#breaking

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men. ↗

— Lyndon B. Johnson

#breaking #destroying #devised #different #down

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope. ↗

— Samuel Johnson

#away #before #breaking #felicity #flights

It might have been easier to retire, to say my knee couldn't handle it and let that be that. At the same time, the prospect of not being able to compete in gymnastics anymore was heartbreaking. ↗

— Shawn Johnson

#anymore #been #being #compete #easier

There would seem to be a limit, even for an art preoccupied with boundaries and transgressions, beyond which a work reaches its breaking point and becomes an actual failure, a mere experimentation. ↗

— Brian Ferneyhough

#art #becomes #beyond #boundaries #breaking

Amin hid nothing. Everybody knew everything. Yet the American Senate only introduced a resolution breaking off trade with Amin three months before his overthrow. ↗

— Ryszard Kapuscinski

#amin #before #breaking #everybody #everything

I was serving good but was returning especially well, which was a weakness in my game. So not only was I serving well, but I was also breaking these other guys, and they felt the pressure. ↗

— Richard Krajicek

#breaking #especially #felt #game #good

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself. ↗

— Jessamyn West

#appreciate #breaking #hearts #irony #joke

I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. (...) I want more numbers than I am likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I am grateful. ↗

— John Green

#heartbreaking #tearjerker #beauty

Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part, Nay, I have done, you get no more of me, And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart, That thus so cleanly I myself can free. Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows, And when we meet at any time again Be it not seen in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain. Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath, When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies, When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And Innocence is closing up his eyes, Now, if thou wouldst, when all have giv'n him over, From death to life thou might'st him yet recover. ↗

— Michael Drayton

#love #separation #death

How could you do that to me?" I repeat. I don´t have to itemize. He knows what I speak of. Eventually N produces three answers, in this order: 1. "Because I am a complete rotter." I silently agree, but it´s a cop-out: I have maggots, therefore I am dead. 2. "I was stressed at work and unhappy and we were always fighting...and you know I was just crazy..." I cut him off, saying, "You don´t get to be crazy. You did exactly what you chose to do." Which is true, he did. It is what he has always done. He therefore seems slightly puzzled at the need for further diagnosis, which may explain his third response: 3. "I don´t know." This, I feel instinctively, is the correct answer. How can I stay angry with him for being what he is? I was, after all, his wife, and I chose him. No coincidences, that´s what Freud said. None. Ever. I wipe my eyes on my sleeve and walk toward the truck, saying to his general direction, "Fine. At least now I know: You don´t know." I stop and turn around and fire one more question: a bullet demanding attention in the moment it enters the skin and spreads outward, an important bullet that must be acknowledged. "What did you feel?" After a lengthy pause, he answers. "I felt nothing." And that, I realize too late, was not the whole truth, but was a valid part of the truth. Oh, and welcome to the Serengeti. That too. ↗

— Suzanne Finnamore

#cheating #deception #divorce #infidelity #marriage