Weakness Quotes - Page 38

• I've always had a weakness for foreign affairs.

  Mae West

  Lovers, Affair, Foreign Affairs

  Mae West (1967). “The wit and wisdom of Mae West”

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• Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Hypocrisy, Enemy, Selfishness

  "New Lamps for Old". Nine articles by Sri Aurobindo in the "Indu Prakash" (a Bombay daily newspaper), August 21, 1893.

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• Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse.

  Plutarch

  Horse, Men, Lame

  "Roman Apophthegms". Cicero. "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th edition", 1919.

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• In most writers, style is a welcome, an invitation, a letting down of the drawbridge between the artist and the world. Shaw had no time for such ruses. Unlike most of his countrymen, he abominated charm, which he regarded as evidence of chronic temperamental weakness.

  Kenneth Tynan

  Artist, Style, World

  Kenneth Tynan (1961). “Curtains: Selections from the Drama Criticism and Related Writings”

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• Weak dogs become bones for other, stronger dogs.

  Tad Williams

  Dog, Stronger, Bones

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• I've known people who thought that reaching their potential would come from shoring up their weaknesses. But do you know what happens when you spend all your time working on your weaknesses and never developing your strengths? If you work really hard, you might claw your way all the way to mediocrity! But you'll never get beyond it.

  John C. Maxwell

  People, Mediocrity, Might

  John C. Maxwell (2015). “The Leadership Handbook: 26 Critical Lessons Every Leader Needs”, p.59, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• I do here in the most solemn and bitter manner curse the Prime Minister of England [sic] for having cumulated all his other betrayals of the national interest and honour, by his last terrible exhibition of dishonour, weakness and gullibility. The depths of infamy which our accurst "love of peace" can lower us are unfathomable.

  Enoch Powell

  Betrayal, Depth, Exhibitions

  "Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell" by Simon Heffer, (p. 47), 1999.

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• The iron arc of the avoiding journey Curves back upon my weakness at the end; Whether the faint light spark against my face Or in the dark my sight hide from my sight, Centre and circumference are both my weakness.

  Stephen Spender

  Dark, Journey, Light

  Stephen Spender (1966). “World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender”, p.5, Univ of California Press

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• No conclusions can be more agreeable to scepticism than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limits of human reason and capacity.

  David Hume

  Discovery, Limits, Reason

  David Hume, Eric Steinberg (1993). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh ; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature”, p.51, Hackett Publishing

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• The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Ignorance, Perfect

  David Hume (1793). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.31

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• That which concerns the mystery of the King's power is not lawful to be disputed; for that is to wade into the weakness of Princes, and to take away the mystical reverence that belongs unto them that sit in the throne of God.

  King James I

  Kings, Thrones, Wade

  Speech in the Star Chamber, June 1616.

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• The basest person is capable of perceiving the weaknesses of the greatest, the most stupid, the errors in the thought of the most intelligent.

  Theodor Adorno

  Stupid, Intelligent, Errors

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.50, Verso

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• For the lost are lost by nature, all your ideas of moral regeneration will make no difference, there is AN INNATE DETERMINISM, there is an undeniable incurability in suicide, crime, idiocy, madness, there is an invincible cuckoldry in man, there is a congenital weakness of the character, a castration of the mind.

  Antonin Artaud

  Suicide, Character, Men

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• Weaknesses in men of genius are usually an exaggeration of their personal feeling; in the hands of feeble imitators they become the most flagrant blunders. Entire schools have been founded on misinterpretations of certain aspects of the masters. Lamentable mistakes have resulted from the thoughtless enthusiasm with which men have sought inspiration from the worst qualities of remarkable artists because they are unable to reproduce the sublime elements in their work.

  Eugene Delacroix

  Mistake, Inspiration, School

  "The Journal of Eugene Delacroix : A Selection". Book edited by Hubert Wellington, translated by Lucy Norton, Cornell University Press, January 16, 1860 (p. 391), 1980.

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• Let the church come to God in the strength of a perfect weakness, in the power of a felt helplessness and a child-like confidence, and then, either she has no strength, and has no right to be, or she has a strength that is infinite. Then and thus, will she stretch out the rod over the seas of difficulty that lie before her, and the waters shall divide, and she shall pass through, and sing the song of deliverance.

  Mark Hopkins

  Song, Children, Lying

  Adam Reid, Benjamin Wood, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Henry Brewster Stanton, Laurens Perseus Hickok (1850). “Strength and beauty: A baccalaureate sermon, delivered at Williamstown, Ms. August 17, 1851”

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• No one in this earthly prison of the body has sufficient strength of his own to press forward with a due degree of watchfulness, and the great majority [of Christians] are kept down with such great weakness that they stagger and halt and even creep on the ground, and so make very slight advances.

  John Calvin

  Christian, Body, Majority

  John Calvin, Henry Van Andel (2004). “Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life”, p.22, Baker Books

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• The Future is distant, like the Past, and therefore sentimental. The mere element "Past" must be retained to sponge up and absorb our melancholy. Everything absent, remote, requiring projection in the veiled weakness of the mind, is sentimental.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Past, Mind, Elements

  Wyndham Lewis (1914). “Blast”, Kraus Reprint Corp.

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• When imperialism feels weak, it resorts to brute force.

  Hugo Chavez

  Imperialism, Resorts, Force

  "Venezuela’s Chavez Closes World Social Forum with Call to Transcend Capitalism". Hugo Chavez's closing speech at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, venezuelanalysis.com. January 31, 2005.

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• You know, when I was in college, there was a big debate: Do unions raise wages? Well, with regard to industrial unions, there were arguments back and forth -- international competition. It is now clear, I think, that whether or not you think unions raised wages 50 years ago, the absence of unions and their weakness that is inflicted by anti-union public policy depresses wages. The fact is that people who are not represented, in the service industries in particular, are the victims of policies which depress their wages.

  Barney Frank

  Depressing, College, Thinking

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• After all, it is a common weakness of young authors to put too much into their papers.

  Ronald Fisher

  Paper, Too Much, Common

  "Contributions to Mathematical Statistics". Book by Ronald Fisher, 1950.

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• It's a funny thing about weaknesses....Most people will tell you they know their weaknesses. When asked, they'll tell you, 'Well for one thing, I'm overgenerous.' ... that's what innkeepers are for.

  David Gemmell

  Funny Things, People, Wells

  "Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde". Book by David Gemmell, Ch. 1, 1984.

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• A man's strength is ultimately born of his knowledge of his own weakness.

  David Gemmell

  Men, Born

  "Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde". Book by David Gemmell, Ch. 7, 1984.

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• The weakness in a model in which one assumes that the electorate gets what it needs from Bill Clinton is that our system doesn't institutionalize the oppositional voice, and one needs to be able to hear the exchange of the debate in order to create an informed electorate.

  Kathleen Hall Jamieson

  Order, Voice, Needs

  "David Gergen and Mark Shields on Bill Clinton's 100 Days". "PBS Newshour" with Jim Lehrer, www.pbs.org. April 29, 1993.

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• The pressure of the [election] campaign has a wonderful way of revealing your strengths and weaknesses.

  William J. Clinton

  Way, Pressure, Campaigns

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Compassion isn't a sign of weakness, but a mark of civilization.

  Nicholas D. Kristof

  Compassion, Civilization, Mark

  Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn (2014). “A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity”, p.21, Vintage

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