Weakness Quotes - Page 37

• Use your will to conquer fears and weaknesses!

  Tae Yun Kim

  Use, Conquer, Conquering Fear

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• This other war, the war upon destruction of natural assets is one that will never be finished. Our weakness in this vast war is largely ignorance, that most of our citizens do not realize what is going on under their very feet.

  Louis Bromfield

  War, Ignorance, Feet

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• The weakness of little children's limbs is innocent, not their souls.

  Saint Augustine

  Children, Soul, Littles

  "Confessions" by Saint Augustine, Book I, (7), (c. 397).

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• Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Passion, Sometimes, Produce

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• It is due to neither impotence nor ignorance on God’s part that evils occur in the world, but it is owing to the order of his wisdom and to the greatness of his goodness, whence come the many and divers grades of goodness in things, many of which would be lacking were he to allow no evil to exist. Thus there would be no good of patience without the evil of persecution, nor the good of the preservation of its life in a lion, without the evil of the destruction of the animals on which it lives.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Ignorance, Greatness, Animal

  "'De Potentia' ('On Power')". Book by Thomas Aquinas, q. 3, art. 6, ad 4, dhspriory.org.

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• Ingratitude is always a kind of weakness. I have never known men of ability to be ungrateful.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Ungrateful, Kind

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.82, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• You are certainly wrong to compare suicide ... with great accomplishments, since it cannot be considered as anything but a weakness. After all, it is easier to die than to endure a harrowing life with fortitude.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Suicide, Accomplishment, Fortitude

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• To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Enemy, Desire, Demand

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo”, p.45, Vintage

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• Are you or aren't you convinced that weakness is a man's condition? How can you raise yourself if you haven't fallen first?

  Cesare Pavese

  Men, Firsts, Fallen

  Cesare Pavese (1968). “Selected Works: Translated from the Italian and with an Introd. by R. W. Flint”

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• We can understand that the Fathers of the Church in the East wanted Apocalypse left out of the New Testament. But like Judas among the disciples, it was inevitable that it should be included. The Apocalypse is the feet of clay to the grand Christian image. And down crashes the image, on the weakness of these very feet. There is Jesus--but there is also John the Divine. There is Christian love--and there is Christian envy. The former would "save" the world--the latter will never be satisfied till it has destroyed the world. They are two sides of the same medal.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Christian, Jesus, Father

  D.H. Lawrence (1974). “Apocalypse”

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• Nothing shows our weakness more than to be so sharp-sighted at spying other men's faults, and so purblind about our own.

  William Penn

  Men, Faults, Shows

  Benjamin Franklin, William Penn (2012). “Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims”, p.25, Courier Corporation

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• No action, whether foul or fair, Is ever done, but it leaves somewhere A record, written by fingers ghostly, As a blessing or a curse, and mostly In the greater weakness or greater strength Of the acts which follow it.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Blessing, Done, Records

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867). “The Poetical Works of H. W. Longfellow. Complete Edition”, p.160

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• Despair puts the last touch not only to our misery but also to our weakness.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Despair, Lasts, Misery

  Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

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• And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure, Didst tread on earth unguess'd at. Better so! All pains the immortal spirit must endure, All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow, Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.

  Matthew Arnold

  Stars, Pain, Grief

  Matthew Arnold (1889). “Selected Poems of Matthew Arnold”

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• Realism is a very sophisticated form of literature, a very grown-up one. And that may be its weakness. But fantasy seems to be eternal and omnipresent and always attractive to kids.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Kids, Literature, May

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• One is not worthy to have what one, through weakness, lets be taken from him; one is not worthy of it because one is not capable of it.

  Max Stirner

  Taken, Worthy, Capable

  Max Stirner, David Leopold (1995). “Stirner: The Ego and Its Own”, p.237, Cambridge University Press

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• I had my yob periods. Nothing violent but certainly loutish. I think it's frustrated intelligence. Imagine that if you were really intelligent and everyone treated you as though you were stupid and no one tried to teach you anything -- the sort of deep subliminal rage that would get going in you. But then once it gets going, you make a strength out of what you know is your weakness, which is that you are undeveloped.

  Martin Amis

  Stupid, Intelligent, Thinking

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• We are doing well, notwithstanding all our failings and weaknesses; but the Lord would like to have us a little more diligent; he would like us to cleave a little more closely to the things of his kingdom, have more of his Spirit, and know more of him and of one another, that complete and perfect confidence can be restored.

  Brigham Young

  Perfect, Littles, Kingdoms

  Brigham Young (1867). “Journal of Discourses”, p.112

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• When I say that I can write nothing but weird fiction, I am not trying to exalt that medium but am merely confessing my own weakness. The reason I can't write other kinds is not that I don't value & respect them, but merely that my slender set of endowments does not enable me to extract a compellingly acute personal sense of interest & drama from the natural phenomena of life.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Drama, Writing, Trying

  Letter to E. Hoffman Price (29 September 1933), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, (p. 579), 1996.

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• Adultery is in most cases a theft in the dark. At such moments almost every woman betrays her husband's innermost secrets; becomes a Delilah who discloses to a stranger, discloses to her lover, the mysteries of her husband's strength or weakness. What seems to me treason is, not that women give themselves, but that a woman is prone, when she does so, to justify herself to herself by uncovering her husband's nakedness, exposing it to the inquisitive and scornful gaze of a stranger.

  Stefan Zweig

  Husband, Dark, Giving

  Stefan Zweig (1955). “Stories and Legends”

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• Children who wish to become good and great men or good and noble women, should try to know well all the people whom they meet. Thus they will find that there is no one who has not much of good; and when they see some great folly, or some meanness, or some cowardice, or some fault or weakness in another person, they should examine themselves carefully. Then they will see that, perhaps, they too have some of the same fault in themselves - although perhaps it does not come out in the same way - and then they must try to conquer that fault.

  Bram Stoker

  Children, Men, People

  Bram Stoker (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Bram Stoker (Illustrated)”, p.2484, Delphi Classics

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• There is not unmitigated ill in the sharpest of this world's sorrows; I touch not the sore of thy guilt; but of human griefs I counsel thee, Cast off the weakness of regret, and gird thee to redeem thy loss: Thou has gained, in the furnace of affliction, self-knowledge, patience and humility, And these be as precious ore, that waiteth the skill of the coiner: Despise not the blessings of adversity, nor the gain thou hast earned so hardly, And now thou hast drained the bitter, take heed that thou lose not the sweet.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Sweet, Regret, Grief

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1849). “Tupper's Poetical Works: Proverbial Philosophy, A Thousand Lines, Hactenus”, p.14

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• If we choose a weak and foolish speculation as a primary textbook illustration (falsely assuming that the tale possesses a weight of history and a sanction of evidence), then we are in for trouble - as critics properly nail the particular weakness, and then assume that the whole theory must be in danger if supporters choose such a fatuous case as a primary illustration.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Illustration, Nails, Textbooks

  Stephen Jay Gould (1999). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History”, Three Rivers Press (CA)

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• God never makes us sensible of our weakness except to give us of His strength.

  Francois Fenelon

  God, Giving, Sensible

  Francois Fenelon (2014). “Spiritual Progress”, p.72, Lulu.com

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• A true woman loves a strong man because she knows his weaknesses. She protects as much as she is protected.

  Andre Maurois

  Strong, Women, True Woman

  "The Art of Living". Book by Andre Maurois, 1939.

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