Quotes About Vulnerability

What if I could learn to trust my feelings instead of asking to be delivered from them? What if I could follow one of my great fears all the way to the edge of the abyss, take a breath, and keep going?

As enjoyable as it could be to spend a couple of hours on Sunday morning with people who were at their best, it was also possible to see the strain in some of the smiles, the effort it took to present the most positive, most faithful version of the self.

being ordained is not about serving God perfectly but about serving God visibly, allowing other people to learn whatever they can from watching you rise and fall. "You probably won't be much worse than other people," he said, "and you certainly won't be any better, but you will have to let people look at you. You will have to let them see you as you are.

Our shadows are often behind us, where others can see them better than we can. If we want to hear and see more, even the parts that expose our scornfulness, we need partners from outside our ingroups to keep telling us how we sound.

I cried for a little while, taking a kind of melancholy delight in my own tears, and then I fell asleep.

Now I lay down on this tree and felt a lonely sadness coming over me in waves. Slow tears ran from my eyes and trickled into my ears. I thought, 'I even cry in a humble, common way, with tears flowing into my ears.' But the humble, common tears had relieved me[...]

Even within the last three or four years, I have a greater ability to communicate, I think. I have more courage to show the stuff... And it does take courage.

But belonging to someone and giving yourself to them were two very different things. One formed out of need, a tidy arrangement mutually beneficial to both parties, while the other involved laying yourself bare—something she'd never been very good at.

You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back. Barbara De Angelis

Ren, it's really important to share your feelings, you know? Because if you don't, they have a way of coming back to bite you in the butt.

Wolves go after a wounded deer, it is the nature of the beast.

Every man wants love, if he can get past the fear of exposure.

Where was the Cloud when she needed it? Oh, it was there. Only she hadn't bothered to sign on for backup.

Doug's office was a Pandora's box that, once opened, gushed with condemning information. Emily was nearly as stunned by the ease of her access to it, as by its quantity. He hadn't camouflaged anything. It was all there for the taking. Apparently it hadn't occurred to the bastard that she would look.

People don't cry because they're weak. They cry because they've been strong for too long.

She'd never learned to censor herself.

But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food includes strivers as well as slackers, habitual optimists as well as the chronically depressed. When and if the economy recovers we can never allow ourselves to forget how widespread our vulnerability is, how easy it is to spiral down toward destitution.

A lot of what we experience as strength comes from knowing what to do with weakness.

You must get hurt a lot," he murmured. She looked at him in surprise. "Why do you say that?" "Because you don't hide anything. You put yourself out there for the world to like or dislike.

I don't know. We're good together, but I have a lot of baggage." "Everyone does. It's nice when you can find someone willing to hold the bags.

she felt incredibly fragile, which was not how she liked to feel.

The thing I didn't see back then is that people can be destroyed by goodness. Damage can be done by hope. If people aren't ready for hope, it's a cruel trick to put it on their doorstep.

The fire dies, the candle is eaten by its weak fluttering flame.

Peter was the current someone she used to keep from relying on herself, the crutch to hold on to, to promise herself that if she only had him to love, she would have it all come together. Why did she keep throwing men up as smoke screens between herself and herself?