Top 65 Harrowing Quotes & Sayings

Of all the agonies in life, that which is most poignant and harrowing--that which for the time annihilates reason, and leaves our whole organization one lacerated, mangled heart--is the conviction that we have been deceived where we placed all the trust of love.

Meeting forensic patients for the first time could occasionally be an unnerving experience. They often came across as mild and gentle people, but the details of the crimes were harrowing in the extreme.

My most profound growth as a writer came when I joined an online critique group. What a harrowing, terrifying, wonderful experience that was.

From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all. But whether or not one can live with one's passions, whether or not one can accept their law, which is to burn the heart they simultaneously exalt - that is the whole question.

When I was seventeen, I worked as a counsellor at a co-ed sleep-away camp for eight weeks. I loved it but it could be harrowing - it was far too much responsibility for someone my age.

A courteous, yet harrowing Grace, As Guest, that would be gone

I should like to make films that are not lowering to the spirit. A new building can be very harrowing, I should like to give people a chance to whistle.

My genuine passion for dance was born watching Ballet Rambert perform Christopher Bruce's harrowing 'Ghost Dances.'

It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise.

The translucence that comes when life hardens into a bead of such cruel perfection you see it with the purest clarity. Everything suddenly there--life as it truly is, enormous, appalling, devastating. You see the great sinkholes it makes in people and the harrowing lengths to which love will go to fill them.

Sin in the Second City is a masterful history lesson, a harrowing biography, and - best of all - a superfun read. The Everleigh story closely follows the turns of American history like a little sister. I can't recommend this book loudly enough.

You are my country, Desdemona. ... My Egypt. My hot, harrowing desert and my cool, verdant Nile, infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining.

Jesmyn Ward returns to the world of her first two books, but here in the mode of non-fiction. A clear-eyed witness to the harrowing stories of 'men we reaped,' she quickens the dead and brings them, vividly alive again. An eloquent, grief-steeped account.

I am a firm believer in The Paleo Solution. I maintain a hectic schedule that starts early and finishes late. Filming a television series, maintaining my fitness, and being a mom can be harrowing some days. Since adopting a Paleo way of eating I look and feel better, and I know that I am setting a good example for my daughter.

Perhaps [transgression] is like a flash of lightning in the night which, from the beginning of time, gives a dense and black intensity to the night it denies, which lights up the night from the inside, from top to bottom, yet owes to the dark the stark clarity of its manifestation, its harrowing and poised singularity.

I went to Cal Arts and AFI, and I worked on 'Bonfire Of The Vanities.' I got this grant from the Academy to be Brian De Palma's apprentice director. And it was such a harrowing, disillusioning, awful experience.

In the tradition of Black Hawk Down, Malcolm MacPherson vividly brings to life this harrowing story of courage, pathos, and war at its grittiest. For military history buffs, or those interested in the front lines of the war on terror, Roberts Ridge is a must read.

The CIA's official history of the Bay of Pigs operation is filled with dramatic and harrowing details that not only lay bare the strategic, logistical, and political problems that doomed the invasion, but also how the still-green President John F. Kennedy scrambled to keep the U.S. from entering into a full conflict with Cuba.

Cravats grow higher, as if they mean to protect the throat. The highest cravats in public life will be worn by Citizen Antoine Saint-Just, of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. In the dark and harrowing days of '94, an obscene feminine inversion will appear: a thin crimson ribbon, worn round a bare white neck.

"Cracking the Ice" scores the literary equivalent of a hat-trick: funny, harrowing and finally, heartfelt. This book is a winner.

I don't search it out - I really want to be clear, I don't search out the misery! I'm not sitting at home going, 'I can't wait to do another harrowing piece of work.'

When you have to face up to the fact that marriage to the man you love is really over, that's very tough, sheer agony. In that kind of harrowing situation, I always go away and cut myself off from the world. Also, I sober up immediately when there is genuine bad news in my life; I never face it with alcohol in my brain. I just rented a house in Palm Springs and sat there and just suffered for a couple of weeks. I suffered there until I was strong enough to face it.

In the harrowing aftermath of Haiti's earthquake, one of the greatest needs became desperately clear: safe water.

Sometimes [the expression] old age has a kind of harrowing beauty. But elderly - ugh!

Drudgery is as necessary to call out the treasures of the mind, as harrowing and planting those of the earth.

I'm doing stand-up comedy. I'm working on a one-woman show about how I don't like my baby. There is a period of time where a baby is born where the next 3 months is harrowing. A lot of people say it's the most wonderful time, but for me it was harrowing.

When they ran out of cadre men they gave me my very own platoon and said, 'Here are 63 men, try to keep as many of them alive as you possibly can.' That was one of the more harrowing experiences of my life.

What harrowing is after sowing, the same is meditation after hearing--it hides the word.

I'd been to Mosul and back and forth to Iraq and Latin America, and it was all quite harrowing... and I felt like I wanted a month or two of total escapism.

My view is that our minds are incredibly powerful animals that are, during life, kept somewhat in check by the load of our bodies. Once that load is gone (or so some ancient texts teach us) the mind is like a horse off the tether. So the habits we get into here might have something to do with what happens to us afterwards. An exciting but harrowing idea, given the everyday state of my mind. But also hopeful, since that's something a person can work with.

Secret of life is to go through something harrowing that doesnt kill you...and to love one woman for the rest of your life.

They are always very lax about putting restrictions on violence for children's movies, which I think is much more harrowing than sexuality for children.

Looking at suicide—the sheer numbers, the pain leading up to it, and the suffering left behind—is harrowing. For every moment of exuberance in the science, or in the success of governments, there is a matching and terrible reality of the deaths themselves: the young deaths, the violent deaths, the unnecessary deaths

I myself have seen the floating ships And nothing will ever be the same The shouts, The harrowing voices within the house. I stand apart with an army: My mind is graven with ships.

Well, I stopped drinking. That was actually a big deal. I didn't go through any harrowing rock-bottom experience. I just made a decision to stop drinking.

Never say that you can't do something, or that something seems impossible, or that something can't be done, no matter how discouraging or harrowing it may be; human beings are limited only by what we allow ourselves to be limited by: our own minds. We are each the masters of our own reality; when we become self-aware to this: absolutely anything in the world is possible

For those of you looking for your action-packed read, check out 'Red Queen' by Victoria Aveyard and 'Vengeance Road' by Erin Bowman. One's a fantasy and one's a Western, but they both feature strong leading ladies and some harrowing twists!

A haunting, harrowing punch to the heart, Among the Missing is flat-out brilliant. About the secrets we keep, the lives we are desperate to live, and the chances we miss, it's a psychological dazzler. Truly, one of my favorite books of this year-or any year.

I had the privilege of hearing incredibly brave women standing up to tell their stories - harrowing stories that reduced many of us listeners to tears. But with each story, the taboo around domestic abuse weakens and the silence that surrounds it is broken, so other sufferers can know that there is hope for them and they are not alone.

We can all tend to get caught up in the complications of life that we create; we live life for other people. It's a harrowing moment when you're confronted with an end, and you have to make the choice to live your life for you.

I remember harrowing episodes. People who emigrated, people who didn't want to emigrate...Many Muslims didn't want to leave India to go to live in Pakistan, but the propaganda was that there they'd have greater opportunities and so they left. Many Hindus, on the other hand, didn't want to stay in Pakistan, but they had ties there or property and so they stayed.

Striding tall through Lauren St John's gorgeously written memoir is her father, and chapter after chapter their relationship is untangled and celebrated. Joy and a hunger for life infuse this book -- whether St John is writing about the harrowing years of Rhodesia's civil war, her childhood adventures in the bush, or the breaking apart of her family. Rainbow's End is a most generous and wise book.

As I flew back from New Zealand to bury my mother, it occurred to me that no matter how harrowing her loss was and how keenly it will always be felt, there was, nevertheless, a sense of relief that my father, sisters and I could say a final goodbye after the longest goodbye and relief that my mum had finally been released.

I love my job, but it's intense, and it's serious, and it's straight, and it can be really harrowing.

Happy are those who dwell apart from the harrowing tumults of public life!

We're all severely addicted to our phones... it's not glamorous or always harrowing even, it's just damaging.

I love travelling full stop - so while I've had some harrowing instances, I never look at them negatively. Memories are made when you're travelling - not when you're chained to your desk.

Crushes start out as that teenage phenomenon, life-affirming and cute, but as you wander into adulthood, they seem to end up more painful, harrowing, and uncertain, especially if you have just come out of the relationship you thought would finally, maybe, maybe be the one that stuck.

I know about the sweet home. I went to school with 'em boys, what became Lynyrd Skynyrd; I knew Allen Collins, the skinny girl-beautiful guitarist. I put Allen Collins in every travel piece I do. Travel writing is harrowing, going to Bermuda with a banjo on my knee.

In the twentieth century, the repellent, harrowing disease that is made the index of a superior sensitivity, the vehicle of "spiritual" feelings and "critical" discontent, is insanity.

There is nothing more painful than the untimely death of someone young and dear to the heart. The harrowing grief surges from a bottomless well of sorrow, drowning the mourner in a torrent of agonizing pain; an exquisite pain that continues to afflict the mourner with heartache and loneliness long after the deceased is buried and gone.

Personally, I had a close friend with cystic fibrosis. I won't ever forget how he handled himself. In the face of extreme challenges and very harrowing circumstances, he maintained a positive outlook and was just very dignified, even in his suffering.

We will, at some point, reflect back at our rampant acceptance of speciesism with profound regret. Our journey to understanding that all demonstrations of life possess equal value is a slow and harrowing one.

Michael Winter’s fiction is a lot like hearing him talk about his life… harrowing in an after-the-fact hilarious way. Full of wonder and mystery. A hangover you wouldn’t miss for the world.

I do not allow myself to be moved by anything except the law. If there has been a mistake in the law, or if I think there has beenperjury or injustice, I will weigh the petition most carefully, but I do not permit myself to be moved by more harrowing details, and I try to treat each case as if I was reviewing it or hearing it for the first time from the bench.

The harrowing of the soul can be like the harrowing of the soil; to increase the yield, things are turned upside down.

I have much to say about the pain I've felt and seen inside of prison. It has been an eye-opening and harrowing experience.

Travel writing is harrowing. You are in paradise, more or less, having to prove it is paradise. It is hard to have a good time trying to figure out a way to say you are having a good time, whether you are having it or not, even in paradise.

You are certainly wrong to compare suicide ... with great accomplishments, since it cannot be considered as anything but a weakness. After all, it is easier to die than to endure a harrowing life with fortitude.

Once upon a time, began the story of you.Many perilous, wonderful, harrowing, brilliant, delightful, profound things happened.And yet—the most exciting twists and best turns are yet to come. And it absolutely does not matter how old or young you are.Like a bright carpet of wonders, enjoy the unrolling of your story.