Quotes About Vulnerability

They are but children.

If there's one thing I know, it's that the minute someone feels obligated to tell you not to be afraid of them, that's the time to start being afraid of them.

I find myself crying unabashedly, then I try to suck it in, realizing this is inappropriate.

The past stood at my shoulder, naked and defenseless as all dead things, as though it were time itself that had been laid open by the fall of the mountain.

Dorcas belonged, as I now realized, to that vast group of women (which may, indeed, include all women) who betray us—and to that special type who betray us not for some present rival but for their own pasts.

The idea is that a beard makes it easy to cut a man's throat. You grab it and jerk his head up." "I see," Silk said. Mentally, he cancelled the beard he had only just resolved to grow.

She possessed the hopeful, hopeless courage of the poor, which is perhaps the most appealing of all human qualities

All any feeling wants is be welcomed with tenderness. It wants room to unfold. It wants to relax and tell its story. It wants to dissolve like a thousand writhing snakes that with a flick of kindness become harmless strands of rope.

I do believe that there are frozen places in ourselves - undigested pockets of pain - that need to be recognized and welcomed, so that we can contact that which has never been hurt or wounded or hungry.

When you sneak food, you perpetuate the belief that you are too ugly, too needy, too intense to be seen and loved for who you are... You give yourself the message that who you are is not acceptable, and that you must pretend to be someone else to be loved.

I kept becoming larger in her presence, kept returning to who I would have been without the pretense of who I thought I should be.

Healing is about opening the wound and letting it heal from the inside out, exposing it to wind and sun and time, not piling bandages on it and screaming each time your skin gets caught in the adhesive tape

Milena's eyes seemed to go hot and heavy. Praise made her heartsick; she was so unused to it, and needed it so badly.

La moraleja de todas las tragedias es la misma: que la Fortuna siempre ataca a los reinos prepotentes cuando menos lo esperan.

For every mortal man's power is but like a bladder full of wind, for certain. When it is blown up, the simple prick of a needle point can deflate the pompous pride of it.

Ich wage kaum die Hände auszustrecken, wie in einem engen Spiegelzimmer, aus Furcht überall anzustoßen, daß die schönen Figuren in Scherben auf dem Boden lägen und ich vor der kahlen, nackten Wand stünde.

Furthermore, one does not fight an enemy on the turf on which he is strongest, but where he is weakest.

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

The risks of liberty we must let everyone take; but the risks of ignorance and self-helplessness are another matter.

The man or woman who feels strong enough for two, seeks for every other quality in a partner than strength.

Weak people want to marry strong people who do not frighten them too much; and this often leads them to make the mistake we describe metaphorically as "biting off more than they can chew.

But when you're in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you're guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That's when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow.

People love to admit they have bad handwriting or that they can't do math. And they will readily admit to being awkward: 'I'm such a klutz!' But they will never admit to having a poor sense of humor or being a bad driver.

If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked?