Quotes About Dependence

All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.

The belief that God will do everything for man is as untenable as the belief that man can do everything for himself. It, too, is based on a lack of faith. We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith but superstition.

A great benefit of Sabbath keeping is that we learn to let God take care of us — not by becoming passive and lazy, but in the freedom of giving up our feeble attempts to be God in our own lives.

My woman. She had a momentary image of a caveman, hanging on to his woman by the hair with one hand while in the other he wielded a club to beat back caveman number two. Perhaps she would sketch it one day.

What a dreadful fate it was sometimes to be a woman. To be dependent. To have to sit and wait. To be helpless to order one's own life no matter how carefully and sensibly one tried to plan.

I am lost without my Boswell.

We think we are pushing our own way bravely, but there is a great Hand in ours all the time.

You seemed so desperate, like you might drown if someone didn't save you.

Maria, groaning for scraps, would drape his head on my feet as I ate, trying to camouflage himself as my napkin or the rug.

In this respect '?????????? would be a fitting title for the will; yet again this title seems to apply to the intellect, in so far as that is the guide and leader, like the footman who walks in front of the stranger. In truth, however, the most striking figure for the relation of the two is that of the strong blind man carrying the sighted lame man on his shoulders.

That woman is by nature meant to obey may be seen by the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural position of complete independence; immediately attaches herself to some man, by whom she allows herself to be guided and ruled. It is because she needs a lord and master. If she is young, it will be a lover; if she is old, a priest.

recognize prayer as a vital necessity.

No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.

One essential characteristic of modern life is that we all depend on systems—on assemblages of people or technologies or both—and among our most profound difficulties is making them work.

Our lives are inherently dependent on others and subject to forces and circumstances well beyond our control. Having more freedom seems better than having less. But to what end? The amount of freedom you have in your life is not the measure of the worth of your life. Just as safety is an empty and even self-defeating goal to live for, so ultimately is autonomy.

Three Plagues of nursing home existence: boredom, loneliness, and helplessness.

As people become aware of the finitude of their life, they do not ask for much. They do not seek more riches. They do not seek more power. They ask only to be permitted, insofar as possible, to keep shaping the story of their life in this world-- to make choices and sustain connections to others according to their own priorities. In modern society, we have come to assume that debility and dependence rule out such autonomy.

They ask only to be permitted, insofar as possible, to keep shaping the story of their life in the world—to make choices and sustain connections to others according to their own priorities. In modern society, we have come to assume that debility and dependence rule out such autonomy.

All the same I fear what happens when we expand the terrain of medical practice to include actively assisting people with speeding their death. I am less worried about the abuse of these powers than I am about dependence on them.

he relied on me for surgical expertise.

help people in a state of dependence sustain the value of existence.

We are all, whatever we do, in the hands of flawed human beings.

You loved people and you came to depend on their being there. but people died or changed or went away and it hurt too much. The only way to avoid that poin was not to love anyone, and not to let anyone get too close or too important. The secret of not being hurt like this again, I decided, was never depending on anyone, never needing, never loving. It is the last dream of children, to be forever untouched.

Just because you're strong doesn't mean you can let other people depend on you too much. It's not fair to them, because when you can't be what they want they're disappointed, and you feel bad.