Hardness Softness Quotes & Sayings

In the dull twilight of the winter afternoon she came to the end of a long road which had begun the night Atlanta fell. She had set her feet upon that road a spoiled, selfish and untried girl, full of youth, warm of emotion, easily bewildered by life. Now, at the end of the road, there was nothing left of that girl. Hunger and hard labor, fear and constant strain, the terrors of war and the terrors of Reconstruction had taken away all warmth and youth and softness. About the core of her being, a shell of hardness had formed and, little by little, layer by layer, the shell had thickened during the endless months. — Margaret Mitchell

I don't think of myself as a hard man, but other people may think otherwise. You know you have obligations to do the best you can for people, for your job, for your shareholders ... it all has to be balanced between the hardness and the softness. — Frank Lowy

There was nothing else in the entire universe, nothing but the two of them together. Her curves, his angles. Her light, his darkness. Her softness, his exquisitely aching hardness.
Male. Female. — Thea Harrison

It seemed strange that with so much softness in her actual construction Mamma gave such a feeling of hardness. When — Madeleine L'Engle

In social life we hardly stop to consider how much of that daring spirit which gives mastery comes from hardness of heart rather than from high purpose, or true courage. The man who succumbs to his wife, the mother who succumbs to her daughter, the master who succumbs to his servant, is as often brought to servility by a continual aversion to the giving of pain, by a softness which causes the fretfulness of others to be an agony to himself, - as by any actual fear which the firmness of the imperious one may have produced. There is an inner softness, a thinness of the mind's skin, an incapability of seeing or even thinking of the troubles of others with equanimity, which produces a feeling akin to fear; but which is compatible not only with courage, but with absolute firmness of purpose, when the demand for firmness arises so strongly as to assert itself. — Anthony Trollope

I do not like hardness of heart, but neither do I like softness of head. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Does he ever eat? Nope. Does he sleep during the day and only comes out at night? Yep. Is he so sexy you'd sell your soul to spend just a night with him? Double-yep. What other proof do you need? — Jayde Scott

Don't forget how to be gentle," she warned. "Don't let the hardness of the world steal the softness of your heart. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Children are born true scientists. They spontaneously experiment and experience and reexperience again. They select, combine, and test, seeking to find order in their experiences - "which is the mostest? which is the leastest?" They smell, taste, bite, and touch-test for hardness, softness, springiness, roughness, smoothness, coldness, warmness: they heft, shake, punch, squeeze, push, crush, rub, and try to pull things apart. — R. Buckminster Fuller

I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. Why is the Moon round? the children ask. Why is grass green? What is a dream? How deep can you dig a hole? When is the world's birthday? Why do we have toes? Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else: 'What did you expect the Moon to be, square?' Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys the grown-ups. A few more experiences like it, and another child has been lost to science. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before 6-year-olds, I can't for the life of me understand. What's wrong with admitting that we don't know something? Is our self-esteem so fragile? — Carl Sagan

There is an ancient conversation going on between mosses and rocks, poetry to be sure. About light and shadow and the drift of continents. This is what has been called the "dialect of moss on stone - an interface of immensity and minute ness, of past and present, softness and hardness, stillness and vibrancy, yin and yan. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

Tell me the word that will win you, and I will speak it. I will speak the stars of heaven into a crown for your head; I will speak the flowers of the field into a cloak; I will speak the racing stream into a melody for your ears and the voices of a thousand larks to sing it; I will speak the softness of night for your bed and the warmth of summer for your coverlet; I will speak the brightness of flame to light your way and the luster of gold to shine in your smile; I will speak until the hardness in you melts away and your heart is free ... — Stephen R. Lawhead

Justice must be blind to the hardness or softness of a man's hands, as well as to the leanness or fatness of his pocketbook — B.C. Forbes

Hardness of heart is a dreadful quality, but it is doubtful whether in the long run it works more damage than softness of head. — Theodore Roosevelt

Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth. This shows clearly the principle of
softness overcoming hardness. — Lao-Tzu

At 16, I was in Toronto and very shy and not hanging around with anyone who was intellectual in the slightest, so I didn't really have the means to discuss what I was seeing and feeling. — Mary Gaitskill

His distaste was palpable. Although he cultivated ideas that embraced the perverse and forbidden, Stephen was squeamish, and his adventures were strictly of the fashionable, literary sort. — Siri Hustvedt

Jazz vision is the fusion of music and art a real paradox of same-yet different. Here we play in exchanges, like the hardness of the key of c# major and from the softness of Db major - capturing, reflecting and improvising. — Barbara Januszkiewicz

The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation. — C.S. Lewis

I am not sinuous or suave; I sit among you abrading your softness with my hardness, quenching the silver-grey flickering moth-wing quiver of words with the green spurt of my clear eyes. — Virginia Woolf

I saw that for a long time I had not liked people and things, but only followed the rickety old pretense of liking. I saw that even my love for those closest to me had become only an attempt to love, that my casual relations -- with an editor, a tobacco seller, the child of a friend, were only what I remembered I should do, from other days. All in the same month I became bitter about such things as the sound of the radio, the advertisements in the magazines, the screech of tracks, the dead silence of the country -- contemptuous at human softness, immediately (if secretively) quarrelsome toward hardness -- hating the night when I couldn't sleep and hating the day because it went toward night. I slept on the heart side now because I knew that the sooner I could tire that out, even a little, the sooner would come that blessed hour of nightmare which, like a catharsis, would enable me to better meet the new day. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread. — Steven Wright

Speak, Madame; speak, queen," said Buckingham. "The softness of your voice covers the hardness of your words. You speak of sacrilege, but the sacrilege is in the separation of hearts that God has formed for each other! — Alexandre Dumas

Only hardness or only softness creates an inability to deal effectively with the fluctuations of life. — Seikichi Toguchi

softness overcomes hardness. — Mark Kurlansky

Every cell singing, begging for a rush of sensation only the press of male hardness against female softness could give. — Gena Showalter

Our constituents paid into Social Security, and they want it paid back to them when they retire. Cutting Social Security benefits that Americans have earned should always be a last resort. — Dennis Cardoza

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head. — Theodore Roosevelt

He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a hot trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other — Ray Bradbury

Love softens the hardest edges of life's tumult. — Bryant McGill