Quotes About Fragility

No truer word, save God's, was ever spoken, Than that the largest heart is soonest broken.

I spent the next two hours down there, first sitting in the sand, sifting and swirling, watching the grains fall from the webs of my dusty hands and then walking down by the water, collecting those little pieces of beach glass. There were more of them than I thought. They were surprisingly strong. I tried to snap one in half to see if the inside was still shiny and clear like regular glass, but it wouldn't break. Its scuffy exterior was like scar tissue. (67)

Everything is fragile; everything is breaking.

Without an engine, Beebe's bathysphere dangled helplessly from the topside support ship like a ball of yarn suspended from knitting needles.

Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

This was incredibly foolish. To live just to die. And to die so easily.

Come, for the House of Hope is built on sand bring wine, for the fabric of life is as weak as the wind.

Ich höre jetzt nur noch das Wehklagen meiner ratlosen Seele. Sie möchte gern etwas erleben, was ihrer Zartheit entspricht, und nicht immerzu dem Zwangsabonnement der Wirklichkeit ausgeliefert sein.

I am a bundle of nerves dressed up to look like a man!

Warum er traurig war? [...] Weil die Welt sich so enttäuschend ausnahm, sobald man erkannte, wie dünn ihr Gewebe war, wie grob gestrickt die Illusion, wie laienhaft vernäht ihre Rückseite. Weil nur Geheimnis und Vergessen es erträglich machten. Weil man es ohne den Schlaf, der einen täglich aus der Wirklichkeit riß, nicht aushielt. Nicht Wegsehenkönnen war Traurigkeit. Wachsein war Traurigkeit. Erkennen [...] war Verzweiflung. [...] Weil die Zeit immer verging.

Die Liebe zu den Kindern - besser, man kämpft gegen sie an. Man kommt ja auch nicht einem Hund zu nahe; sogar wenn er freundlich aussieht, kann er zuschnappen. Stets muss man einen Abstand lassen zwischen sich und seinem Kind, sie sterben einfach zu schnell. Aber mit jedem Jahr, das vergeht, gewöhnt man sich mehr an so ein Wesen. Man fasst Zutrauen, man erlaubt sich, es teilzuhaben. Und plötzlich ist es weg.

If there is one lesson we can take away from the extravagant lives of our tyrants it is the fragility of our democratic society which, after all, is the exception, not the norm, in that dark, violent story known as human history.

If touching a spider kills you, well, I guess you were too delicate for this earth, and it was nice knowing you." My summers always started with a firm acknowledgment that I might die as a result of trying to enjoy them.

O human race born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou fall.

He nurtured silence so long That emptiness took hold of him. The man became a dry branch That cracked in the cold.

In fact, Drew herself had felt shaken, at the reality of those pictures, at their silent reminder - that the people we are closest to can disappear like that, even the people most rooted in our lives, the ones we think of as constant. They too, like Drew herself, would at some point exist merely in images - photographs, recollections.

Fugace è la giovinezza un soffio la maturità; poi avanza tremando vecchiaia e dura, dura un'eternità.

Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it.

Humpty Dumpty is hard to put back together, and so is trust.

When you grow up", I said, "do you ever stop feeling little and weak?" "No," she says. "There's always a little frail and tiny thing inside, no matter how grown-up you are.

Nothing is indestructible. Anyone who believes otherwise is already halfway to being defeated.

If we were to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well. But if they were to disappear, the land's ecosystems would collapse.

The truth is that the piece of art which seems so profoundly right in its finished state may earlier have been only inches or seconds away from total collapse.

I'll tell you a secret. Something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.