Quotes About Fragility

Rejection steals the security of all we thought was beautiful and stable and leaves us scared and fragile and more vulnerable than ever.

Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken.

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

When people have no sense of self, relationships are just temporary distractions from the inner emptiness and fall apart at the first obstacle. My

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

Look at you quivering like a bag of fresh tofu!

Her mother, she thought, had all the attributes of the famous proverb: one who thrives in calamity but perishes in soft living.

With her honey hair and perfect posture, she had that porcelain-doll fragility that most men wanted...as if she might shatter if someone so much as touched her. In his youth, he'd been certain he wanted that sort of woman: the kind he could protect, the kind that made him feel like a man. But years on the battlefield had taught him to appreciate a woman who could stand at his side and hold her own with enemy, who has some flesh on her bones and some fire in her eyes.

Every moment mortals died, by shipwreck and sword, by wild beasts and wild men, by illness, neglect, and age. It was their fate, Prometheus had told me, the story they all shared. No matter how vivid they were in life, no matter how brilliant, no matter the wonders they made, they came to dust and smoke. Meanwhile every petty and useless god would go on sucking down the bright air until the stars went dark.

It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.

He had no chance, really. He was only flesh.

Even the best iron grows brittle with too much beating.

The hills and trees before me, the worms and lions, stones and tender buds, Daedalus' loom, all wavered as if they were a fraying dream. Beneath them was the place I truly dwelt, a cold eternity of endless grief.

Daedalus had said to me once: Even the best iron grows brittle with too much beating.

We cannot say. We are men only, a brief flare of the torch.

A bird, a horse, a dog, a man, a girl, or a cat—you knock them about and diminish yourself because all you do is prove yourself equally vulnerable.

He tottered in. In a few moments he came out, hair piece in place. But the haggardness of his face made it look more spurious than before.

I went back to Lois. She had a glass of bourbon that looked like a glass of iced coffee. Her smile was loose and wet and her eyes didn't track.

I am a mushroom On whom the dew of heaven drops now and then.

It takes a long time for white guys to appreciate that they are breakable. They do not live from birth with the daily fear that they might be attacked or detained or killed. Their bodies are not constant targets of power. Their bodies are power, so they throw those bodies up and down mountains and stairs and out of airplanes and into pointless online yelling matches for fun. They just presume they will survive.

there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.

In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases. John Irving's The World According to Garp

A clammy dew is beading on my brow, At mere remembering her pale laugh, and curse. "Ha! ha! Sir Dainty! there must be a nurse Made of rose leaves and thistledown, express, To cradle thee my sweet, and lull thee: yes, I am too flinty-hard for thy nice touch: My tenderest squeeze is but a giant's clutch.

Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence.