Torn Quotes - Page 16

• So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.

  Lucretius

  Heart, Adversity, Reality

  "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations". Book by John Bartlett, 1855.

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• Having gone through what I went through, watching my family be torn to shreds and my children suffer immensely, I can't be the agent of doing that to someone else. I can't be the agent of causing someone to go to prison.

  Jack Abramoff

  Children, Suffering, Gone

  "Abramoff won't name names" by M. J. Lee, www.politico.com. February 7, 2012.

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• And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place, and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out and drank his blood! But, till then - if you don't believe me, you don't know me - til then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair on his head!

  Emily Bronte

  Believe, Heart, Hair

  Emily Bronte (2015). “Wuthering Heights (Diversion Classics)”, p.171, Diversion Books

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• Is one human? Or merely alive? Like a blade of grass equal to all existance in the moment it is torn? Yes. If pain is fundament, then a blade of grass can know all there is.

  Norman Mailer

  Life, Pain, Alive

  Norman Mailer (2013). “Ancient Evenings: A Novel”, p.11, Random House

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• Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Life, Book, Passion

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1851). “The prose works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”, p.193

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• I came into the world charged with the duty to uphold the right in every place, to destroy sin and evil... the only reason I took birth was to see that righteousness may flourish, that good may live, and tyrants be torn out by their roots.

  Guru Gobind Singh

  Tyrants, Roots, Evil

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• All Gaza's temples are torn down and burned and the city is cleansed of every belief but the Christian faith. The most stubborn opponents, faute de mieux, are tied up, marched away to the provincial capital, severely tortured, and all killed mala morte, 'a great number.'

  Ramsay MacMullen

  Christian, Cities, Numbers

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• Inspired men have been raised up, who have given us our form of government, and the code of laws by which we are controlled, the best ever evolved by man, so far as we are able to judge. The Lord has strengthened the arms of the patriots who have defended us against the assaults of all those who have come up against us, and delivered us until today, from those who would have torn us asunder. Against all opposition, I sometimes think almost against ourselves, the Lord has brought us to our present condition, until this nation, like a city set on a hill, has become the light of the world.

  Anthony W. Ivins

  Men, Thinking, Light

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• I want my work to become part of our visual history, to enter our collective memory and our collective conscience. I hope it will serve to remind us that history's deepest tragedies concern not the great protagonists who set events in motion but the countless ordinary people who are caught up in those events and torn apart by their remorseless fury. I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.

  James Nachtwey

  Photography, Memories, Collective Memory

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• Every authentic poem contributes to the labor of poetry... to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart... Poetry can repair no loss, but it defies the space which separates. And it does this by its continual labor of reassembling what has been scattered.

  John Berger

  Loss, Space, Together

  John Berger (2011). “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos”, p.96, Vintage

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• Marco knows he does not have the time to push her away, so he pulls her close, burying his face in her hair, his bowler hat torn from his head by the wind...."Trust me," Celia whispers in his ear, and he stops fighting it, forgetting everything but her.

  Erin Morgenstern

  Fighting, Hair, Wind

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• The fragile weave of natural sound is being torn apart by our seemingly boundless need to conquer the environment rather than to find a way to abide in consonance with it.

  Bernie Krause

  Sound, Needs, Torn Apart

  "A great silence is spreading over the natural worl" by John Vidal, www.theguardian.com. September 3, 2012.

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• In that inevitable, excruciatingly human moment, we are offered a powerful choice. This choice is perhaps one of the most vitally important choices we will ever make, and it determines the course of our lives from that moment forward. The choice is this: Will we interpret this loss as so unjust, unfair, and devastating that we feel punished, angry, forever and fatally wounded-- or, as our heart, torn apart, bleeds its anguish of sheer, wordless grief, will we somehow feel this loss as an opportunity to become more tender, more open, more passionately alive, more grateful for what remains?

  Wayne Muller

  Death, Powerful, Grief

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• The agony of martyrdom is almost too much to bear. In the early hours, when the loss is fresh, there is no comfort in knowing Glory will live on. We speak of the martyrs in History but we cannot know the actual pain they suffered in their final living hours. They enter the realm of the mythic, but we must never forget these were men like ourselves. When their flesh is torn, they cry out. They suffer as you or I would suffer, although more bravely. Remember Christ. Although I am now an enemy to Joseph's legacy, I shudder when recalling his pain.

  David Ebershoff

  Pain, Loss, Men

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• A bird painted not with beauty but with all the dirt and wounds collected in a long hard life, in battle, in love, with torn feathers and a busted leg and a chipped beak and one of its eyes half closed; and yet a bird of deeper loveliness for all of that.

  Jeff Noon

  Eye, Long, Bird

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• In the act of worship itself, the experience of liberation becomes a constituent of the community's being . . . It is the power of God's Spirit invading the lives of the people, "building them up where they are torn down and propping them up on every leaning side".

  James H. Cone

  People, Community, Down And

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• Did you measure to attain your height? Did you use geometry to radiate your limb? Did you lament storm-torn branches? Did you inventory your leaves for the sun? You did none of these things, yet man in his cleverness Cannot match your perfection.

  Ming-Dao Deng

  Men, Perfection, Tree

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• The hardened mass of liquid stones had much stronger qualities than those which had simply torn. The skin remained a recognisable part of the molten stone.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Artist, Stronger, Skins

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• Well, there are always those who cannot distinguish between glitter and glamour . . . the glamour of Isadora Duncan came from her great, torn, bewildered, foolhardy soul.

  Dorothy Parker

  Soul, Glitter, Duncan

  Dorothy Parker (1970). “A month of Saturdays: thirty-one famous pieces by "Constant Reader"”

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• Go back, go back to sleep. Yes, you are allowed. You who have no Love in your heart, you can go back to sleep. The power of Love is exclusive to us, you can go back to sleep. I have been burnt by the fire of Love. You who have no such yearning in your heart, go back to sleep. The path of Love, has seventy-two folds and countless facets. Your love and religion is all about deceit, control and hypocrisy, go back to sleep. I have torn to pieces my robe of speech, and have let go of the desire to converse. You who are not naked yet, you can go back to sleep.

  Rumi

  Letting Go, Love You, Heart

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• The glow dies down, and she's standing at the end of my bed--the one who's been following me around leaving feather messages. I take in the torn fishnets, plaid mini-kilt, shiny, riveted breastplate with leather straps at the sides and a worn Great Temolo decal near the left shoulder. Her wings are a crazy black-and-white-checkered pattern, like they've been spray-painted at a body shop to look like hipster sneakers.

  Libba Bray

  Hipster, Crazy, Black And White

  Libba Bray (2009). “Going Bovine”, p.113, Delacorte Books for Young Readers

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• ...being torn apart by far too many loyalties that could not possibly live together in the same brain.

  Jeff Lindsay

  Loyalty, Brain, Together

  Jeff Lindsay (2005). “Darkly Dreaming Dexter”, p.181, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.

  T. S. Eliot

  Unique, Feelings, Immature

  "Essays on Elizabethan Drama".

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• It's not that I haven't given it (turning pro) careful thought, it's just that I am torn as to which course I should take. There is no need to rush. I won't be consulting anybody about this and I will do things my own way.

  Shizuka Arakawa

  Needs, Way, Should

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• A torn rotator cuff is a cancer for a pitcher and if a pitcher gets a badly torn one, he has to face the facts, it's all over baby.

  Don Drysdale

  Baby, Cancer, Cuffs

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