Jonathan Swift
Satirist, Writer
"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through."
Break Through quotes
Break Through
165 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Anais Nin
Writer, Diarist
"It takes courage to push yourself to places you have never been before... to test your limits... to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to stay tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
Joyce Meyer
Author, Speaker
"When you are tempted to give up, your breakthrough is probably just around the corner."
Nhat Hanh
Zen Master, Author
"People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one's perception of reality."
Antonin Artaud
Playwright, Actor, Theorist
"The theater, which is in no thing, but makes use of everything - gestures, sounds, words, screams, light, darkness - rediscovers itself at precisely the point where the mind requires a language to express its manifestations.... To break through language in order to touch life is to create or recreate the theatre."
Explore further
Topics related to Break Through
Browse quotes that often appear alongside break through — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Break Through quotes (page 1 of 9)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric."
Read quote
58 likes
"To break through language in order to touch life is to create or re-create the theater."
Read quote
54 likes
"It is not morbidity which draws crowds to scenes of disaster or unusual joy. It is the desire to participate in a moment when life breaks through to some higher level of intensity so that one's own life might take fire from that sudden spurted flame."
Read quote
48 likes
"Each of us is a moving center, a space of divine mystery. And though we spend most of our time on the surface in the daily details of ordinary existence, most us hunger to connect to this space within, to break through to bliss, to be swept away into something bigger than us."
Read quote
21 likes
"Science has always been my preoccupation and when you think a breakthrough is possible, it is terribly exciting."
Read quote
20 likes
"The power of growth, of improvement, the power to overcome all stagnation and break through every obstacle and transform a barren wasteland into a verdant field - that unstoppable power of hope resides right within your own heart. It wells up from the rich earth of your innermost being when you face the future without doubt or fear: "I can do more. I can grow. I can become a bigger and better human being.""
Read quote
19 likes
"A lot of my students are Asian-American, and it has been thrilling to watch them break through the stereotypes into something alive and surprising."
Read quote
19 likes
"If you don't break a hole through the brick wall, don't just start digging a new hole. Keep going until you break through that wall."
Read quote
18 likes
"A crafty enemy will set a weak ambush you are meant to break through. Confident because you have dealt with the threat, your guard relaxed, you walk into the second, stronger ambush."
Read quote
16 likes
"You cannot be wimpy out there on the dream-seeking trail. Dare to break through barriers, to find your own path."
Read quote
14 likes
"When I started, rock and roll itself was the basic revolution to people of my age and situation. We needed something loud and clear to break through all the unfeeling and repression that had been coming down on us kids."
Read quote
11 likes
"[State] finds [frontier] either with the aid of force, as in 1914, when Germany invaded Belgium in order to deal a blow against France or it "borrows" a frontier, such as Germany did with regard to Latvia, for instance, in 1918, in attempting to break through to Leningrad across Latvia."
Read quote
10 likes
"All personal breakthroughs being with a change in beliefs. So how do we change? The most effective way is to get your brain to associate massive pain to the old belief."
Read quote
9 likes
"The unconscious - that is to say, the 'repressed' - offers no resistance whatever to the efforts of the treatment. Indeed, it itself has no other endeavour than to break through the pressure weighing down on it and force its way either to consciousness or to a discharge through some real action."
Read quote
9 likes
"In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time."
Read quote
9 likes
"I'm constantly striving to break through to something new. You try to maintain a neutral approach to your work, and not be too hard on yourself."
Read quote
8 likes
"When we learn new behaviors and break through to higher levels of consciousness and love, we can fulfill the deeper spiritual hunger within."
Read quote
8 likes
"King Hussein of Jordan dedicated his life - I witnessed it in his sleeping as well as waking hours - to trying to break through the impasses keeping people apart. He understood that the security and prosperity of any one of us in this world depends on the security and prosperity enjoyed by others. As Martin Luther King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." In the Middle East, nothing could be more true."
Read quote
7 likes
"Break through the bonds of your past."
Read quote
7 likes
"I wonder how many times people give up just before a breakthrough - when they are on the very brink of success."
Read quote
7 likes