Browse 3047 quotes about Weakness.
“All haste implies weakness.”
Source: Robert Falconer
“Will is not unfrequently weakness.”
“If the man be really the weaker vessel, and the rule is necessarily in the wife's hands, how is it then to be? To tell the truth, I believe that the really loving, good wife never finds it out. She keeps the glamor of love and loyalty between herself and her husband, and so infuses herself into him that the weakness never becomes apparent either to her or to him or to most lookers-on.”
Source: Womankind
“Virgil has very finely touched upon the female passion for dress and shows, in the character of Camilla; who though she seems to have shaken off all the other weaknesses of her sex, is still described as a woman in this particular.”
Source: The spectator
“Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins the character he is so industrious to advance by it.”
Source: The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison
“Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength.”
Source: Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional
“Sin is disease, deformity, and weakness.”
Source: Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study
“I begin to think that none are so bold as the timid, when they are fairly roused.”
Source: Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett: the courtship correspondence, 1845-1846 : a selection
“Levity of behavior, always a weakness, is far more unbecoming in a woman than a man.”
“If thou wouldst conquer thy weakness, thou must never gratify it. No man is compelled to evil: his consent only makes it his. It is no sin to be tempted, but to be overcome.”
Source: Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims
“He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“I feel real ownership in this show. I feel very invested in it. I care very much about it. I don't feel any more like a hired hand, you know? It's a strange feeling - I feel personally responsible for how the story goes. What happens. What the weaknesses are. And so in a way, some of the changes gave me an opportunity to have a voice in a different way.”
“Strength that goes wrong is even more dangerous than weakness that goes wrong.”
Source: Eleanor Roosevelt's My Day: First lady of the world, her acclaimed columns, 1953-1962
“Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female, who had been all weakness and dependence, and alive to every trivial roughness while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising in mental force to be the comforter and supporter of her husband under misfortune, and abiding with unshrinking firmness the bitterest blast of adversity.”
Source: The Complete Works: With a Memoir of the Author
“A bed or a chair will trick you if you stay still on them long at a time. They will draw out your strength and leave you weak as water.”
“Lack of fairness to an opponent is essentially a sign of weakness.”
Source: Living My Life (Two Volumes in One)
“a great man always knows better than to explain unless an explanation is demanded. To rush into explanations and excuses is always a sign of weakness.”
Source: Murder at the manor: The Seven dials mystery, Crooked House, Ordeal by innocence
“Motives are symptoms of weakness, and supplements for the deficient energy of the living principle, the law within us. Let them then be reserved for those momentous acts and duties in which the strongest and best-balanced natures must feel themselves deficient, and where humility no less than prudence prescribes deliberation.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry, Plays, Literary Essays, Lectures, Autobiography and Letters (Classic Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lyrical Ballads, Conversation Poems and Biographia Literaria
“Don't mistake niceness for weakness.”
“Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.”
Source: Pascal's Pensees
“The weakness of human reason appears more evidently in those who know it not than in those who know it.”
Source: Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects
“Is it courage in a dying man to go, in weakness and in agony, to affront an almighty and eternal God?”
Source: The Thoughts, Letters and Opuscules of Blaise Pascal
“I know my own weaknesses as a human being, and as a musician, as a singer and as a woman.”
“The anonymity of the city is one of its strengths as well as - carried too far - one of its weaknesses.”
Source: Twentieth century faith: hope and survival
“People's weaker side is not necessarily their truer self.”
Source: A Family and a Fortune
“if a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining qualities which, we are given to understand, lie balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness.”
Source: Points of View
“Men say their pinnacles point to heaven. Why, so does every tree that buds, and every bird that rises as it sings. Men say their aisles are good for worship. Why, so is every mountain glen and rough sea-shore. But this they have of distinct and indisputable glory,--that their mighty walls were never raised, and never shall be, but by men who love and aid each other in their weakness.”
Source: The Two Paths: Being Lectures on Art, and Its Application to Decoration and Manufacture, Delivered in 1858-9
“Writers on the subject of August Strindberg have hitherto omitted to mention that he could not write. ... Strindberg, who was neither a good nor a wise man, had a stroke of luck. He went mad. He lost the power of inhibition. Everything down to the pettiest suspicion that the dog had been given the leanest mutton chop, poured out of his lips. Men of his weakness and sensuality are usually, from their sheer brutishness, unable to express themselves. But Strindberg was mad and articulate. That is what makes him immortal.”
“Women deluded by these sentiments, sometimes boast of their weakness, cunningly obtaining power by playing on the weakness of men; and they may well glory in their illicit sway, for, like Turkish bashaws, they have more real power than their masters: but virtue is sacrificed to temporary gratifications, and the respectability of life to the triumph of an hour.”
Source: A vindication of the rights of woman: with strictures on political and moral subjects
“Men with common minds seldom break through general rules. Prudence is ever the resort of weakness; and they rarely go as far as as they may in any undertaking, who are determined not to go beyond it on any account.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft (Illustrated)
“A 'weakness,' I now realize, is nothing but a strength not properly developed.”
“He teaches best,
Who feels the hearts of all men in his breast,
And knows their strength or weakness through his own.”
Source: The Poems
“It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.”
“How strong sometimes is weakness!”
Source: Folly as It Flies
“Genius! thou gift of Heav'n! thou Light divine!
Amid what dangers art thou doom'd to shine!
Oft will the body's weakness check thy force,
Oft damp thy Vigour, and impede thy course;
And trembling nerves compel thee to restrain
Thy noble efforts, to contend with pain;
Or Want (sad guest!) will in thy presence come,
And breathe around her melancholy gloom:
To Life's low cares will thy proud thought confine,
And make her sufferings, her impatience, thine.”
Source: Tales
“[On Peter III:] He did not have a bad heart; but a weak man usually has not.”
“Wine was given us by God, not that we might be drunken, but that we might be sober. It is the best medicine when it has the best moderation to direct it. Wine was given to restore the body's weakness, not to overturn the soul's strength.”
Source: A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church
“When you write you in a way write out of what you think of as your best self, the part of you that is lacking in foibles and weaknesses and egotism and vanities and so on. You're just trying to really say something as truthful as you can out of the best that you have in you.”
“I was creative before I started meditating, but I had, looking back, a weakness. I wasn't self-assured. I had a little bit of melancholy. I had a lot of anger for my situations in life, and I would take this out on my first wife.”
“Ministers who threaten death and destruction employ weapons of weakness. Argument and kindness are alone effectual, flavored by the principles of Divine love.”
“Weakness is a great bully without knowing it.”
“Absurdity is the one thing love can't stand; it can overlook anything else, -- coldness, or weakness, or viciousness, -- but just be ridiculous and that's the end of it!”
“It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery. These may, perhaps, succeed for once, and borrow for awhile, from hope, a gay and flourishing appearance. But time betrays their weakness, and they fall into ruin of themselves. For, as in structures of every kind, the lower parts should have the greatest firmness--so the grounds and principles of actions should be just and true.”
Source: All the orations of Demosthenes, pronounced to excite the Athenians against Philip King of Macedon: Translated into English; digested and connected, so as to form a regular history of the progress of the Macedonian power: with notes historical and critical. By Thomas Leland, ...
“Poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty--the shame of being thought poor--it is a great and fatal weakness, though arising in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves.”
Source: Advice to Young Men - And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life. In a Series of Letters, Addressed to a Youth, a Bachelor, a Lover, a Husband, a Father, a Citizen, or a Subject.
“Our age is so gregarious that there is at present a marked prejudice against anyone being alone. It is looked down on, and a need to be alone is almost considered a fault, a weakness, as though if one cannot endure - more - enjoy being with other people every minute one is aloof, unreal, and somehow to be pitied.”
“The strength of weak people constantly appalls me. Have you ever seen a vine kill an oak tree? Deadly.”
“Never underestimate the power of helplessness!”
Source: The Bleeding Heart: A Novel
“All the things that are negative in me as a person - the incompetence and despair and weakness and pain - are like a gift from God in a performer. If you don't hide them and if you stop lying to yourself about what you are and are not, there is a ring or a tent or a stage where you can take them and use them to make something beautiful.”
“There is nothing more effectual in showing us the weakness of any habitual fallacy or assumption than to hear it sympathetically through the ears, as it were, of a skeptic.”
Source: Phoebe, Junior0: A Last Chronicle of Carlingford : in Two Volumes
“Husband and wife,--so much in common, how different in type! Such a contrast, and yet such harmony, strength and weakness blended together!”