Quotes About Powerless

The source and cause of all temptation is in the inward desire; that being purified or eliminated, outward objects and extraneous powers are utterly powerless to move the soul to sin or to temptation.

As a man purifies his heart, temptation ceases, for when a certain unlawful desire has been taken out of the heart, the object which formerly appealed to it can no longer do so, but becomes dead and powerless, for there is nothing left in the heart that can respond to it.

which also makes me feel powerless to change.

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.

The law is powerless against a crowd.

Okay," I said. There are these moments when you see the course of your life unfolding, and you feel powerless to alter it.

there was an atmosphere of injustice that enveloped them both. Owen felt that God had assigned him a role that he was powerless to change; Owen's sense of his own destiny—his belief that he was on a mission—robbed him of his capacity for fun.

It was a reaction bred into her from childhood. That was an explanation, not an excuse. The reaction shamed her, and yet she seemed powerless to banish it or keep it from affecting her behavior.

His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed;

for there are times when disobedience heals a very ailing part of the self. It relieves the human spirit's distress at being forced into narrow boundaries. For the nearly powerless, defying authority is often the only power available.

For all the strides the Nation [of Islam] had made in promoting self-improvement in the lives of its members, its political isolation had left it powerless to change the external conditions that bounded their freedoms (177).

Sometimes our impulses and desires make us feel powerless. But part of the art of living is knowing how to fight that feeling; because when we're powerless, we get frightened, and then we lose our grip on our intelligence, our common sense, and we become weak.

The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; as it was not they that engendered those beliefs, so they are powerless to destroy them.

the good intentions of a third party are powerless to control a woman who is annoyed to find herself pursued even into a ball-room by a man whom she does not love. Too often, the kind friend comes down again alone.

Do the strong cry every night for a month? she asked softly. When they need to, I countered, clasping her hand. Women, Arjumand, women are taught that there's no strength in our tears. But why are one's tears powerless, if those tears lead to insight, or a sense of peace?

The histories of the poor and the powerless are as important as those of their conquerors, their colonizers, their kings and queens.

Excessive fear is always powerless.

Intolerance is evidence of fear, and fear is the consequence of feeling powerless.

Change is the only constant thing one can ever rely in their life. Enmity between being powerless over it and accepting it is ones biggest mistake. Trust in change. Don't be perturbed by your own unavailing decisions.

since she could not bring into play the deliberate glances, charged with a definite meaning, which one directs, in a crowd, towards people whom one knows, but must allow her vague thoughts to escape continually from her eyes in a flood of blue light which she was powerless to control,

The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; as it was not they that engendered those beliefs, so they are powerless to destroy them; they can aim at them continual blows of contradiction and disproof without weakening them;

That hateful staircase, up which I always passed with such dismay, gave out a smell of varnish which had to some extent absorbed, made definite and fixed the special quality of sorrow that I felt each evening, and made it perhaps even more cruel to my sensibility because, when it assumed this olfactory guise, my intellect was powerless to resist it.

Habit! that skilful but slow-moving arranger who begins by letting our minds suffer for weeks on end in temporary quarters, but whom our minds are none the less only too happy to discover at last, for without it, reduced to their own devices, they would be powerless to make any room seem habitable.

Habit! – that skilful but very slow housekeeper who begins by letting our mind suffer for weeks in a temporary arrangement; but whom we are nevertheless very happy to find, for without habit and reduced to no more than its own resources, our mind would be powerless to make a lodging habitable.