#weakness

When a nation which has long groaned under the intolerable yoke of a tyrant rises at last and throws off its chains, do you call that weakness? The man who, to rescue his house from the flames, finds his physical strength redoubled, so that he lifts burdens with ease which in the absence of excitement he could scarcely move; he who under the rage of an insult attacks and puts to flight half a score of his enemies,—are such persons to be called weak? My good friend, if resistance be strength, how can the highest degree of resistance be a weakness? ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#love #resistance #strength #weakness #love

He honestly believed, for an instant, that what he'd heard was music-a tune piped, a burble of notes, a little scrap of melody floating by on wind and breaking his heart. ↗

— Anne Tyler

#feelings #hurt #love #love

For he or she that harbours no fear has never truly loved anything. You can only measure true love by the thought and fear of its loss. ↗

— Chris Jirika

#feelings-of-weakness #motivational-inspirational #inspirational

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

#illness #inspirational #life #life-changing #meaning

Planning is really the hallmark of any large military formation, and it's typically a weakness in new formations and new armies. ↗

— John R. Allen

#armies #formation #formations #hallmark #large

The incorrectness and weaknesses of a theory cause other minds to formulate the problems more exactly and in this way scientific progress is made. ↗

— Robert Barany

#exactly #formulate #his way #made #minds

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

#weakness #intelligence

Admitting weakness seems to be such a severe psychic threat for Bush that when he makes a mistake it's safer just to reinforce it. The strategy creates a perverse system of rewards and punishments. ↗

— Tina Brown

#bush #creates #just #makes #mistake

Solitude is strength; to depend on the presence of the crowd is weakness. The man who needs a mob to nerve him is much more alone than he imagines. ↗

— Paul Brunton

#crowd #depend #him #imagines #man

Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses. ↗

— Quentin Crisp

#finding #hand #intelligence #modify #powerless