#tenderness

As she stooped over him, her tears fell upon his forehead. The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of pity and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection he had never known; as a strain of gentle music, or the rippling of water in a silent place, or the odour of a flower, or even the mention of a familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never were, in this life; which vanish like a breath; and which some brief memory of a happier existence, long gone by, would seem to have awakened, for no voluntary exertion of the mind can ever recall them. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#memory #tenderness #dreams

You must remember that you are my prime treasure (and always have been).' Emma Darwin to husband Charles ↗

— Deborah Heiligman

#marriage #tenderness #way-to-be #faith

Some of our most exquisite murders have been domestic, performed with tenderness in simple, homey places like the kitchen table. ↗

— Alfred Hitchcock

#domestic #exquisite #homey #kitchen #kitchen table

Remember those black-and-white films with Frank Sinatra? Those guys looked like men and they were only 27! Listen to Otis Redding singing 'Try A Little Tenderness'. That was a man who understood what a man has to know in the world. Show me a real man now! Where are they? ↗

— Chrissie Hynde

#black-and-white #films #frank #frank sinatra #guys

My father couldn't warm my frozen hands. ↗

— Tahereh Mafi

#hurt #love #shatter-me #tenderness #love

He had tenderness in his heart — ‘a soft place,’ as Nicholas Higgins called it; but he had some pride in concealing it; he kept it very sacred and safe, and was jealous of every circumstance that tried to gain admission. But if he dreaded exposure of his tenderness, he was equally desirous that all men should recognize his justice; and he felt that he had been unjust, in giving so scornful a hearing to anyone who had waited, with humble patience, for five hours, to speak to him. ↗

— Elizabeth Gaskell

#tenderness #vulnerability #equality

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return. ↗

— George Eliot

#ease #ill #indifference #love #return

My dad's a beautiful man, but like a lot of Mexican men, or men in general, a lot of men have a problem with the balance of masculinity and femininity - intuition and compassion and tenderness - and get overboard with the macho thing. It took him a while to become more, I would say, conscious, evolved. ↗

— Carlos Santana

#beautiful #become #compassion #conscious #dad

You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#gentleness #love #material-things #money #power

This is what it means to be loved... when someone wants to touch you, to be tender... ↗

— Banana Yoshimoto

#love #tenderness #the-lake #touch #love