Brokenness Quotes

“Until we learn to love others as ourselves, it's difficult to blame broken people who desperately try to affirm themselves when no one else will.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“We all have cracks and tears and shattered glass within our souls. Some have more than others. We do not wish to seek one who has none; but we wish to find the one who can say" look at me, look at this. "We wish to find the one who sees every bit of broken glass and who will put those pieces into the palms of our hands and say" please keep them. "And we wish to be that kind of person, too. This is how it should be.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so 'in-between' things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World

“You would not ask someone with a broken arm to swim the English Channel, so you cannot demand that the broken to live as if they were whole.”
― John Eldredge, Love and War: Finding the Marriage You've Dreamed Of

“The worst kind of brokenness is the kind that you don’t know you have.”
― Amy Neftzger, The Orphanage of Miracles

“You were the monster, but all I could see was the boy.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I'm broken, but I have to learn how to live. I feel stuck together with scotch tape, like after any breath everything could come apart. If it does, if it all comes undone, I think I'll fall down and never rise again.”
― Anna White, Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith

“Wish I could be a fragile piece of glass to accept my brokenness.”
― Munia Khan

“Leave the broken, irreversible past in God's hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him.”
― Oswald Chambers

“Being broken isn't the worst thing. We can be mended and put together again. We don’t have to be ashamed of our past. We can embrace the history that gives us value, and see our cracks as beautiful.”
― Anna White, Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith

“I want to share my story, and I want to know yours. I believe with all my heart that sharing our stories, the real, ugly, broken ones, is one of the most powerful things in the world, because to share our story we must first accept it. We must own it. We must stop running from it or shoving it into the corner when company comes over. To share our story is to admit that we've been changed.”
― Anna White, Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith

“I am still not good enough. I am still not whole enough. I am still not pure enough. I am still weakness and sharp edges and broken, but He is good and pure and whole, all that I strive for but am not.

I wake up every morning and I sit in silence and I choose to believe. I may speak. I may not. I let Him wrap up all my broken in to His grace. He takes me imperfect. This is the great mystery I never knew.”
― Anna White, Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith

“The prayer that prevails is not the work of lips and fingertips. It is the cry of a broken heart and the travail of a stricken soul.”
― Samuel Chadwick

“It's possible I've been through too much, lost too much. War damages different people in different ways; Hector taught me that. King Alejandro became spineless and incapable. His father before him was rash and unpredictable, if I'm to believe court gossip. Perhaps this is my damage. Maybe I am numb to fear because I am broken.”
― Rae Carson, The Bitter Kingdom

“People aren’t broken. They’re just interestingly wired.”
― Silvia Hartmann

“Plus, once he did the requisite double-take and recognized me, he’d probably beat the crap out of any guy who looked at me in all my Snow White meets Frederick’s of Hollywood glory.”
― Katja Millay, The Sea of Tranquility

“No one was ever born without that light or flame of life. Some event, some person stifles or drowns it altogether. I was always tempted to resuscitate such men by my own joyousness or luminosity.

When I break glasses in a night club, as the Russians do, when my unconscious breaks out in wild rebellions, it is against life which has crippled these idealistic, romantic men. I respect these men, cold, pure, faithful, devoted, moral, delicate, sensitive, and unequal to life, more than I respect the tough-minded ones who return three blows to one received, who kill those who hurt them.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

“And he came to understand that the burial of the broken wasn't eccentric — this was what people did every day, stuffing their brokenness down, pushing it down, smoothing the surface over, making the surface look like nothing was broken underneath. Because, if people see that you are broken, they will not want to stand with you. They will migrate away from you the way groups of people walking down the street will move aside when a shambling ranting man approaches. They will look at the ground and look away so that such a person becomes invisible. So if you are such a personor just an everyday person with some broken places, some places really broken, you will pull them back from view so you can mingle with others without being seen as broken. Because if you have the look of a broken thing, if you are pushed aside and turned from, you will never find your footing again in the world.”
― Lindsay Hill, Sea of Hooks

“We are designed to dance. To use our bodies as weapons of grace, beauty and intrigue. We are designed to stretch until we master growth. To replace old dead cells and be physically renewed each moment. So challenges don’t destroy us, they just should make us dance more swiftly and passionately. For when we dance we please God. Especially when we dance in brokenness.”
― Phindiwe Nkosi, Behind the Hospital

“A desperate plea to the Trinity
is not something you can just
apologize for in the morning

-Drunk Dialing the Divine”
― Amber Koneval, Drunk Dialing the Divine

“(speaking of insecurity)
"It's broken greater spirits than ours, and robbed the world of God knows how much beauty. I've seen it happen more times than I like to think about."
-- "$10,000 A Year, Easy”
― Kurt Vonnegut, While Mortals Sleep: Unpublished Short Fiction

“Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Sorrow is God's plowshare that turns up and subsoils the depths of the soul, that it may yield richer harvests. If we had never fallen, or were in a glorified state, then the strong torrents of Divine joy would be the normal force to open up all our souls' capacities; but in a fallen world, sorrow, with despair taken out of it, is the chosen power to reveal ourselves to ourselves. Hence it is sorrow that makes us think deeply, long, and soberly.”
― Lettie Cowman

“Suddenly, he felt a tremendous stirring of hope inside his heart; it filled his whole body with its warmth. I may not be that much of a broken man, he thought to himself.”
― H. L. Balcomb