Quotes About Vulnerability

Homelessness–it's not about not having a home. It's about something being seriously fucking wrong.

We can be confident in our dealings with the world when what the world sees is the outer person, with all the outer person's defences: the intimacy of a love affair is a different matter altogether. And who might not feel just the slightest bit insecure under the gaze of a lover--a gaze which falls on birthmarks, on blemishes physical and psychological, on our imperfections and impatience, on our human vulnerability?

We never realise how transparent we are.

She felt that she had revealed something to Cat, and with revealing something about oneself there always comes a sense of lightening of the load that we all carry; the load of being ourselves.

Moisturiser and a good cry: two things for modern men to think about.

We are human and vulnerable, whatever our individual situation: The moon looks on them all The Healers and the brilliant talkers The eccentrics and the silent walkers The dumpy and the tall.

It just did not make sense; unless, of course, as she had suggested, we all have a weak point, an area of intellectual or emotional vulnerability that may be quite out of keeping with out character.

as she made her way back to the tiny white van she listened to her own breathing and felt her own heart thumping wildly. She had no idea where she had found the courage, but it had been there, like the water at the bottom of a disused quarry--unfathomably deep.

He took a deep breath. 'To marry me,' he said quietly. It was easier than he thought. Icarus did not fall from the sky; the ground did not open; the earth did not wobble on its trajectory.

Something terrible happened and people began to shake. It was the reminder that frightened them; the reminder of just how close to the edge we are in life, always, at every moment.

If you are there to staunch the tears of the world, then it does not cross your mind that you yourself may weep.

We are all human, she would say. Men particularly. You must not be ashamed.

She had never been able to tolerate dishonesty, which she thought threatened the very heart of relationships between people. If you could not count on other people to mean what they said, or to do what they said they would do, then life could become utterly unpredictable. The fact that we could trust one another made it possible to undertake the simple tasks of life.

It's easy to be foolish... It's dead simple, really. All you have to be is human and to allow yourself to do the human things, like fall in love with somebody when you know that there's no point and when you know, too, that it's just going to make you unhappy.

Eating with others was different from just talking to them—it was an act of commitment, a recognition of shared humanity. We all share these physical needs, it said; we are brothers and sisters in our vulnerability.

The whole point about childhood," Domenica went on, "is that it affords us a brief moment of innocence and protection from the pressures of the world. Parents who push their children too hard intrude on that little bit of space.

Be gentle...Many of the people who will come to see you are injured in spirit. They need to talk about things that have hurt them, or about things that they have done. Do not sit in judgement on them, but listen. Just listen.

But some of us cannot see love, she said to herself, even when it is there, right before us, asking us to invite it in.

People were only too ready to believe things that were manifestly untrue. When it came to remarks that portrayed others in a bad light, people were happy to believe things that showed others to be weak or flawed in some way: we believed that of them because it made us feel better; it was as simple as that.

Cake," said Mma Ramotswe quickly. "That is Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's great weakness. He cannot help himself when it comes to cake. He can be manipulated very easily if he has a plate of cake in his hand.

They meet these women who hang about in bars waiting for other women's husbands. This city is full of women like that." She looked at Alice, and there flowed between them a brief current of understanding. All women in Botswana were the victims of the fecklessness of men.

there was any number of men like that, waiting for an attractive girl that they could latch on to and whose life they could slowly destroy.

Alexander McCall Smith

He is a good man, but even a good man can fall for a glamorous woman. That is well known." "That is very well known," agreed Mma Ramotswe. "Look at Adam. Look how he fell for Eve." "Just because she had no clothes on, he fell for her," said Mma Makutsi. "That sometimes helps," said Mma Ramotswe.