Quotes About Fragility

A king of shreds and patches.

Even the mightiest oak can fall by a gentle touch

The sky is low, the clouds are mean, A travelling flake of snow Across a barn or through a rut Debates if it will go. A narrow wind complains all day How some one treated him; Nature, like us, is sometimes caught Without her diadem. - Beclouded

Every natural man is a man who "dies in a tent" [Num. 19:14]; his physical body is a tent, and the one who is in the tent is dead.

But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined. If my body were cut up in pieces and those pieces mixed with those of other bodies, and then if someone told me, "Find your left eye," I suppose it would be difficult to do so.

After sitting for so long in the ruined cabin, the objects we had taken must have been shocked when we pulled them out into the world. I could almost sense their fear, coming through the bags.

The white clippings of hair fell in clumps on the cape and then scattered to the floor.

But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined.

The real me is disappearing as we speak. Slowly but surely being sucked into thin air.

But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance.

His soul is too dense. If he comes out, he'll dissolve into pieces, like a deep-sea fish pulled to the surface too quickly. I suppose my job is to go on holding him here at the bottom of the sea.

The male members of the species Homo sapiens appealed to me a great deal. They were soft and small and had fragile but adorable teeth. Their fingers were delicately constructed, the fingernails all but nonexistent. Sometimes they reminded me of stuffed animals, lovely to hold in one's arms.

I had a little light. I blew on it, trying to turn it into a torch, but I blew a bit too hard and put it out.

That line again. For Ian, a joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hands like a cheap umbrella.

That was the way with Moldenke, a brightly burning candle with a shortened wick, destined to burn low and give off gas.

JFK had to act before his fragile body betrayed him.

sheets, carefully taped together, forming a triptych

His moods changed minute to minute, and Jan could change him quicker than anyone. The more he loved her the more mixed up he got. He was such a beautiful man, but so unstable.

Weak democracies are vulnerable to coup d'états because their institutions cannot absorb a frontal assault.

There was uncertainty in the air, a feeling that life was suddenly fragile.

I well up with tears for it. For all of it. On the one hand: the uncertain future. The possibility of another hemorrhage. The chance that my children will be killed in a car accident. The chance that Nic will relapse. A million other catastrophes. On the other: compassion and love. For my parents and family. For my friends. For Karen. For my children. I may feel more fragile and vulnerable, but I experience more consciousness.

Beyond the edge of town, past tar-covered poor houses and a low hill bare except for fallen electric poles, was the institution and it sent its delicate and isolated buildings trembling over the gravel and cinder floor of the valley.

Strange isn't it, people spend their time making nice things and other people come along and brake them.

Short, dark, and slight, he looks simultaneously middle-aged and prepubescent, a little worse for wear in any case with his black hair matted like a street cat and his eyes crusted over and bleary.