Quotes About Fragility

Very old age is when the things that go wrong cause other things to go wrong, until, like sparks racing up a fuse, they finally reach a pack of dynamite.

A young girl, a frailty, simple and true, who had been unable to stand up from the piano and had had to be carried; a girl half his age; a girl who could not shoot a gun, had never been in an oyster house, atop a tower, or under the wharves; a girl hotter always than noon in August; a girl who knew nothing; had thrown him so hard that he would be out of breath forever.

As powerful a figure as this man was, still, he was more vulnerable than the slight little girl next to Alessandro. Even Alessandro knew, even at this moment, that the world had worn down the attorney Giuliani in ways that his son simply could not understand. The little ones, the delicate ones of nine or eleven, had all the strength, really.

One of humankind's most enduring misconceptions is that of nature's bounty... the belief that nature is such a powerful force that it is indestructible.

Is this what it's like, I thought then, and think now: a little blood here, a chomp there, and still we live, trampling the grass? Must everything whole be nibbled? Here was a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world, the actual plot of the present moment in time after the fall: the way we the living are nibbled and nibbling--not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land.

Is this what it's like, I thought then, and think now: a little blood here, a chomp there, and still we live, trampling the grass? Must everything whole be nibbled? Here was a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world, the actual plot of the present moment in time after the fall: the ways we living are nibbled and nibbling- not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land.

Life was clearly a cruel joke. A place with no guarantees, built on a foundation of false assumptions if not outright untruths. You think everything's going okay… Then they shoot your fucking dog.

He was very great," said Ratler to Bonteen. "Did you not think so?" "Yes, I did, — very powerful indeed. But the party is broken up to atoms." "Atoms soon come together again in politics," said Ratler. "They can't do without him. They haven't got anybody else. I wonder what he did when he got home.

he has not been false to me. He has always meant what he has said, when he was saying it. But he is weak and blind, and flies like a moth to the candle; one pities the poor moth, and would save him a stump of his wing if it be possible.

There are hearts and bodies so organized, that in them severe wounds are incurable, whereas in others no injury seems to be fatal.

when that blow should fall, — Lucy would require very different treatment than might be expected for her from the hands of Lady Linlithgow. She would fade and fall to the earth like a flower with an insect at its root. She would be like a wounded branch, into which no sap would run

Perhaps the most indispensable thing we can do as human beings, every day of our lives, is remind ourselves and others of our complexity, fragility, finiteness, and uniqueness.

The house of fame, he thought, is built on melting ice, not steel...

Until recently, I lived in a world where lost things could always be replaced. But it has been made overwhelmingly clear to me now that anything you think is yours by right can vanish, and what you can do about that is nothing at all.

The blood of a goat will shatter a diamond.

there are a million things we survive every day without recognizing we were ever at risk. Then we have a close call, and we become acutely aware of what that fraction of an inch or that split second means.

There is something very strange about a universe where a few dead butterflies can balance a billion-ton tower.

It's not any kind of rock—it crumbles when I touch it—I feel as if I'm exploring a giant Gruyère cheese…

windows of nonsurvivability

Never had I been so conscious of the earth of the toughness and fragility and flowing life of it. I realised for the first time that the stones were not dead, nor the dust devoid of life, nor the waters vacuous. Our earth lived. It lived and breathed and sang and flowed and ached, in ever tiny part. And it's singing called to me - whispered, hummed, through the skin of my feet, through my whole self, until with all my being I was attuned to it.

He wondered if she'd been waiting all these nights to come because she hadn't had a nightgown. He started to ask her. But there was something—she had her hair pinned back and she was studying her own hands—that changed his mind. She seemed small and fragile again, and for the first time in his life he wanted to hit a woman. It was the bend of the neck that did it. It was so exposed and patient.

He, who considered himself a man, had become, with his first wife, vulnerable as an intimidated child. She acted on him like a wasting disease: all healthy links to life were infidelities to be rescinded.

It's not nice to think of children growing up like mushrooms, in the dark.

Passing through the outskirts of the city, she thought, it's as though everything were traveling so fast that the solid stuff couldn't stand it and were going to pieces under the strain, cornices blowing off and windows caving in. She knew she was afraid to say it truly, afraid to face the knowledge that it was a voluntary neck-breaking speed, a deliberate swirling faster and faster to end in destruction.