“Whatever happens, they say afterwards, it must have been fate. People are always a little confused about this, as they are in the case of miracles. When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events -- the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broken just there -- that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.” PeopleIfsMeanLittlesHas BeensHappensCertainCoursesCasesNiceFateEventsStrangeBrokenCircumstancesMiracleSafetyOilSavedChainsConfusedFreakFenceMiraculousWhatever HappensDiscworldInteresting TimesCertain DeathChain Of Events Author:Terry Pratchett
“Adolescents' immature thinking makes it difficult for them to process the divorce. They tend to see things in black-and-white terms and have trouble putting events into perspective. They are absolute in their judgments and expect perfection in parents. They are likely to be self-conscious about their parent's failures and critical of their every move. They have the expectations that parents will keep them safe and happy and are shocked by the broken covenant. Adolescents are unforgiving.” ThinkingSelfMovingProcessParentDifficultBlackTermWhiteTroubleEventsBrokenPerspectiveSafeJudgmentExpectationsConsciousPerfectionAbsolutesDivorceCriticalBlack And WhiteShockedSelf ConsciousCovenantImmatureUnforgiving Book:Reviving Ophelia Source: Reviving Ophelia
“In psychology, there's something called the broken-leg problem. A statistical formula may be highly successful in predicting whether or not a person will go to a movie in the next week. But someone who knows that this person is laid up with a broken leg will beat the formula. No formula can take into account the infinite range of such exceptional events.” KnowsMayPersonsProblemNextSuccessfulPsychologyWeekEventsBrokenBeatsAccountsInfiniteLegsRangeFormulasExceptionalNext WeekPredictingBroken Leg Author:Atul Gawande
“South America has virtually broken away in the last decade. That's an event of historic significance. South America just doesn't follow US orders. In fact there isn't a single US military base left there.” FactsLastsAmericaOrderLeftMilitaryEventsBrokenSouthDecadesSignificanceHistoricSouth AmericaUs Military Author:Noam Chomsky
“'I Will Not Be Broken' has really become very healing for me. Any time you go through a cataclysmic event... it's going to inform the richness that you sing from... The experiences of life make all your emotions, I think, deeper.” ThinkingEmotionHealingEventsBrokenDeeperRichness Author:Bonnie Raitt
“A life is such a strange object, at one moment translucent, at another utterly opaque, an object I make with my own hands, an object imposed on me, an object for which the world provides the raw material and then steals it from me again, pulverized by events, scattered, broken, scored yet retaining its unity; how heavy it is and how inconsistent: this contradiction breeds many misunderstandings.” WorldMomentsHandsLife IsMy OwnEventsObjectsStrangeMaterialsBrokenUnityHeavyStealingContradictionMisunderstandingInconsistentRaw MaterialsRetainingOpaque Author:Simone de Beauvoir
“I believed that by fixing it down in words, I could force sense from all that had happened, that effect would follow cause, and the reason for each event come clear to me. But then I returned one day, to find all my careful scribing gone to fragments of vellum lying in a trampled yard with wet snow blowing over them. I sat my horse, looking down at them, and knew that, as it always would, the past had broken free of my effort to define and understand it. History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.” ReasonLastsPastLyingForceCausesEffortGoneClearHappenedEffectsEventsBrokenOne DayHorseBreathsCarefulSnowFixedSatWetYardsFragmentsFixingLooking Down Author:Robin Hobb
“Because of our broken instincts we are in pain. We continue in pain because our instincts have been twisted by reason. So, what are we supposed to do? Should we abandon knowledge? Throw away reason? In any event, that wouldn't be possible. For better or worse, we ate the fruit of knowledge long, long ago.” ShouldLongHas BeensReasonPainEventsBrokenInstinctFruitAbandonLong AgoTwisted Author:Tatsuhiko Takimoto