Break Off Quotes

• Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.

  Pat Conroy

  Inspirational, Life, Travel

  FaceBook post by Pat Conroy from Dec 19, 2013

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• Distance does not break off the friendship absolutely, but only the activity of it.

  Aristotle

  Long Distance Relationship, Doe, Long Distant Relationship

  Aristotle, (2014). “Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation”, p.1829, Princeton University Press

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• To remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off

  Christopher Hitchens

  Remember, Sin, Conversation

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Mortality”, p.34, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Every day huge amounts of information break off like icebergs and melt away. What worries me is that much information in electronic form is never reduced to paper. Some people have described this as being on the edge of a digital Dark Age and fear we may commit a massive act of amnesia.

  Paul Saffo

  Dark, Worry, People

  Source: www.sfgate.com

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• We break off obsession by laughing at ourselves, by learning to be funny, by just seeing the joy in life and by having a terrific love for this world.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Laughing, Joy

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• If you light upon an impertinent talker, that sticks to you like a bur, to the disappointment of your important occasions, deal freely with him, break off the discourse, and pursue your business.

  Plutarch

  Disappointment, Light, Talking

  Plutarch, Matthew Morgan (1718). “Plutarch's Morals”, p.64

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• Other times I say: I would very much like to try to do something with this music, but after playing for a few minutes, I have to break off.

  Jan Garbarek

  Trying, Break, Minutes

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• It was cold autumn weather, but in spite of the cold they wandered up and down the roads of the Park for nearly three hours. They agreed to break off their intercourse; every bond, he said, is a bond to sorrow.

  James Joyce

  Autumn, Weather, Sorrow

  James Joyce (2016). “James Joyce The Dover Reader”, p.84, Courier Dover Publications

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• A Frenchwoman, when double-crossed, will kill her rival; the Italian woman would rather kill her deceitful lover; the Englishwoman simply breaks off relations-but they all will console themselves with another man.

  Charles Boyer

  Italian, Men, Rivals

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• ...when the words pour out of you just right, you understand that these sentences are all part of a river flowing out of your own distant, hidden ranges, and all words become the dissolving snow that feeds your mountain streams forever. The language locks itself in the icy slopes of our own high passes, and it is up to us, the writers, to melt the glaciers within us. When these glaciers break off, we get to call them novels, the changelings of our burning spirits, our life's work.

  Pat Conroy

  Rivers, Snow, Forever

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• A lady with whom I was riding in the forest said to me that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspend their deeds until the wayfarer had passed onward; a thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Feet, Waiting, Poetry

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.147, Harvard University Press

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• So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.

  John Donne

  Kissing, Two, Soul

  John Donne, Izaak Walton (1855). “The Poetical Works of Dr. John Donne: With a Memoir”, p.316

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• The lives of individuals of the human race form a constant plot, in which every attempt to isolate one piece of living that has a meaning separate from the rest-for example, the meeting of two people, which will become decisive for both-must bear in mind that each of the two brings with himself a texture of events, environments, other people, and that from the meeting, in turn, other stories will be derived which will break off from their common story.

  Italo Calvino

  Race, Two, People

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• As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea's foot and marveling at a midge's humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Life, Wise, Laughter

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• I figure the world is basically a machine. I don't know who made it, if it was the Fates, or the gods, or the capital-G god or whatever. But it chugs along the way it's supposed to most of the time. Sure, little pieces break off and stuff goes haywire once in a while, but mostly... things happen for a reason.

  Rick Riordan

  Fate, Littles, Stuff

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• an expression of surprise falls from her face, though she's trying to keep it. it breaks off and she seems to catch it and fidget with it in her hands.

  Markus Zusak

  Fall, Expression, Hands

  Markus Zusak (2014). “Markus Zusak: The Book Thief & I Am the Messenger”, p.832, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• Now to sum it up,' said Bernard. 'Now to explain to you the meaning of my life. Since we do not know each other (though I met you once I think, on board a ship going to Africa), we can talk freely. The illusion is upon me that something adheres for a moment, has roundness, weight, depth, is completed. This, for the moment, seems to be my life. If it were possible, I would hand it you entire. I would break it off as one breaks off a bunch of grapes. I would say, "Take it. This is my life.

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Hands, Depth

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.175, Virginia Woolf

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• The Amoeba?" she asked Aiden. "The gang," he said, tossing his hand to indicate all around. "My people. A large amorphous mass that keeps on changing size, hasn't much apparent use, sometimes makes you sick, and occasionally breaks off into smaller parts that act exactly like the parent.

  Annette Curtis Klause

  Hands, People, Sick

  Annette Curtis Klause (1999). “Blood and Chocolate”, Laurel Leaf

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• She serves me a piece of it a few minutes out of the oven. A little steam rises from the slits on top. Sugar and spice - cinnamon - burned into the crust. But she's wearing these dark glasses in the kitchen at ten o'clock in the morning - everything nice - as she watches me break off a piece, bring it to my mouth, and blow on it. My daughter's kitchen, in winter. I fork the pie in and tell myself to stay out of it. She says she loves him. No way could it be worse.

  Raymond Carver

  Daughter, Morning, Nice

  Raymond Carver (2015). “All of Us: The Collected Poems”, p.148, Vintage

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• It was the kind of talk that made me want to break off a limb and take to whacking her and that bunch of hypocrites across the back of the head.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Hypocrite, Want, Kind

  Joe R. Lansdale (2012). “Edge of Dark Water”, p.81, Hachette UK

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• Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you. Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you. And without feet I can make my way to you, without a mouth I can swear your name. Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you with my heart as with a hand. Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat. And if you consume my brain with fire, I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Heart, Eye, Fire

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• As you get older, the heart shed its leaves like a tree. You cannot hold out against certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves; and then there are the storms that break off several branches at one go. And while nature’s greenery grows back again in the spring, that of the heart never grows back.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Spring, Heart, Wind

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• If you strike upon a thought that baffles you, break off from that entanglement and try another, so shall your wits be fresh to start again.

  Aristophanes

  Thinking, Trying, Strikes

  Aristophanes (1927). “The Frogs: And Three Other Plays. Translated by Frere, Hickie, Mitchell and Cumberland”

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• It is better to break off a thousand friendships, than to endure the sight of a single enemy.

  Saadi

  Sight, Enemy, Endure

  Saadi, Francis Gladwin, Eric Serejski (2016). “Gulistan or Rose Garden”, p.111, Innovations and Information

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• Once committed to an attack, fly in at full speed. After scoring crippling or disabling hits, I would clear myself and then repeat the process. I never pursued the enemy once they had eluded me. Better to break off and set up again for a new assault. I always began my attacks from full strength, if possible, my ideal flying height being 22,000 ft because at that altitude I could best utilize the performance of my aircraft. Combat flying is based on the slashing attack and rough maneuvering.

  Erich Hartmann

  Flying, Enemy, Height

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