Quotes About Fragility

Why cannot the ear be closed to its own destruction? Or the glistening eye to the poison of a smile?

A smile is ever the most bright and beautiful with a tear upon it. What is the dawn without the dew? The tear is rendered by the smile precious above the smile itself.

Um aspecto muito visível do desaparecimento das velhas garantias é a nova fragilidade dos laços humanos. A fragilidade e transitoriedade dos laços pode ser um preço inevitável do direito de os indivíduos perseguirem seus objetivos individuais, mas não pode deixar de ser, simultaneamente, um obstáculo dos mais formidáveis para perseguir eficazmente esses objetivos -- e para a coragem necessária para persegui-los.

Y por eso es imposible aprender a amar, tal como no se puede aprender a morir. Y nadie puede aprender el elusivo —el inexistente aunque intensamente deseado— arte de no caer en sus garras, de mantenerse fuera de su alcance. Cuando llegue el momento, el amor y la muerte caerán sobre nosotros, a pesar de que no tenemos ni un indicio de cuándo llegará ese momento.

Forms of modern life may differ in quite a few respects – but what unites them all is precisely their fragility, temporariness, vulnerability and inclination to constant change. To 'be modern' means to modernize – compulsively, obsessively; not so much just 'to be', let alone to keep its identity intact, but forever 'becoming', avoiding completion, staying underdefined.

Living under liquid modern conditions can be compared to walking in a minefield: everyone knows an explosion might happen at any moment and in any place, but no one knows when the moment will come and where the place will be.

and it occurs to me how fragile our lives are, how at any moment the sky can open and drown us, the earth can open and swallow us. I think of all the intricate ways our bodies can betray us, the accidents and the atrocities, the missteps and the misunderstandings.

Things were pretty cold-blooded back in Rockdale. That's when my arms were so pretty I could hold them up to the light and see the veins curling all clean and smooth like little blue branches.

Human enjoyment was a fragile skin drawn over a great depth of potential misery

Life is fragile, fleeting, and precious. And to live at all is miracle enough.

Alas, poor men, their destiny. When all goes well a shadow will overthrow it. If it be unkind one stroke of a wet sponge wipes all the picture out; and that is far the most unhappy thing of all. -Cassandra

We are the old, dishonoured ones, the broken husks of men. Even then they cast us off, the rescue mission left us here to prop a child's strength upon a stick. What if the new sap rises in his chest? He has no soldiery in him, no more than we, and we are the aged past ageing, gloss of the leaf shrivelled, three legs at a time we falter on. Old men are children once again, a dream that sways and wavers into the hard light of day.

and consequently you are destroyed; while we, on the contrary, bend before the least breath of air, and therefore remain unbroken.

The man who buries his house in the sand and digs it up again, each evening, learns to put it together quickly and just as quickly to take it apart. My parents sleep like children in the dark. I am too far to hear them breathe

But when I know that the glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.

It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.

Our "ego" or self-conception could be pictured as a leaking balloon, forever requiring the helium of external love to remain inflated, and ever vulnerable to the smallest pinpricks of neglect.

Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous.

What enables him to think of himself as sane is only a certain fragile chemical good fortune, but he knows he would be very much in the market for a tragedy if ever life chose to test him properly.

The lawyer Thien, when Morath was ushered into his office by a junior member of the staff, turned out to be an ancient bag of bones held upright only by means of a stiff, iron-coloured suit.

And I think of the night-blooming cereus, a plant that looks like a leathery weed most of the year. But for one night each summer its flower opens to reveal silky white petals, which encircle yellow lacelike threads, and another whole flower like a tiny sea anemone within the outer flower. By morning, the flower has shriveled. One night of the year, as delicate and fleeting as a life in the universe.

Why do we argue? Life's so fragile, a successful virus clinging to a speck of mud, suspended in endless nothing.

Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers, down it goes.

There... Poor little things. You see them? Standing with their numbers on their blank, indifferent faces, Nuremberg in miniature, the ranks of painted wooden men... Poor dominoes. Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers down it goes.