Quotes About Vulnerability

Of course. And you already know you have hers," Pei said. And then, whatever his culture might have demanded, he cleared his throat hard, harshly. "And mine," he said huskily.

to be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others...

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.

His mother was a reasonably nurturing person but did not protect and defend him from his father.

We can depend on nobody in this world, and sometimes we even betray ourselves

the worst happens when you least expect it

But the more people we love and the more deeply we love them, the more vulnerable we are to loss and grief and loneliness.

She might have been born this way, without an empathy gene and other essentials. In that case, she would interpret any kindness as weakness. Among predatory beasts, any display of weakness is an invitation to attack.

Our culture sentimentalizes children, and we forget one of the things that we should most remember from that time of our lives: Children know that this world can be hard on them, harder than it is on adults. They are physically weaker than adults, financially dependent, and in times of danger, nothing clarifies our thinking more than an awareness of our extreme vulnerability.

Maybe it was this: The name of a person marked for murder is just a name, but the face makes real the cost of violence, for if we have the nerve to look, we can see in any face our own vulnerability.

I realized that loving people, depending on them, NEEDING them, is just too dangerous. Love is just a way to set you up for a bad fall. It's the rug they pull out from under you at the very moment you decide that everything's going to be fine. We're all so ephemeral. So fragile. And life's so unpredictable.

He loved her as he had never loved another, and he trusted her as he had allowed himself to trust no one else. But by the nature of the world, those who loved and trusted were uniquely vulnerable

There are those who take upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless

Except that now, for having accused Ravi of an unspecified crime he hadn't committed, I was as good as dead. In years subsequent, when he was in the mood to terrorize me, he would whisper to me, Just wait till we're alone. You're the next goat!

One discovers weeping - one's weeping personality - only upon weeping. It is a strange discovery, not only to others but to oneself. p 49

One discovers weeping—one's weeping personality—only upon weeping. It is a strange discovery, not only to others but to oneself

Si la rose savait que sa grâce et sa beauté la conduisent droit dans un vase, elle serait la première à trancher la gorge avec sa propre épine.

Les émotions sont effrayantes.

In the end, the only truly intimate relationships are those between two people.

Your mother was such a gentle person. I always feel when I see someone like her that I'm watching the last flowers fall. This is no world for gentle people.

Oh, to be laughed at when I have the courage to speak my heart. I don't want to live in a world like this. -from Diary of My Sixteenth Year

One can't stop and suddenly speak to a complete stranger, can one?......When it happens I could die of sadness. I feel somehow empty and drained....

and yet the woman's existence, her straining to live, came touching him like naked skin.

It was, with no attempt at covering itself, the naked heart of a woman calling out to her man.