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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• 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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• 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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• I respect my parents' opinion very much. No matter how old you are, what your parents think is very important. If they like your boyfriend or if they like some work you've done. And if they don't, it's more shattering than anybody else telling you, because they're the most honest.

  Olivia Newton-John

  Thinking, Parent, Your Boyfriend

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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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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• Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A full blown storm where everything changes. The sky goes through four days in an hour, the trees wail, little animals skitter in the mud and everything gets dark and goes completely wild. But it is really God - playing music in his favourite cathedral in heaven - shattering stained glass - playing a gigantic organ - thundering on the keys - perfect harmony - perfect joy.

  Joan Baez

  Dark, Animal, Keys

  Joan Baez (1968). “DAYBREAK”

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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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• 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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• Just thinking about that, if that were to really happen, if an alien were to come down and really abduct you, how terrifying and how earth-shattering would that be? Your whole world is just destroyed. God is destroyed. It's kind of a fascinating thing to think about.

  Evan Peters

  Thinking, World, Earth

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I mean, if you are directing actors to do one thing and then directing them to do something else entirely because the one thing you wanted them to do may not work, then you are just shattering their confidence in the project.

  Atom Egoyan

  Mean, Actors, May

  Interview with Ron Burnett, rburnett.squarespace.com.

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• The strongest iron, hardened in the fire, most often ends in scraps and shatterings.

  Sophocles

  Strength, Fire, Iron

  Sophocles (2013). “Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus”, p.38, University of Chicago Press

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• God rescues us by breaking us, by shattering our strength and wiping out our resistance.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Wiping Out, Resistance, Rescue

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• Many people can listen to their cat more intelligently than they can listen to their own despised body. Because they attend to their pet in a cherishing way, it returns their love. Their body, however, may have to let out an earth-shattering scream in order to be heard at all.

  Marion Woodman

  Philosophy, Cat, Order

  Marion Woodman (1985). “The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation”

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• Deliverance can come to us only by the defeat of our old life. Safety and peace come only after we have been forced to our knees. God rescues us by breaking us, by shattering our strength and wiping out our resistance.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Safety, Wiping Out, Knees

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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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• 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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• The co-opting of the environmental movement by the petroleum industry had a shattering effect. It crushed nascent biofuel businesses, killed research, cut off critical funding, stopped the building of new infrastructure, dissolved powerful alliances and seeded America with doubt over our ability to free ourselves from petroleum.

  Josh Tickell

  Powerful, Cutting, America

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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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• 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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