#Vulnerability Quotes

“The wound of peace is surety, Surety secure.”

“They told me I was everything. 'Tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.”

“How sometimes nature will betray its folly, Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime To harder bosoms!”

“Pray, do not mock me.I am a very foolish fond old man,Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;And, to deal plainly,I fear I am not in my perfect mind.”

“And too soon Marred are those so early Made.”

“Ah me, how weak a thingThe heart of woman is!”

“The weakest goes to the wall.”

“I remember the thought which occurred to me when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to America, was, Have you been victimized in being brought hither?--or, prior to that, answer me this, "Are you victimizable?”

“They that stand high have many blasts to shake them.”

“No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can't dishearten it.”

“A human being should beware how he laughs, for then he shows all his faults.”

“I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies.”

“No .... holy father, throw away that thought.Believe not that the dribbling dart of loveCan pierce a complete bosom.”

“Blame is safer than praise”

“Ships are but boards, sailors but men.”

“The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us.”

“You have been walking the ocean's edge, holding up your robes to keep them dry. You must dive naked under and deeper under, a thousand times deeper. Love flows down. The ground submits to the sky and suffers what comes. Tell me, is the earth worse for giving in like that? Do not put blankets over the drum. Open completely.”

“Be crumbled.So wild flowers will come up where you are.You have been stony for too many years.Try something different.Surrender.”

“When you're grieving that's not the time to be brave or strong, you need to let it show”

“I don't like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand right back and if possible get a pillar between me and the train. I don't like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A second's action would end everything. A few drops of desperation.”

“Thou hast not half that power to do me harm As I have to be hurt.”

“So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. Such a one has curculios, borers, knife-worms; a swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as Moloch.”

“The eye is easily frightened.”

“I have unclasp'd to thee the book even of my secret soul.”

“A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.”

“Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. O Never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love? He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost.”

“Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all my ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.”

“Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

“Ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves, I mean pirates, and thenthere is the peril of waters, winds, and rocks.”

“But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.”

“The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart-see, they bark at me.”

“She dares me to pour myself out like a living waterfall. She dares me to enter the soul that is more than my own; she extinguishes fear in mere seconds. She lets light come through.”

“Communication is truth; communication is happiness. To share is our duty; to go down boldly and bring to light those hidden thoughts which are the most diseased; to conceal nothing; to pretend nothing; if we are ignorant to say so; if we love our friends to let them know it.”

“I know, although when looks meetI tremble to the bone,The more I leave the door unlatchedThe sooner love is gone.”

“Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

“The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.”

“But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

“I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens.”

“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”

“Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems”

“I took a chance, I took a shot And you may think I’m bullet-proof, but I’m not. You took a swing, I took it hard. And down here from the ground I see who you are”

“The only one who's got enough of me to break my heart.”

“In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: “Help me!”

“It is the peculiarity of grief to bring out the childish side of man.”

“O Lord! Unhappy is the man whom man can make unhappy.”

“being open isn't the same as being weak.”

“I think I fall into the category of the hopeless romantic, and I think youdo too, because you're here...The tricky thing about us, the hopeless romantic, is when we fall in love with someone, when we say hello—and it’s magical—we never imagine that hello can turn into a goodbye. And when we kiss someone—and it’s magical—we never ever imagine that it can turn into a last kiss.”

“Once you fall, Septimus repeated to himself, human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert. They fly screaming into the wilderness. The rack and the thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless.”

“Rhoda comes now, having slipped in while we were not looking. She must have made a tortuous course, taking cover now behind a waiter, now behind some ornamental pillar, so as to put off as long as possible the shock of recognition, so as to be secure for one more moment to rock her petals in her basin. We wake her. We torture her. She dreads us, she despises us, yet she comes cringing to our sides because for al our cruelty there is always some name, some face which sheds a radiance, which lights up her pavements and makes it possible for her to replenish her dreams.”

“and you come away with a great little story of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you”