Weakness Itself Quotes & Sayings

No cowardice, no sin, no crime, no weakness - the rest will come of itself ... — Swami Vivekananda

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome. — Friedrich Nietzsche

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

The only unforgivable crime is to cut short the experiment of one's own life before its natural end. To do so is a weakness and a pity - for the experiment of life will cut itself off soon enough, in all our cases, and one may just as well have the courage and the curiosity to stay in the battle until one's eventual and inevitable demise. Anything less than a fight for endurance is cowardly. Anything less than a fight for endurance is a refusal of the great covenant of life. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Given the ease with which health infuses life with meaning and purpose, it is shocking how swiftly illness steals away those certainties ... Time unused and only endured still vanishes, as if time itself is starving, and each day is swallowed whole, leaving no crumbs, no memory, no trace at all. — Elisabeth Tova Bailey

How sometimes nature will betray its folly, Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime To harder bosoms! — William Shakespeare

Another thing is war. I am naturally warlike. Attacking is one of my instincts. Being able to be an enemy, being an enemy - these require a strong nature, perhaps; in any case every strong nature presupposes them. It needs resistances, so it seeks
resistance: aggressive pathos is just as integrally necessary to strength as the feeling of revenge and reaction is to weakness. Woman, forinstance, is vengeful: that is a condition of her weakness, as is her sensitivity to other people's afflictions. - The strength of anattacker can in a way be gauged by the opposition he requires; allgrowth makes itself manifest by searching out a more powerful opponent - or problem: for a philosopher who is warlike challenges problems to duels, too. The task is not to master all resistances, but only those against which one has to pit one's entire strength, suppleness, and mastery-at-arms - opponents who are equal ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

Because i have been a man of order, my efforts were directed towards the attainment of a real, not a deceptive, freedom...I have always considered despotism of any kind a symptom of weakness. Where it appears, it condemns itself; most intolerably where it appears behind the mask of advancing the cause of liberty. — Kissinger Henry

Sneezing absorbs all the functions of the soul just as much as the [sexual] act, but we do not draw from it the same conclusions against the greatness of man, because it is involuntary; although we bring it about, we do so involuntarily. It is not for the sake of the thing in itself but for another end, and is therefore not a sign of man's weakness, or his subjection to this act. — Blaise Pascal

In randori, one must search out the opponent's weaknesses and be ready to attack with all the resources at his disposal the moment the opportunity presents itself, without violating the rules of judo. — Kano Jigoro

Because we know ourselves. Because others obey us as though we were gods, and we know we're not. We see the fragility of our own power, and through it we see the fragility of every other link. What if the Spectrum suddenly refused my orders? Not hard to imagine, when you consider the scheming and lust for power it takes to become a Color. What if a general suddenly refuses his satrap's orders? What if a son refuses his father's orders? What if that first link in the Great Chain of being - Orholam Himself - is as empty as every other link before him? Seeing the weakness of each link, we think the Great Chain itself is fragile: surely at any moment it will burst if we don't do everything in our power to hold it together. — Brent Weeks

I always thought fainting showed an inherent weakness of character, but I understood it now. It was an act of self-preservation. Confronted by emotion too extreme to handle, the body shuts down to keep from running around like a chicken with its head cut off, potentially injuring itself. — Karen Marie Moning

Life in extremity reveals itself in its movement a definite rhythm of decline and renewal. The state of wakefulness is essential, but in actual experience it is less an unwavering hardness of spirit than a tenuous achievement with periods of weakness and strength. Survivors not only wake, but reawaken, fall low and begin to die, and then turn back to life. — Terrence Des Pres

He "binds up the broken-hearted" (Isa. 61:1). As a mother is tenderest toward the most diseased and weakest child, so does Christ most mercifully incline to the weakest. Likewise he puts an instinct into the weakest things to rely upon something stronger than themselves for support. The vine steadies itself upon the elm, and the weakest creatures often have the strongest shelters. The consciousness of the church's weakness makes her willing to lean on her Beloved and to hide herself under his wing. — Richard Sibbes

A strong back is a big help but not even the strongest back was built for that treatment, and there combine not just at the kidneys, ad rill down the thighs and up the spine and athwart the shoulders, the ticklish weakness of gruel or water, and an aching that increases in geometric progression, and at length, in the small of the spine, a literal sensation of yielding, buckling, splintering, and breakage: and all of this, even though the mercy of nature has strengthened and hardened your flesh and anesthetized your nerves and your powers of reflection and imagination, reaches in time the brain and the more mirrorlike nerves, and thereby makes itself much worse than before. — James Agee

Looked into remote space, where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed to him great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen. And such had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and philanthropy seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness, and senselessness. Now, however, he had learned to see the great, eternal, and infinite in everything, and therefore - to see it and enjoy its contemplation - he naturally threw away the telescope through which he had till now gazed over men's heads, and gladly regarded the ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil — Leo Tolstoy

Pain is the body's way of ridding itself of weakness. — Dean Karnazes

Your generation is so cynical. You should try to help every individual person you meet, Ari, as a reflex, without thinking." Ari put his head on the steering wheel. "Here we find a fundamental weakness of the Christ doctrine," the Minister declared, making that wise and relatable face that had always been such a success in his television lectures. "It troubles itself too much with conscience, rationale, and so on. Now, I myself am a student of human nature. I observe all faiths, and draw my own conclusions. For example, a Christian sees a tramp in the street, he begins agonizing. Should I give him the money in my pocket? What if he uses it for drink? What if he wastes it? What if there's someone else who needs it more? What if I need it more? And so on. The Jews, the Muslims - they see a tramp, they give him money, they walk on. The action is its own justification. — Zadie Smith

A great many grown-up and intelligent people believe, or pretend to believe, that by behaving in a friendly and accommodating way to our attackers, we will show them that they have nothing to fear from us and so defuse their wrath. The idea that such behavior would be taken by a ruthless and implacable enemy only as a sign of weakness is as foreign to them as the idea of honor itself. — James Bowman

I believe that Love is at the center of everything; therefore, I accept Love as the healing power of life. I permit Love to reach out from me to every person I meet. I believe that Love is returned to me from every person I meet. I trust the guidance of Love because I believe it is the power of Good in the universe. I feel that Love is flowing through me to heal every situation I meet, to help every person I contact. Love opens the way before me and makes it perfect, straight, and glad. Love forgives everything unlike itself; it purifies everything. Love converts everything that seems commonplace into that which is wonderful. Love converts weakness into strength, fear into faith. Love — Ernest Holmes

Weakness ineffectually seeks to disguise itself,
like a drunken man trying to show how sober he is. — Christian Nestell Bovee

In his profession and mine you're successful if it leaves you untouched." "How does one achieve that?" "In one of two ways: by not looking at people at all or by looking at everything about them." "Which is preferable, Miss Francon?" "Whichever is hardest." "But a desire to choose the hardest might be a confession of weakness in itself. — Ayn Rand

When an attack on home soil causes cultural paroxysms that have nothing to do with the attack, when we respond to real threats to our nation by distrusting ourselves with imagined threats to femininity and family life, when we invest our leaders with a cartoon masculinity and require of them bluster in lieu of a capacity for rational calculation, and when we blame our frailty in 'fifth column' feminists - in short, when we base our security on a mythical male strength that can only increase itself against a mythical female weakness - we should know that we are exhibiting the symptoms of a lethal, albeit curable, cultural affliction (p. 295). — Susan Faludi

One reason the United States finds itself at the edge of a foreign policy disaster is its underinformed citizenry, a key weakness in democracy. — Stefan Halper

Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, it beauties and ugliness; accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap ... Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in this way between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence. Naturally, every one does not feel this equally strongly. — Hermann Hesse

That man is formed for social life is an observation which, upon our first inquiry, presents itself immediately to our view, and our reason approves that wise and generous principle which actuated the first founders of civil government, an institution which hat its origin in the weakness of individuals, and hath for its end the strength and security of all; and so long as the means of effecting this important end are thoroughly known and religiously attended to government is one of the richest blessings to mankind, and ought to be held in the highest veneration — Joseph Warren

Every weakness contains within itself a strength. — Shusaku Endo

The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves - or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn. — Sophie Scholl

Your edict, King, was strong,
But all your strength is weakness itself against
The immortal unrecorded laws of God.
They are not merely now: they were, and shall be,
Operative for ever, beyond man utterly.
I knew I must die, even without your decree:
I am only mortal. And if I must die
Now, before it is my time to die,
Surely this is no hardship: can anyone
Living, as I live, with evil all about me,
Think Death less than a friend? — Sophocles

Well, people are like that too. THey create a false door - to deceive. If they are conscious of weakness, of inefficiency, they make an imposing door of self-assertion, of bluster, of overwhelming authority - and, after a time, they get to believe in it themselves. They think, and everybody thinks, that they are like that. But behind that door, Renisenb, is bare rock... And so when reality comes and touches them with the feather of truth - their true self reasserts itself. — Agatha Christie

In strength the body only knows itself, is full of itself, its movements, its words, but in weakness is the invisible and the whisperings. — Lene Fogelberg

Nothing is more arrogant than the weakness which feels itself supported by power. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Elegant self-control concealing from the world's eyes until the very last moment a state of inner disintegration and biological decay; sallow ugliness, sensuously marred and worsted, which nevertheless is able to fan its smouldering concupiscence to a pure flame, and even to exalt itself to mastery in the realm of beauty; pallid impotence, which from the glowing depths of the spirit draws strength to cast down a whole proud people at the foot of the Cross and set its own foot upon them as well; gracious poise and composure in the empty austere service of form; the false, dangerous life of the born deceiver, his ambition and his art which lead so soon to exhaustion - to contemplate all these destinies, and many others like them, was to doubt if there is any other heroism at all but the heroism of weakness. In any case, what other heroism could be more in keeping with the times? — Thomas Mann

Hate promises you strength, but is in itself a weakness. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Everyone died in solitude, after all. A simple enough truth. A truth no one need fear. The spirits waited before they cast judgement upon a soul, waited for that soul - in its dying isolation - to set judgement upon itself, upon the life it had lived, and if peace came of that, then the spirits would show mercy. If torment rode the Wild Mare, why, then, the spirits knew to match it. When the soul faced itself, after all, it was impossible to lie. Deceiving arguments rang loud with falsehood, their facile weakness too obvious to ignore. — Steven Erikson

We were convinced of the inherent madness of codified inequity. All cooperation involves some measure of surrender. And coercion. But the alternative, being anarchy, is itself no worthy virtue. It is but an excuse for selfish aggression, and all that seeks justification from taking that stance is, each and every time, cold-hearted. Anarchists live in fear and long for death, because they despair of seeing in others the very virtues they lack in themselves. In this manner, they take pleasure in sowing destruction, if only to match their inner landscape of ruin. [ ... ] We rejected civilization, but so too we rejected anarchy for its petty belligerence and the weakness of thought it announced. By these decisions, we made ourselves lost and bereft of purpose. — Steven Erikson

Weakness and strength are necessary for balance. No one or nothing is only weak or only strong. But some of us overlook our weaknesses, and even deny that we have them. That can be dangerous, because denying there is a weakness is in itself a weakness. Likewise, accepting that we have weaknesses becomes a strength. And by the same token, overestimating strength is a weakness. You should not be blinded by your strengths. The feeling of strength is not the same as having strength. Neither should you ignore your weaknesses. Know them well, too. — Joseph M. Marshall III

Subjection to fear is weakness, bondage, feverish unrest. To be afraid is to have no soul that we can call our own; it is to be at the beck and call of alien powers, to be chained and driven and tormented; it is to lose the life itself in the anxious care to keep it. — Henry Van Dyke

Comedy naturally wears itself out - destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at. — William Hazlitt

Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance. First, the subjects of deepest dread (corruption, decay, pollution, anomie, weakness) are identified with the disease. The disease itself becomes a metaphor. Then, in the name of the disease (that is, using it as a metaphor), that horror is imposed on other things. The disease becomes adjectival. Something is said to be disease-like, meaning that it is disgusting or ugly. — Susan Sontag

Those who correct others should watch for the Holy Spirit to go ahead of them and touch a person's heart. Learn to imitate Him who reproves gently ...
When you become outraged over a person's fault, it is generally not "righteous indignation" but your own impatient personality expressing itself. Here is the imperfect pointing a finger at the imperfect. The more you selfishly love yourself, the more critical you will be. Self-love cannot forgive the self- love it discovers in others. Nothing is so offensive to a haughty, conceited heart as the sight of another one.
God's love, however, is full of consideration, patience, and tenderness. It leads people out of their weakness and sin one step at a time. — Francois Fenelon

He began by talking about the Christ child as the representative of all children and what it was to be childlike. He was arguing in favour of the need for times of weakness and vulnerability in our lives. An always invincible, strong, resistant humanity would have no room for growth or learning. It would have nothing to do. There would be no test because there could be no failure. Humanity needed its failings in order to understand itself. This was more than a matter of learning from mistakes. It was about acknowledging weakness, denying pride, and beginning any task from a position of openness, aware of the possibility that we often fall short. We must learn from the appearance of the Christ child in the world, as ready for companionship as tribulation, a blank canvas on whose surface life was painted and where depths contained mysteries yet to be understood. 'The — James Runcie

[John C.] Calhoun was a minority spokesman in a democracy, a particularist in an age of nationalism, a slaveholder in an age of advancing liberties, and an agrarian in a furiously capitalistic country. His weakness was to be inhumanly schematic and logical, which is only to say that he thought as he lived. His mind, in a sense, was too masterful - it imposed itself upon realities. The great human, emotional, moral complexities of the world escaped him because he had no private training for them, had not even the talent for friendship, in which he might have been schooled. It was easier for him to imagine, for example, that the South had produced upon its slave base a better culture than the North because he had no culture himself, only a quick and muscular mode of thought. It may stand as a token of Calhoun's place in the South's history that when he did find culture there, at Charleston, he wished a plague upon it. — Richard Hofstadter

Strength is Happiness. Strength is itself victory. In weakness and cowardice there is no happiness. When you wage a struggle, you might win or you might lose. But regardless of the short-term outcome, the very fact of your continuing to struggle is proof of your victory as a human being. — Daisaku Ikeda

The heart itself is beyond control. That is its power, and its weakness. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Poor human nature cannot bear such strains as heavenly triumphs bring to it; there must come a reaction. Excess of joy or excitement must be paid for by subsequent depressions. While the trial lasts, the strength is equal to the emergency; but when it is over, natural weakness claims the right to show itself. — Charles Spurgeon

I witnessed the birth of time itself. I watched the mortal coil spring forth from perfect darkness. I watched the stars form, watched this world coalesce, watched as life was breathed into it and as your kind rose to rule it." She put both hands on the table and leaned toward me, her blue eyes cold and hard. "Thus far, I have behaved as a guest ought. But do not mistake propriety for weakness, mortal. I beg you not to oblige me to take further action. — Jim Butcher

Without order or authority in the spirit of man the free way of life leads through weakness, disorganization, self-indulgence, and moral indifference to the destruction of freedom itself. The tragic ordeal through which the Western world is passing was prepared in the long period of easy liberty, during which men ... forgot that their freedom was achieved by heroic sacrifice ... They forgot that their rights were founded on their duties ... They thought it clever to be cynical, enlightened to be unbelieving, and sensible to be soft. — Walter Lippmann

I did not believe him capable of love. That is an emotion in which tenderness is an essential part, but Strickland had no tenderness either for himself or for others; there is in love a sense of weakness, a desire to protect, an eagerness to do good and to give pleasure
if not unselfishness, at all events a selfishness which marvellously conceals itself; it has in it a certain diffidence. — W. Somerset Maugham

They'd never known anything but victory which, Paul realized, could be a weakness in itself. He put that thought aside for later consideration in his own training program. — Frank Herbert

Compassion is not a dirty word. Compassion is not a sign of weakness. In my view, compassion in politics and in public policy is in fact a hallmark of great strength. It is a hallmark of a society which has about it a decency which speaks for itself. — Kevin Rudd

He is not a challenge, he is not a conquest. You were once that for him, back when he used to call you a little beast and defeated you handily, time and again. You got the feeling over time and then again that he didn't want to win, when he sparred with you. That was the motivation you needed. The opportunity presented itself; his weakness presented itself. You took it, you beat him, you got better, you stayed neck and neck. Just stay strong, was the first directive. Get stronger, was the next. Don't die, was the final, and that is where you remain. Daunting, to excel at a game that you must eventually lose. Unless you really are an angel. Unless he really is already a ghost. — Vee Hoffman

This conversation revealed to Odo a third conception of the religious idea. In Piedmont religion imposed itself as a military discipline, the enforced duty of the Christian citizen to the heavenly state; to the Duke it was a means of purchasing spiritual immunity from the consequences of bodily weakness; to the Bishop, it replaced the panem et circenses of ancient Rome. Where, in all this, was the share of those whom Christ had come to save? Where was Saint Francis's devotion to his heavenly bride, the Lady Poverty? Though here and there a good parish priest like Crescenti ministered to the temporal wants of the peasantry, it was only the free-thinker and the atheist who, at the risk of life and fortune, laboured for their moral liberation. Odo listened with a saddened heart, thinking, as he followed his host through the perfumed shade of the gardens, and down — Edith Wharton

Is he dead? Blue asked, staring down at the prostrate body.
kitterick shook his head.'No,but he will remain in a coma for several hours.And there will be a substantial headache when he wakes up. And tremors.Something of a limp.Blurred vision.Impaired hearing.A few facialtics.Some nausea,loss of appetite, occasional hallucinations,flatulence,a weakness in the back. The nerve damage will repair itself in a few years.Providing he rests of course. — Herbie Brennan

The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions, and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.
- Albert Einstein, letter of February 5, 1921 — Albert Einstein

It was about half-past one - 'only half-past one,' Lucy complained - when she and Walter and Spandrell left the restaurant. 'Still young,' was Spandrell's comment on the night. 'Young and rather insipid. Nights are like human beings - never interesting till they're grown up. Round about midnight they reach puberty. At a little after one they come of age. Their prime is from two to half-past. An hour later they're growing rather desperate, like those man-eating women and waning middle-aged men who hop around twice as violently as they ever did in the hope of persuading themselves that they're not old. After four they're in full decay. And their death is horrible. Really horrible at sunrise, when the bottles are empty and people look like corpses and desire's exhausted itself into disgust. I have rather a weakness for the deathbed scenes, I must confess,' Spandrell added. 'I'm — Aldous Huxley

A weakness of many of the self-oriented play theories is that they often sound too much like vain consumerism instead of being about the more passionate and willful character of human play, which involves a willingness, even if a fantasy, to believe in the play venture itself. — Brian Sutton-Smith

We are weakness itself, and unless He guards the city, in vain shall we labor to defend it. — Teresa Of Avila

Marihuana is a World Wide Problem.
It is Connected to Sex and Porn Addiction.
It is Weakness, itself.
P. Hermans
September 13, 2016 — Petra Hermans

Humans are most imaginative when they need a means of self-destruction. If the world existed in an overflowing amount of happiness; a utopian state, then the suicide rate would dwarf any extinction level threat. Humans cannot be trusted with their own survival. Their minds have been trained to be blindly and unconsciously subjugated. In a time related to Heaven-on-Earth, the smallest amount of worry, will drive a human into the arms of death. This is how weak and fragile the human mind and will is. It's funny, because the best friend of humanity, is none other than Chaos itself. — Lionel Suggs

Strength must build up, not destroy. It should outdo itself, not others who are weaker. Used without responsibility, it causes nothing but harm and death. I can lift the heaviest weights, but I can not take the responsibility off my shoulders. Because the way we use our strength defines our fate. What traces will I leave on my path into the future? Do we really have to kill in order to live? My true strength lies in not seeing weakness as weakness. My strength needs no victims. My strength is my compassion. — Patrik Baboumian

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself
Yea, all which it inherit - shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vexed.
Bear with my weakness. My old brain is troubled.
Be not disturbed with my infirmity.
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose. A turn or two I'll walk
To still my beating mind. — William Shakespeare

Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation - but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? — Friedrich Nietzsche

Even at birth the soul comes to its own and through every step of its earthly pilgrimage it attracts those combinations of conditions which reveal itself, which are the reflections of its own purity and, impurity, its strength and weakness. Men — James Allen

When we have nothing to cling to as our own and cease thinking of ourselves as people who must defend privileges, we can open ourselves freely to others with the faithful expectation that our strength will manifest itself in our shared weakness. — Henri Nouwen

The danger was within itself: it was the crisis of confidence it was going through, the fear of being itself. When you considered them individually, French boys were as active and intelligent as ever. But they lacked the sort of shared hope and dreams which are the sign of health in a people. The fact that the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the Revolution were only funeral commemorations revealed that weakness, that lifelessness. It was so clear — Jean Guehenno

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission. — Edmund Burke

The West is a civilization that has survived all the prophecies of its collapse with a singular stratagem. Just as the bourgeoisie had to deny itself as a class in order to permit the bourgeoisification of society as a whole, from the worker to the baron; just as capital had to sacrifice itself as a wage relation in order to impose itself as a social relation - becoming cultural capital and health capital in addition to finance capital; just as Christianity had to sacrifice itself as a religion in order to survive as an affective structure - as a vague injunction to humility, compassion, and weakness; so the West has sacrificed itself as a particular civilization in order to impose itself as a universal culture. The operation can be summarized like this: an entity in its death throes sacrifices itself as a content in order to survive as a form. — The Invisible Committee

Of course it's all-consuming, but love- real love- doesn't destroy or smother. It's the very opposite of a weakness. Love strengthens. It liberates. It molds itself to every fiber of your being and fortifies you where where you may be broken. — Kerrigan Byrne

The very fact that faith looks to a power beyond itself means that it is continually subject to loss of control. So if you're looking to get control of all your problems, forget Christianity. If you're looking for success, happiness, or freedom from pain, forget Christ. The way of Christ is the cross, and the cross spells weakness, poverty, failure, death. — Mike Mason

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I have urged on woman independence of man, not that I do not think the sexes mutually needed by one another, but because in woman this fact has led to an excessive devotion, which has cooled love, degraded marriage and prevented it her sex from being what it should be to itself or the other. I wish woman to live, first for God's sake. Then she will not take what is not fit for her from a sense of weakness and poverty. Then if she finds what she needs in man embodied, she will know how to love and be worthy of being loved. — Margaret Fuller

If I acknowledge my dependency, I do so because for me it is a means of signifying my demand: in the realm of love, futility is not a "weakness" or an "absurdity": it is a strong sign: the more futile, the more it signifies and the more it asserts itself as strength.) — Roland Barthes

In order for us to liberate the energy of our strength, our weakness must first have a chance to reveal itself. — Paulo Coelho

Like one's own children, golf has an uncanny way of endearing itself to us while at the same time evoking every weakness of mind and character, no matter how well hidden. — Timothy Gallwey

Attachment to the same thought wearies and destroys the mind of man. Hence for the solidity and permanence of the pleasure of love, it is sometimes necessary not to know that we love; and this is not to be guilty of an infidelity, for we do not therefore love another; it is to regain strength in order to love the better. This happens without our thinking of it; the mind is borne hither of itself; nature wills it, commands it. It must however be confessed that this is a miserable consequence of human weakness, and that we should be happier of we were not forced to change of thought; but there is no remedy. — Blaise Pascal

But this first clumsy attempt showed her that the imagination itself was a source of secrets: once she had begun a story, no one could be told. Pretending in words was too tentative, too vulnerable, too embarrassing to let anyone know. Even writing out the she saids, the and thens, made her wince, and she felt foolish, appearing to know about the emotions of an imaginary being. Self-exposure was inevitable the moment she described a character's weakness; the reader was bound to speculate that she was describing herself. What other authority could she have? — Ian McEwan

A Man's suicide is the ultimate violence he can fling against the granite circumstance he could not vanquish. Its a lonely and desperate act of supreme courage, not weakness. But it is also an admission of total failure, and the destruction of the self is the end of one person's struggle, an end where from there would be no rebirth or resurrection-nothing but the blackness, the impenetrable muck the hides everything, sometimes even the reason for death itself. — F. Sionil Jose

What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and the power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing
that resistance has been overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence. The first principle of our humanism: The weak and the failures shall perish. They ought even to be helped to perish. — Friedrich Nietzsche

And the weak soul, within itself unbless'd, Leans for all pleasure on another's breast. — Oliver Goldsmith

The weakness of God is stronger than human strength. And it leads, as Jesus said it would lead, to a life of following him, which would itself be about taking up the cross and so finding life, about the meek inheriting the earth. The point of it all, once more, is vocational: if we can study Genesis and human origins without hearing the call to be an image-bearing human being renewed in Jesus, we are massively missing the point, perhaps pursuing our own dream of an otherworldly salvation that merely colludes with the forces of evil, as gnosticism always does. — N. T. Wright

My heart might very well beat itself from my chest," she whispered, "and 'tis difficult to breathe."
"How odd." Passion thickened his voice. "I seem to be suffering the same symptoms. Does anything else plague you?"
"A terrible weakness," she whispered shakily. "If you let me go, I am not entirely certain I shall be able to stand."
He buried his face in her neck. "Then I shall never let you go. — Jo Grafford

In this couple defects were multiplied, as if by a dangerous doubling; weakness fed upon itself without a counterstrength and they were trapped, defaults, mutually committed, left holes everywhere in their lives. When you read their letters to each other it is often necessary to consult the signature in order to be sure which one has done the writing. Their tone about themselves, their mood, is the fatal one of nostalgia
a passive, consuming, repetitive poetry. Sometimes one feels even its most felicitious and melodious moments are fixed, rigid in experession, and that their feelings have gradually merged with their manner, fallen under the domination of style. Even in their suffering, so deep and beyond relief, their tonal memory controls the words, shaping them into the Fitzgerald tune, always so regretful, regressive, and touched with a careful felicity. — Elizabeth Hardwick

But struggling with these better feelings was pride,
the vice of the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high and self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves and ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows itself,
even this degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a weakness, but which alone conneced her with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when a very child. — Charles Dickens

If any sensual weakness arise, we are to yield all our sound forces to the overthrowing of so unnatural a rebellion; wherein how can we want courage, since we are to deal against so feeble an adversary, that in itself is nothing but weakness? Nay, we are to resolve that if reason direct it, we must do it, and if we must do it, we will do it; for to say "I cannot" is childish, and "I will not" is womanish. — Philip Sidney

The boycott of parliamentary institutions on the part of anarchists and semianarchists is dictated by a desire not to submit their weakness to a test on the part of the masses, thus preserving their right to an inactive hauteur which makes no difference to anybody. A revolutionary party can turn its back to a parliament only if it has set itself the immediate task of overthrowing the existing regime. — Leon Trotsky

Incalculable failed experiments." She wrote, "Those who are ill-prepared to endure the battle for survival should perhaps never have attempted living in the first place. The only unforgivable crime is to cut short the experiment of one's own life before its natural end. To do so is a weakness and a pity - for the experiment of life will cut itself off soon enough, in all our cases, and one may just as well have the courage and the curiosity to stay in the battle until one's eventual and inevitable demise. Anything less than a fight for endurance is — Elizabeth Gilbert

Making these choices, as it turned out, wasn't about willpower. I always admired people who "willed" themselves to do something, because I have never felt I was one of them. If sheer will were enough by itself, it would have been enough a long time ago, back on University Avenue, I figured. It wasn't, not for me anyway. Instead, I needed something to motivate me. I needed a few things that I could think about in my moments of weakness that would cause me to throw off the blanket and walk through the front door. More than will, I needed something to inspire me. — Liz Murray

Death used to announce itself in the thick of life but now people drag on so long it sometimes seems that we are reaching the stage when we may have to announce ourselves to death. It is as though one needs a special strength to die, and not a final weakness. — Ronald Blythe

... she does not resent her grief. No; the weakness of that word would make it a lie. To her, what hurts becomes immediately embodied: she looks on it as a thing that can be attacked, worried down, torn in shreds. Scarcely a substance herself, she grapples to conflict with abstractions. Before calamity she is a tigress; she rends her woes, shivers them in convulsed abhorrence. Pain, for her, has no result in good; tears water no harvest of wisdom; on sickness, on death itself, she looks with the eye of a rebel. Wicked, perhaps, she is, but also she is strong: and her strength has conqueredBeauty, has overcome Grace, and bound both at her side, captives peerlessly fair, and docile as fair. Even in the uttermost frenzy of energy is each maenad movement royally, imperially, incedingly upborne. ... Fallen, insurgent, banished, she remembers the heaven whereshe rebelled. — Charlotte Bronte

The most regular and most perfect soul in the world has but too much to do to keep itself upright from being overthrown by its own weakness. — Michel De Montaigne

Such is the weakness of our nature, that when men are a little exalted in their condition they immediately conceive they have additional senses, and their capacities enlarged not only above other men, but above human comprehension itself. — Richard Steele

We try to ease our pain with anger. But anger isn't strength. It only masks itself as strength. It's weakness. At its core, it's fear. Fear of facing what might be truth — Richard Paul Evans

And this brings us to our final type of man: the one who asserts himself out of defiance of his own weakness, who tries to be a god unto himself, the master of his fate, a self-created man. He will not be merely the pawn of others, of society; he will not be a passive sufferer and secret dreamer, nursing his own inner flame in oblivion. He will plunge into life,
into the distractions of great undertakings, he will become a restless spirit ... which wants to forget ... Or he will seek forgetfulness in sensuality, perhaps in debauchery ...
At its extreme, defiant self-creation can become demonic, a passion which Kierkegaard calls "demoniac rage," an attack on all of life for what it has dared to do to one, a revolt against existence itself. — Ernest Becker