Quotes About Fragility

The short story is very good at looking at shadow psychologies and how the system breaks down underneath.

My mother kept all my awards on the sideboard of her front room, and she polished them. She polished everything religiously. And it doesn't take long for the very thin layer of gold to disappear and the base metal underneath to show through.

I had a few problems. I didn't realise it until I started going to therapy. I did it for 10 years, two days a week, and pretty quickly I understood that a lot of my suffering, many of my issues, were rooted in my realising that I was gay when I was a little boy. I knew I was different. That made me very fragile.

An egg's true value is only known when it is broken.

A child can die even in the safest place on earth- its mother's womb!

A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.

Obviously I tell myself I'm more than happy for everything that's been given to me. But if I wake up one morning and my kidney decides 'I don't fancy it today', I'm back to square one.

In fragile and conflict-affected states, education can insulate children from chaos and insecurity and better prepare them to bring about future stability.

The precedent is that civilizations collapse, and everything's stacked up for this one to go, and it's a mess when it happens.

Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.

A man without self-restraint is like a barrel without hoops, and tumbles to pieces.

Drowning men, it is said, cling to wisps of straw.

Among these things, one thing seems certain - that nothing certain exists and that there is nothing more pitiful or more presumptuous than man.

I've been a bad, bad girl - I've been careless with a delicate man.

Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!

I think the King is but a man as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me.

He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered , with difficulty recognizing the beauty for which he picked and ruined it.

Old men, what are they? Fast fading the leaf, Three-footed they walk, yet frail as a child, As a dream set afloat in the daylight.

The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest.

Man is the weak being who, in spite of all his self-importance and pride of wealth and capital, is vanquished by the smallest microbe.

Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, and clever.

We are anthill men upon an anthill world.

It is a great pity but tis certain from every day's observation of man, that he may be set on fire like a candle, at either end provided there is a sufficient wick standing out.

The world hangs on a thin thread, and that is the psyche of man.