Hardens Quotes & Sayings

I know the way you can get / When you have not had a drink of Love: / Your face hardens, / Your sweet muscles cramp. / Children become concerned / About a strange look that appears in your eyes / Which even begins to worry your own mirror / And nose. — Hafez

Habit in most cases hardens and encrusts by taking away the keener edge of our sensations: but does it not in others quicken and refine, by giving a mechanical facility and by engrafting an acquired sense? — William Hazlitt

There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds. — Anne Nicol Gaylor

It's this same habit that confirms some of us, who are capable of better things, in Lucifer's own pride and stubbornness - that confirms and deepens others of us in villainy - more of us in indifference - that hardens us from day to day, according to the temper of our clay, like images, and leaves us as susceptible as images to new impressions and convictions. — Charles Dickens

I am not saying people shouldn't be held accountable for terrible acts. But holding people in prisons does not necessarily make them responsible or accountable. It makes them bad. It makes them evil. It puts an end to any process of transformation. It hardens them spiritually and psychologically. — Eve Ensler

Prayer is self-discipline. The effort to realize the presence and power of God stretches the sinews of the soul and hardens its muscles. To pray is to grow in grace. To tarry in the presence of the King leads to new loyalty and devotion on the part of the faithful subjects. Christian character grows in the secret-place of prayer. — Samuel Marinus Zwemer

The starkest reality of war is that the enemy is never really a monster, never inhuman ... Every soldier is the same fallible breed of human that we are. The making of war, even the most necessary and 'just' war, hardens human hearts. — Stan Goff

Have a heart that never hardens — Charles Dickens

To love our success more than God and our neighbor hardens the heart, making us less able to feel and to sense. — Timothy Keller

Sometimes people become mean because of horrible experiences. It's a gradual process that hardens their hearts and minds and forces them to develop a thick skin. In order to survive they must adapt to their harsh surroundings. They in turn become mean. — Astrid Yrigollen

Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers. — Lord Acton

When God is here spoken of as hardening some of the children of men, it is not to be understood that God by any positive efficiency hardens any man's heart. There is no positive act in God, as though he put forth any power to harden the heart. To suppose any such thing would be to make God the immediate author of sin. God is said to harden men in two ways: by withholding the powerful influences of his Spirit, without which their hearts will remain hardened, and grow harder and harder; in this sense he hardens them, as he leaves them to hardness. And again, by ordering those things in his providence which, through the abuse of their corruption, become the occasion of their hardening. Thus God sends his word and ordinances to men which, by their abuse, prove an occasion of their hardening. — Jonathan Edwards

I waive the quantum o' the sin, The hazard of concealing; But, och! it hardens a' within, And petrifies the feeling! — Robert Burns

The possession of unlimited power corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding. — Lord Acton

I walk at night under a moonless sky. Only the terrain guides my steps, yet my footfall is as sure as if a dozen suns lit the way. I go to meet you under a leafless tree that never seems to grow or alter its shape. I am uncertain if it still lives or has learned to disguise its death. The same thought crosses my mind when I feel your cold fingers take my hand. It is not the tree I reflect upon.

'Do you still love me?' The words tumble clumsily out of the dark.

Hesitation is its own answer, but I reply 'I'm here' anyway as if my words were whispered comfort and not a weathered blade. They are taken wrong.

'I love you too.'

Your arms wrap me up and clamp tightly around my waist. An old, familiar kiss hardens my lips. I wonder why it is I return to this place every year where only memories remain fond. Perhaps it is because I keep hoping this leafless tree will either change or die. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshape it. — Walter F. Mondale

The same fire that hardens the egg will melt the butter; and much depends on the personality type, whether you customarily rise to a challenge or whether you sink. For as long as I can remember, I have been a sinker. One challenge, and I drop like a rock. — Peg Bracken

After all that corrupt poets, and more corrupt philosophers, have told us of the blandishments of pleasure, and of its tendency to soften the temper and humanize the affections, it is certain, that nothing hardens the heart like excessive and unbounded luxury; and he who refuses the fewest gratifications to his own voluptuousness, will generally be found the least susceptible of tenderness for the wants of others. — Hannah More

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold — Louis MacNeice

Bricks will be most serviceable if made two years before using; for they cannot dry thoroughly in less time. When fresh undried bricks are used in a wall, the stucco covering stiffens and hardens into a permanent mass, but the bricks settle and ... the motion caused by their shrinking prevents them from adhering to it, and they are separated from their union with it ... at Utica in constructing walls they use brick only if it is dry and made five years previously, and approved as such by the authority of a magistrate. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

I lock all my scaredness down in my stomach until the fear hardens into something I hardly notice. I myself harden into a person that I hardly notice. — Mary Karr

Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable. — Maya Angelou

How surely a knowledge of the world hardens the heart! — Pedro Calderon De La Barca

Is it cool if I invite Morris and Daisy to the game tomorrow?" She eases her panties up her smooth, bare legs, and I'm so distracted by the sight that I forget what she asked a nanosecond after she asks it.



My cock hardens beneath the sheets, tenting up as if trying to get Grace's attention. She sighs when she notices the campsite on the bed. — Elle Kennedy

He who has always spared himself much will in the end become sickly of so much consideration. Praised be what hardens! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Like the body craves oxygen, the mind is desperate for certainty. It believes that without a safe foothold on reality, it will die.
But the fascinating thing is that the illusion of certainty is exactly the opposite of safety because it hardens and narrows the vision to make everything fit its own scope. Then when new information arrives which would be its ally, the mind pushes it away in favor of the leaky life raft to which it clings, sinking all the while beneath the waves of change.
In fact, the only antidote for this is to embrace 'I don't know' so deeply that a powerful, dynamic safety emerges. This is like learning to surf so well that a tsunami wave shows up as a challenge to test our mastery. — Jacob Nordby

Fear hardens caution, but boredom erodes it. — David Mitchell

Loneliness, mother said, is like a hammer blow that shatters glass but hardens steel. — Amos Oz

You can't blame her,' said Amit. 'After a life so full of tragedy anyone would become hard.'
'What tragedy?' asked Mrs. Chatterji.
'Well, when she was four,' said Amit, 'her mother slapped her
it was quite traumatic
and then things went on in that vein. When she was twelve she came in second in an exam ... It hardens you. — Vikram Seth

I have no beginning nor an end,
I have no mother nor a friend.
Seldom do I give you warning or fear,
but when you think of me, you shall shed a tear.
So fair and just I'm known,
Like the wind and air that you cannot own,
On and on I shall continue,
When your heart hardens to a stone — Weina Dai Randel

Anger dulls the sharpness of mind, hardens the softness of feelings, and replaces the sweetness of the world with bitterness. — Debasish Mridha

Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The grief in her green eyes slips then hardens and, for an instant, Pendleton sees the woman she has become and has no right being, not at sixteen. — Ilsa J. Bick

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts. — Charles Dickens

Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart. — Nicolas Chamfort

The thought manifests as the word; The word manifests as the deed; The deed develops into habit; And habit hardens into character; So watch the thought and its ways with care, And let it spring from love Born out of concern for all beings ... . As the shadow follows the body, as we think, so we become. - FROM THE DHAMMAPADA (SAYINGS OF THE BUDDHA) — Lama Surya Das

Do what you will, the heart hardens and the soul shrinks in upon itself. — Mikhail Lermontov

Afflictions sent by providence melt the constancy of the noble minded, but confirm the obduracy of the vile, as the same furnace that liquefies the gold, hardens the clay Charles Caleb Colton. — Charles Caleb Colton

Humor hardens the heart, at least to the point of sanity ... — Agnes Repplier

If love closes, the self contracts and hardens: the mind having nothing else to occupy its attention and give it that change and renewal it requires, busies itself more and more with self-feeling, which takes on narrow and disgusting forms, like avarice, arrogance and fatuity. — Charles Horton Cooley

Perhaps one of the most important things you can do for human beings is wean them off an animal-based diet. It hardens the arteries and runs up our health-care costs. The last thing a poor person can afford is a heart attack or cancer or a stroke. And that's all linked to a meat-based diet. I think animal liberation is human liberation. — Ingrid Newkirk

It might be suggested, and not easily disproven that anything, no matter how exotic, can be believed by someone. On the other hand, abstract belief is largely impossible; it is the concrete, the actuality of the cup, the candle, the sacrificial stone, which hardens belief; the statue is nothing until it cries, the philosophy is nothing until the philosopher is martyred. — Shirley Jackson

Of all the ills that circumstance forces upon man, separation from a beloved object is, perhaps, the most salutary. Separation is the crucible wherein love undergoes the test absolute; in the fire of loss, grief softens to indifference or hardens to enduring need. — Katherine Cecil Thurston

Nothing so hardens the heart of man as a barren familiarity with sacred things. — J.C. Ryle

Every fresh act of sin lessens fear and remorse, hardens our hearts, blunts the edge of our conscience, and increases our evil inclination. — J.C. Ryle

Inequality hardens society into a class system. Inequality divides us from one another ... Inequality undermines democracy. — George Packer

The translucence that comes when life hardens into a bead of such cruel perfection you see it with the purest clarity. Everything suddenly there
life as it truly is, enormous, appalling, devastating. You see the great sinkholes it makes in people and the harrowing lengths to which love will go to fill them. — Sue Monk Kidd

What doesn't kill us sharpens us. Hardens us. Schools us. You're beating plowshares into swords, Vosch. You are remaking us. We are the clay, and you are Michelangelo. And we will be your masterpiece. — Rick Yancey

Floods, fires, earthquakes, disease, starvation, betrayal, isolation, murder.
What doesn't kill us sharpens us. Hardens us. Schools us. — Rick Yancey

The same sun that melts the butter hardens the clay. — Billy Graham

To love love and not its meaning, hardens the heart in monstrous ways ... (The Rape Of The Swan)
Footnote : A form of self-edification, infatuation, lust and the epitome of hedonism. — Archibald MacLeish

A fluid choice, the choice of fantasy, is poured out on the ground and instantly hardens; it has taken its undeniable shape. — Alice Munro

It may perhaps be said that it signifies nothing to a man what is done to him after he is dead; but it signifies much to the living; it either tortures their feelings or hardens their hearts ... — Thomas Paine

Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy, perhaps. — Charles Dickens

Perhaps the worst thing about suffering is that it finally hardens the hearts of those around it. — Gloria Steinem

It's good for you to see your friends arrested. It hardens you. There's no place in our New Order for sentimentalists. — Curt Siodmak

The longer men sin, the more easily they can; for every act of transgression weakens conscience, stupefies intellect, hardens hearts, adds force to bad habits, and takes force from good example. And, surely, there is nothing in such associations; as wicked affinities will insure to the sinner in the future state, to incline him to repentance. — Edward Thomson

Great wealth may be to its owner a blessing or a curse. Alas! I fear it is too often the latter. It hardens the heart, blunts the finer susceptibilities, and transforms into a fiend what under more favourable circumstances might have been a human being. — Arnold Bennett

What fire does not destroy, it hardens — Oscar Wilde

And if it's proud to have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts,' Miss Jenny struck in, flushed, 'she is proud. And if it's not, she is NOT. — Charles Dickens

No attempt should be made to "reconcile" Yahweh's hardening of Pharaoh's heart (plagues 6,8,9,10) with statements in the other plagues that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.
The tension cannot be resolved in a facile manner by suggesting, for example, that Pharaoh has already demonstrated his recalcitrance, so Yahweh merely helps the process along, or that he is doing what Pharaoh would have done on his own anyway. Rather, 9:12 is a striking reminder of what God has been trying to teach Moses and Israel since the beginning of the Exodus episode: He is in complete control. However Pharaoh might have reacted is given the chance is not brought into the discussion. He is not even given that chance. Yahweh hardens his heart. It is best to allow the tension of the text to remain. — Peter Enns

The more everyone knows just what a nerdfighter is, the more the definition hardens. The most beautiful and intriguing parts of any identity tend to be the fluid ones. And the young people nerdfighteria attracts, after all, are often as confused and lonely and frustrated as they are because they don't fit into the boxes, a problem that can hardly be resolved by creating a new one. — Michelle Dean

In money matters no relationship counts; money hardens all hearts. — Matilde Serao

When a man's eyes are sore his friends do not let him finger them, however much he wishes to, nor do they themselves touch the inflammation: But a man sunk in grief suffers every chance comer to stir and augment his affliction like a running sore; and by reason of the fingering and consequent irritation it hardens into a serious and intractable evil. — Plutarch

God-sent ministry, heeded and bowed to, leads to enlargement and blessing; but the Spirit's testimony rejected increases the guilt of him who hardens himself against it, and makes his condition far worse than before. It is ever the case that light refused makes the darkness all the deeper. Hence the need of a tender conscience, quick to respond to every word from God. — Henry Allen Ironside

Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent - the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free. — H.L. Mencken

Reckless predictions of the second coming of Christ create an artificial excitement among believers followed by a corresponding depression. In addition, it hardens skeptics in their unbelief and provides new fodder for cynics to mock the Christian faith. — Doug Batchelor

In France, even heresy rapidly hardens into dogma. — Storm Jameson

A path is something you create as you walk it. The ground you've trodden hardens, and that's what forms your path. You're the only one who can create your own path. Walk on your own. If you haven't given up yet, that is. -Cross Marian — Katsura Hoshino

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender. — John Locke

Let it never be forgotten that, although we may do nothing about the Word we hear, the Word will do something to us.
The same sun melts ice and hardens clay, and the Word of God humbles or hardens the human heart. — Vance Havner

Death is the stone into which our oblivion hardens. — Pablo Neruda

Affliction hardens those whom it does not soften. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Being a member of the court is a lot like walking through fresh concrete. Do you remember doing that as a child and leaving a footprint and it hardens after you? I'm afraid that's what we do and we look back and we see those opinions we've written and they've sort of hardened after us. — Sandra Day O'Connor

Caldwell speaks in the dry, inflectionless tone of a lecturer, but her expression hardens as she stares down at the thing that is both her nemesis and the focal point of her waking life. "If — M.R. Carey

What? Don't you want a girl who can talk dirty to you?"
His look only hardens. "No, Lucy. I'm serious. I won't tolerate that from you." He doesn't look away and I feel that heat in the pit of my stomach, spreading down again.
"Well...I've heard you curse before..." I swallow loudly, but keep his gaze.
"I'm a man. — Willow Madison

Covetousness puts money above manhood. It shackles its devotee and makes him its victim. It hardens the heart and deadens the noble impulses and destroys the vital qualities of life. — Billy Graham

Who shows a child, just as they are? Who sets it
in its constellation, and gives the measure
of distance into its hand? Who makes a child's death
out of grey bread, that hardens, - or leaves it
inside its round mouth like the core
of a shining apple? Killers are
easy to grasp. But this: death,
the whole of death, before life,
to hold it so softly, and not live in anger,
cannot be expressed. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it. — George Sand

Man wants the truth about Ed Watson," Daniels jeered. "Where you aim to find it? Smallwoods'll tell you their truth, Hardens'll tell you theirs. Fat-ass guard out there, he'll tell you his and I'll give you another. Which one you aim to settle for and make your peace with? — Peter Matthiessen

This was a cruelty made by history. Long after serfdom had been abolished the land captains exercised their right to flog the peasants for petty crimes. Liberals rightly warned about the psychological effects of this brutality. One physician, addressing the Kazan Medical Society in 1895 said that it 'not only debases but even hardens and brutalizes human nature'. Chekhov, who was also a practising physician, denounced corporal punishment, adding that 'it coarsens and brutalizes not only the offenders but also those who execute the punishments and those who are present at it'. — Orlando Figes

The ego is definitely an advancement, but it can be compared to the bark of the tree in many ways. The bark of the tree is flexible, extremely vibrant, and grows with the growth beneath. It is a tree's contact with the outer world, the tree's interpreter, and to some degree the tree's companion. So should man's ego be. When man's ego turns instead into a shell, when instead of interpreting outside conditions it reacts too violently against them, then it hardens, becomes an imprisoning form that begins to snuff out important data, and to keep enlarging information from the inner self. The purpose of the ego is protective. It is also a device to enable the inner self to inhabit the physical plane. It is in other words a camouflage. It is the — Jane Roberts

Pain hardens, and great pain hardens greatly, whatever the comforters say, and suffering does not ennoble, though it may occasionally lend a certain rigid dignity of manner to the suffering frame. — A.S. Byatt

This is how anger works. It hardens your tender skin and gives you the illusion of being wrapped in steel — Anthony Paull

Certainty is a cruel mindset. It hardens our minds against possibility. — Ellen Langer

For the word "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie.
The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages. — Ayn Rand

The habit of falling hardens the body, reaching the ground, to in itself, is a relief. — Jose Saramago

The sun which warms the plant can under other conditions also wither it. The rain which nourishes the flower can under other conditions rot it. The same sun shines upon mud that shines upon wax. It hardens the mud but softens the wax. The difference is not in the sun, but in that upon which it shines. The Divine Life which shines upon a soul that loves Him, softens it into everlasting life; that same Divine Life which shines upon the slothful soul, neglectful of God, hardens it into everlasting death. — Fulton J. Sheen

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable. Curly — Maya Angelou

My heart breaks for him; my heart hardens against him. — Victoria Aveyard

When Heaven is about to confer a great office on a man, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil ; it exposes his body to hunger, and subjects him to extreme poverty ; it confounds his undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies. — Mencius

It's exemplification of our moment in American culture and American cultural journalism. It is an accurate document of the discourse of "takes." This movie, that book, this poem, that painting, this record, that show: Make a smart remark and move on. A take is an opinion that has no aspiration to a belief, an impression taht never hardens into a position. Its lightness is its appeal. It is provisional, evanescent, a move in a game, an accredited shallowness, a bulwark against a pause in the conversation. A take is expected not to be true but to be interesting, and even when it is interesting it makes no troublesome claim upon anybody's attention. Another take will quickly follow, and the silence that is a mark of perplexity, of research and reflection, will be mercifully kept at bay. A take asks for no affiliation. It requires no commitment. — Leon Wieseltier

If our theology does not quicken the conscience and soften the heart, it actually hardens both. — J.I. Packer

In strategy the longest way round is often the shortest way there- a direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, whereas an indirect approach loosens the defender's hold by upsetting his balance. — B.H. Liddell Hart

Loss either teaches you to persist in the face of suffering, or hardens you into a bitter cynic. Sometimes, it does a little of both. — Grace Slick

A plague of snow, fluffy and dry before it hardens and grips the trees, the walls, and the cars parked haphazardly everywhere. When I walk to the little market a few blocks away, it feels like a test of endurance. — Henri Cole

Funny how the stupid shit we do for those we love hardens into legend. — Taylor Adams

Sweet as sugar. And then he hardened. I can't 'splain it another way. He was like sugar in a jar that hardens. And after a while you take it out, and it is one rock-solid lump — Rene Denfeld

Mia looks down at my outstretched hands, opens her mouth to say something, and then she just sighs. Her face hardens into a mask as she reaches out her own hand to take mine.

The tremor in my hand has become so normal, so nonstop, that it's generally imperceptible to me. But as soon as my fingers close around Mia's, the thing I notice is that it stops and suddenly it goes quiet, like when the squall of feedback is suddenly cut when someone switches off an amp. And I could linger here forever.

Except this is a handshake, nothing more. — Gayle Forman