Broken Promise Quotes

Courage, ne'er by sorrow broken! Aid where tears of virtue flow; Faith to keep each promise spoken! Truth alike to friend and foe! ~ Friedrich Schiller

A promise must never be broken. ~ Alexander Hamilton

I brought Sammy inside and put him to bed. Said his prayer with him. "'Now I lay me down to sleep…'" To me, just random noise. Gibberish. I wasn't sure exactly what it was, but I felt that, when it came to God, there was a broken promise in there somewhere. ~ Rick Yancey

Enemies' promises were made to be broken. ~ Aesop

The Strip was still lit by a million neon lights, though the crowds on the sidewalk had greatly decreased by this hour. Still, Bosch was awed by the spectacle of light. In every imaginable color and configuration, it was a megawatt funnel of enticement to greed that burned twenty-four hours a day. Bosch felt the same attraction that all the other grinders felt tug at them. Las Vegas was like one of the hookers on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Even happily married men at least glanced their way, if only for a second, just to get an idea what was out there, maybe give them something to think about. Las Vegas was like that. There was a visceral attraction here. The bold promise of money and sex. But the first was a broken promise, a mirage, and the second was fraught with danger, expense, physical and mental risk. It was where the real gambling took place in this town. ~ Michael Connelly

The question felt more personal than professional. A father disappointed that his son had broken a promise. And in this case, a broken promise might have gotten him killed. ~ Marissa Meyer

Is there any reason why you should not have faith in God? Has God ever broken one of His promises? I defy any infidel or unbeliever to place a finger on a single promise of God ever made and failed to fulfill. ~ Dwight L. Moody

At the point that our promises have become tactics to get what we want verses commitments that we intend to keep, the only thing that we are promising is the delivery of a broken promise. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

i know it's hard
believe me
i know it feels like
tomorrow will never come
and today will be the most
difficult day to get through
but i swear you will get through
the hurt will pass
as it always does
if you give it time and
let it so let it
go
slowly
like a broken promise
let it go ~ Rupi Kaur

Our story, it wasn't over yet
It was far from a romance.
But it was still a love story.
And it was ours.
We started as a broken promise, one never meant to be kept.
We ended on the promise of forever. ~ T.M. Frazier

The two million or so residents who live beneath the Heathrow flight path are accustomed to the noise. However, they are right to feel that any expansion would represent an unacceptable broken promise. ~ Zac Goldsmith

Civilization rests on a set of promises; if the promises are broken too often, the civilization dies, no matter how rich it may be, or how mechanically clever. Hope and faith depend on the promises; if hope and faith go, everything goes. ~ Herbert

I don't expect to have a fully verified story of how Jo's disorder developed, but I don't think that historical accuracy is as important as what I call "emotional truth." People attach different levels of significance to the same events. No two participants in any event remember it in exactly the same way. A single broken promise, for example, among thousands of promises kept, might not be remembered by a parent, but may never be forgotten by the child who was disappointed. (34) ~ Joan Frances Casey

Yet here we are, two children and a broken promise later, standing before each other, just the way we stood that day at the alter, with equal parts love and hope. And once again, I close my eyes, ready to take a leap of faith, ready for the long, hard road ahead. I have no idea how it's going to turn out, but then again, I never really did. ~ Emily Giffin

The stars are brilliant at this time of night
and I wander these streets like a ritual I don't dare to break
for darling, the times are quite glorious.

I left him by the water's edge,
still waving long after the ship was gone
and if someone would have screamed my name I wouldn't have heard for I've said goodbye so many times in my short life that farewells are a muscular task and I've taught them well.
There's a place by the side of the railway near the lake where I grew up and I used to go there to burry things and start anew.
I used to go there to say goodbye.
I was young and did not know many people but I had hidden things inside that I never dared to show and in silence I tried to kill them,
one way or the other,
leaving sin on my body
scrubbing tears off with salt
and I built my rituals in farewells.
Endings I still cling to.

So I go to the ocean to say goodbye.

He left that morning, the last words still echoing in my head
and though he said he'd come back one day I know a broken promise from a right one
for I have used them myself and there is no coming back.
Minds like ours are can't be tamed and the price for freedom is the price we pay.

I turned away from the ocean
as not to fall for its plea
for it used to seduce and consume me
and there was this one night
a few years back and I was not yet accustomed to farewells
~ Charlotte Eriksson

I never made promises lightly
There may have been some that I've broken
But I swear in the days still left
We will walk in fields of gold ~ Sting

You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Every road I walked would take me down to the sea
With every broken promise in my sack
And every love would always send the ship of my heart
Over the rolling sea ~ Sting

Hermes's shoulders sagged. "They'll try, Percy. Oh, we'll all try to keep our promise. And maybe for a while things will get better. But we gods have never been good at keeping oaths. You were born because of a broken promise, eh? Eventually we'll become forgetful. We always do."
"You can change."
Hermes laughed. "After three thousand years, you think the gods can change their nature?"
"Yeah," I said. "I do. ~ Rick Riordan

My family doesn't do happy endings. We do sad endings or frustrating endings or no endings at all. We are hardwired to expect the next interruption or disappearance or broken promise. ~ Hope Solo

To learn a vocation, you also have to learn the frauds it practices and the promises it breaks. ~ Mason Cooley

People will let you down in this life, promises will be broken, you should expect less of others and trust more in yourself. ~ Leon Brown

Life is a series of lessons, some of them obvious, some of them not. We learn as we go that dreams end, that plans get changed, that promises get broken, that our idols disappoint us. ~ Joan D. Chittister

As the weeks and months unfolded, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Better a broken promise than none at all. ~ Mark Twain

My whole life has been one big broken promise. ~ Sara Zarr

The rules are all in a sixty-four-page pamphlet by Aristotle called 'Poetics.' It was written almost three thousand years ago, but I promise you, if something is wrong with what you're writing, you've probably broken one of Aristotle's rules. ~ Aaron Sorkin

My religion teaches me that a promise once made or a vow once taken for a worthy object may not be broken. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Lonely's a temporary condition, a cloud that blocks out the sun for a spell and then makes the sunshine seem even brighter after it travels along. Like when you're far away from home and you miss the people you love and it seems like you're never going to see them again. But you will, and you do, and then you're not lonely anymore.
Lonesome's a whole other thing. Incurable. Terminal. A hole in your heart you could drive a semi truck through. So big and so deep that no amount of money or whiskey or pussy or dope in the whole goddamn world can fill it up because you dug it yourself and you're digging it still, one lie, one disappointment, one broken promise at a time. ~ Steve Earle

I follow a more easy, and, in my opinion, a wiser course, namely
to inveigh against the levity of the female sex, their fickleness, their double-dealing, their rotten promises, their broken faith, and, finally, their want of judgment in bestowing their affections. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

A mysterious ability, a broken promise, a life changed forever ... ~ Kim Hornsby

Under the broken promises of superpowers and under the worlds indifference to spilled Arab blood. ~ Susan Abulhawa

Nothing in my life could prepare me for the utter devastation that three-letter word held at this moment. He had given his heart to another. Another broken promise, the one that carried the most hurt. ~ Ashlan Thomas

As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, Leads by the hand her little child to bed, Half willing, half reluctant to be led, And leave his broken playthings on the floor. Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured and comforted By promises of others in their stead Which, the more splendid, may not please him more; So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest so gently, that we go Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, Being too full of sleep to understand How far the unknown transcends the what we know. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I wish President Obama had succeeded because I want America to succeed. But his promises gave way to disappointment and division. This isn't something we have to accept. Now is the moment when we can do something. With your help we will do something. ~ Mitt Romney

Sorcha took the elevator down to the basement of the fashion house. She glanced at her stunningly beautiful reflection in the mirror and smiled to herself. How fortunate she was to be a vampire - no gray hairs, no wrinkles, no broken nails, no weight problems, and no PMT. What bliss! And how fortunate it was that all the legends about vampires were not true. She could not imagine an existence where she could not see and admire her own likeness - such a life to her would be intolerable and tedious. How could any female, even a vampire, survive without being able to see their own reflection? How could they do their hair and makeup? The very idea was totally preposterous. ~ Alan Kinross

Promises that you make to yourself are often like the Japanese plum tree - they bear no fruit. ~ Francis Marion

Perhaps you have been ensnared by a sinful habit that you will not abandon, and your guilt is so overwhelming you are ashamed to approach Christ. Whatever the reason for your broken intimacy with God, there is good news. Jesus waits to embrace you now in the arms of unconditional, divine love. ~ Charles Stanley

With a new found confidence, Briston comes alive. "Then we have to do something. We need to call the police, or the swat team, maybe the military."
"Yeah, and why we're at it, why don't we send a prayer up to Heaven and tell the other angels to go ahead and take our names off the eternal guest list. ~ Brandy Nacole

i cried because i was
full of dead stars and broken debris,
but you still called me
beautiful. ~ Catarine Hancock

It was a broken world, I knew then, that would allow a boy such as me to bury a boy such as William K. ~ Dave Eggers

Closing the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is a promise President [Barack] Obama made it but has yet to fulfill. ~ Audie Cornish

Friendship requires truth, and there is no truth in her. ~ Julie Eshbaugh

Kindness refreshes and restores the tired and broken. ~ Gerard Straub

Kaltain just squeezed Elide's fingers. "You find Celaena Sardothien. Give her this. No one else. No one else. Tell her that you can open any door, if you have the key. And tell her to remember her promise to me - to punish them all. When she asks why, tell her I said that they would not let me bring the cloak she gave me, but I kept a piece of it. To remember that promise she made. To remember to repay her for a warm cloak in a cold dungeon. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Boston. Fucking horrible.
I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity."
But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.
But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.
But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.
So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will. ~ Patton Oswalt

[Inigo corners Count Rugen, knocks his sword aside, and slashes his cheek, giving him a scar just like Inigo's]
Inigo Montoya: Offer me money.
Count Rugen: Yes!
Inigo Montoya: Power, too, promise me that.
[He slashes his other cheek]
Count Rugen: All that I have and more. Please ...
Inigo Montoya: Offer me anything I ask for.
Count Rugen: Anything you want ...
[Rugen knocks Inigo's sword aside and lunges. But Inigo traps his arm and aims his sword at Rugen's stomach]
Inigo Montoya: I want my father back, you son of a bitch! ~ William Goldman

Good design can't fix broken business models. ~ Jeffrey Veen

As my heart begins to return to normal, I look down at -- and feel such an intense rush of love and relief it takes my breath away. "I will never let you put of my sight again," I promise -- ~ Camilla Way

You must expect from me nothing but the melancholy effusions of a broken Heart which is ever reverting to the Happiness it once enjoyed... ~ Jane Austen

The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses. No creature who began as a mathematical improbability, who was selected through millions of years of unprecedented environmental hardship and change for ruggedness, ruthlessness, cunning, and adaptability, and who in the short ten thousand years of what we may call civilization has achieved such wonders as we find about us, may be regarded as a creature without promise. ~ Robert Ardrey

Things break all the time. Glass and dishes and fingernails. Cars and contracts and potato chips. You can break a record, a horse, a dollar. You can break the ice. There are coffee breaks and lunch breaks and prison breaks. Day breaks, waves break, voices break. Chains can be broken. So can silence, and fever ... promises break. Hearts break. ~ Jodi Picoult

I'm going to stay the hell out of Vegas, and away from Benny…I'm going to finish school. But I need you. I need you. You're my best friend." His voice was desperate and broken, matching his expression.
In the dim light I could see a tear fall from his eye, and in the next moment he reached out for me and I was in his arms, his lips on mine. He squeezed me tight against his chest as he kissed me, and then cradled my face in his hands, pressing his lips harder against my mouth, desperate to get a reaction. ~ Jamie McGuire

There's some sort of Soothsayers' Code that prevents soothsayers from soothsaying on a day-to-day basis, when it might, you know, avert this kind of ordinary, everyday tragedy. Something about the laws of causality being broken and the order of creation overturned, resulting in a world run amok, river running backwards, the run rising in the west, cats and dogs getting married ...
I don't know; don't ask me.
I don't pretend to understand ( ... ) But I guess it didn't rise to the standard required to break the Soothsayers' Code since no sooth was said. ~ Jacqueline Carey

You're not broken. You're perfect. And when you get to get away from these kids, you might finally have a good man. ~ Ashley Newell

But his arms are there to comfort me, and eventually his lips. On the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach, I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that. So after, when he whispers, "You love me. Real or not real?" I tell him "Real. ~ Suzanne Collins

Abel grabs my shoulders to steady me. "You can do this," he say. "I won't lie. Part of me was hoping you would abandon this but we've come this far. You're special, cousin. You're going to do great things. Just promise me that you won't love it someplace else and leave me here alone. ~ Celia Mcmahon

Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don't know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?"

"I do indeed, sir."

"Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoat--your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me. ~ Charlotte Bronte

I felt that the decrepit state of these once magnificent buildings, with their broken gutters, walls blackened by rainwater, crumbling plaster revealing the coarse masonry beneath it, windows boarded up or clad with corrugated iron, precisely reflected my own state of mind ... ~ W.G. Sebald

The lack of diversity in higher education is a problem we as a country must tackle if we're going to live up to our promise. ~ Wendy Kopp

We are in front of a fountain, whose jet she seems to be watching. 'Those are your thoughts and mine. Look where they all start from, how high they reach, and then how it's still prettier when they fall back. And then they dissolve immediately, driven back up with the same strength, then there's that broken spurt again, that fall ... and so on indefinitely. ~ Andre Breton

I promise to keep my hands to myself. I'm too exhausted to make a move on you. ~ Faith Sullivan

But there's always something left to be broken. ~ Victoria Aveyard

All things have a soul. A vase, a wall, a chair. And when a vase is broken, it might die in the physical realm, but for a time its soul remembers what it was. So all things die twice. Its final death is when men forget it was a vase, and only think of the pieces. I imagine the vase floating away then, its form dissolving into the nothingness. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Are you waiting for a knight in shining armor, Ren? Or will you take this soldier with a broken sword who is willing to take his last breath fighting by your side? ~ Ky Lehman

You don't have a monopoly on suffering, okay?" I say, my voice rising. "Other people get to be mad about their lives. Your broken leg doesn't make my sprained ankle hurt any less. ~ Katie Henry

All this talk of necromancy was just a morbid veil drawn over the filthy truth of the matter. Poor Elise! Stuck with a broken-down husband, who knew no better way to please than to give her over to an Englishman for an occasional pleasuring. Of all things, an Englishman! As if the English knew anything about making love.
("Haeckel's Tale") ~ Clive Barker

It's impossible to walk a block in Miami, in Los Angeles, San Antonio without running into someone who is being deeply impacted by a broken legal immigration system. ~ Marco Rubio

Jenna and Vix laughed at that and, after making me promise to hang out with them tomorrow, practically waltzed out the door. I felt like there should have been rainbows and rose petals in their wake or something.
Ugh. That was catty. ~ Rachel Hawkins

You could think that you had won. But I woke up, I came back to myself. You won nothing. I transcended you years ago, I left you in the past, I chained you up in my dreams. You may leave me shaken at times, but never again will you leave me broken. You have no power over me. ~ Tamara Thiel

She touched his jaw with gentle fingers. "Promise me you will never leave me like that again.Next time let me go with you."
Her eyes were eloquent, pleading, so much so that he had to look away. "Do not ask me for what I cannot give you. I would give you the moon if you asked, cherie, but I cannot allow you to place yourself in danger.Not for any reason.Not even to help me. ~ Christine Feehan

When we face…temptations in our time, we must declare, as young Nephi did in his, '[I will] give place no more for the enemy of my soul.' [2 Nephi 4:28]
We can reject the evil one. If we want it dearly and deeply enough, that enemy can and will be rebuked by the redeeming power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Furthermore, I promise you that the light of His everlasting gospel can and will again shine brightly where you feared life had gone hopelessly, helplessly dark. ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

The captive had broken off the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock- tick
a dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop was falling when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the foundations of Rome were laid when Christ was crucified; when the Conqueror created the British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the massacre at Lexington was "news." It is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for this flitting human insect's need? ~ Mark Twain

I was so sentimental about you I'd break any one's heart for you. My, I was a damned fool. I broke my own heart, too. It's broken and gone. Everything I believe in and everything I cared about I left for you because you were so wonderful and you loved me so much that love was all that mattered. Love was the greatest thing, wasn't it? ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Deliver more than you promise. ~ Patricia Ryan Madson

What need for feathers now? What need to confirm their loss? While the womb-red sky swelled with the promise of tomorrow, and he rode the warm, crimson currents, skimming, wheeling and gliding. ~ Georgina Anne Taylor

Foes and false friends are all around me, Lord Davos. They infest my city like roaches, and at night I feel them crawling over me." The fat man's fingers coiled into a fist, and all his chins trembled. "My son Wendel came to the Twins a guest. He ate Lord Walder's bread and salt, and hung his sword upon the wall to feast with his friends. And they murdered him. Murdered, I say, and may the Freys choke upon their fables. I drink with Jared, jape with Symond, promise Rhaegar the hand of my own beloved granddaughter ... but never think that means I have forgotten. The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer's farce is almost done. My son is home. ~ George R R Martin

Je suis ce que je suis." – Death
"Is that a spell?" – Nick
"It's French, Nick. Means 'I am what I am.' Sheez, kid. Get educated. Read a book. I promise you it's not painful." – Death
"I would definitely argue that. Have you seen my summer reading list? It's nothing but girl books about them getting body parts and girl things I don't want to discuss in class with my female English teacher. Maybe in the boys' locker room and maybe with a coach, but not with a woman teacher in front of other girls who already won't go out with me. Or worse, they're about how bad all of us men reek and how we need to be taken out and shot 'cause we're an affront to all social and natural orders. Again – thanks, Teach. Give the girls even more reason to kick us down when we talk to one. Not like it's not hard enough to get up the nerve to ask one out. Can you say inappropriate content? And then they tell me my manga's bad. Riiight…Is it too much to ask that we have one book, just one, on the required reading list that says, 'Hey, girls. Guys are fun and we're okay. Really. We're not all mean psycho-killing, bloodsucking animals. Most of us are pretty darn decent, and if you'll just give us a chance, you'll find out we're not so bad.'" – Nick ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

It was not just friendship that we are attached to each other, it was sisterhood that made that bonding between us, but now that love doesn't exist anymore as people changes with time- that's reality. ~ Debolina

My problem now was that no one was will- ing to look deep enough to see the real me that lay dormant beneath the surface. Everyone thought I was a trouble maker, the bad boy, the punk.
I wasn't. I was just broken. - Chase ~ Lacey Weatherford

I'll be a good boy, please make me well. I promise you anything, get me out of this hell. Cold turkey has got me on the run. ~ John Lennon

The pain and the sadness that you encounter when you lose something important is only a mix of one emotion: guilt. When you feel it once, you learn from it. When you live it twice, you mourn in silence. But if you experience it thrice, you will break, shattering like a frail piece of glass. But if you manage to survive, then you will only be a shadow of your soul: a broken doll. Because we are nothing more than mere puppets of Destiny, holding tightly on the string that keeps us from being consumed by the darkness. The string that will eventually lead humankind to its pinnacle.
A simple red string named Hope. ~ Giou Yomi