't put something together again unless you've torn it apart first.

  Steven Brust

  Together Again, Together, Firsts

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• It's because...you see, if we had souls, which we haven't, and if our souls met--yours and mine--they'd fight to the death. But after they had torn each other to pieces, to the very bottom, they'd see that they had the same root.

  Ayn Rand

  Fighting, Roots, Soul

  Ayn Rand (2009). “We the Living”, p.106, Penguin

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• A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Children, Heart, Parenting

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, J. D. McClatchy (2000). “Poems and Other Writings”, p.796, Library of America

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• If we don't take effective measures now, the Netherlands could be torn between two extreme rights.

  Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  Rights, Two, Netherlands

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• The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed. I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

  Lord Byron

  Spring, Responsibility, Should Have

  Lord Byron, Lord George Gordon Byron (2013). “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage”, p.131, Cambridge University Press

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• I don't really want to direct myself, but I'm certainly torn in that direction.

  Paul Reubens

  Want, Direct

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, film.avclub.com. July 26, 2006.

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• Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.

  Elie Wiesel

  Events, Veils, Moments

  Elie Wiesel (2007). “The Judges: A Novel”, p.24, Schocken

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